Evaluating the Impact of Abortion Liberalization on Youth Crime Rates in Canada: An Effective Abortion Ratio Analysis

Since the early to mid-1980s, an increase in youth violence has been apparent in the United States and in ten European countries: England and Wales, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, France, Denmark, Switzerland, and Poland. In most of these countries rates of youth violence have been increasing even though youth crime rates overall appear to be stable or declining slightly and even though crime rates of older people are not increasing. The principal victims of increased youth violence are male youths and young adults. These patterns are evident from official records, victim surveys, and self-report studies. A main cause appears to be that life in many European countries is shifting toward a "winner-loser culture" in which many disadvantaged youth appear fated to be losers. Countries vary considerably in the mix of law enforcement and prevention efforts undertaken to deal with increased youth violence.

This study used panel data from a sample of cities and counties to examine the effects of curfew laws on youth crime rates. The analysis estimated the impact of new and revised laws on juvenile homicide victimizations (1976 to 1995) and on juvenile arrests for a variety of offenses (1985 to 1996). The results show statistically significant decreases in burglary, larceny, and simple assault arrests after revised laws, but only in the county data. Homicide rates did not change in either counties or cities, and new laws were not followed by reductions in crime. Any preventive effects of curfews appear to be small.

In the 2000s, a major educational reform in Germany reduced the academic high school duration by one year while keeping constant the total number of instructional hours before graduation. The instructional hours from the eliminated school year shifted to lower grade levels, which increased the time younger students spend at school. This study explores the impact of the reform on youth crime rates and substance abuse using administrative police crime statistics, administrative student enrollment data, and a student drug survey. The staggered implementation of the reform in different Lander-age-groups allows for a difference-in-difference approach. I find that the reform resulted in a decline in crime rates, which is almost exclusively driven by a reduction in violent crime and illegal substance abuse. Regarding the latter, the rate of illegal cannabis consumption strongly declined; however, no significant effect is detected on cannabis dealers or the consumption of other illegal drugs. The survey evidence further suggests that decreased cannabis consumption was not driven by a shift of consumption into 'school hours'. The results point to an 'incapacitation' effect of schooling due to the increased instructional hours at lower grade levels.

The purpose of this article is to examine the linkage between implementing the rights of children, as described in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and preventing youth crime. Using Canada as a case study and comparing jurisdictions in Canada where youth crime rates are relatively low and high, the article concludes that efforts at crime prevention are more successful where child and family policies in support of children's rights are stronger. What this illustrates is the importance of implementing children's rights as means of preventing crime.

Despite the profound demographic and socioeconomic changes characterizing family life in recent years, youth crime rates have remained more or less constant since 1971. This finding is of interest given the intense public concern regarding the welfare of children. It also serves as a convenient basis for projecting the future volume of youth crime.

Challenging Public/Private Divide: Feminism, Law and Public Policy. Ed. Susan B. Boyd. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Images of Justice. Dorthy Harley Eber. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997. Policing Risk Society. Richard W. Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Crimes, Laws and Communities. Eds., John McMullan, David Perrier, Stephen Smith and Peter Swan. Toronto: Fernwood Publishing, 1997. Mounties, Moose and Moonshine: Patterns and Content of Outport Crime. Norman R. Okihiro. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Law and Markets: Is Canada Inheriting America's Litigious Legacy? Eds. John Robson and Owen Lippert. Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1997. Blaming Children: Youth Crime, Moral Panics and Politics of Hate. Bernard Schissel. Toronto: Fernwood Publishing, 1997. The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management. Eds. Joep Spiertz and Melanie G. Wiber. VUGA, Netherlands, 1996. Making Good: Law and Moral Regulation in Canada,1867-1939. Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Race, Rights and Law in Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies. James W. St. G. Walker. Waterloo: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1997. These fine books on aspects of law and criminality support platitude that crime does not pay - except for lawyers, criminologists and insurance companies. Canadian criminals put in more time in jail per dollar stolen in other countries, although these statistics predate conviction of Alan Eagleson. Another statistic, even less likely to stir patriotic pride, is that Canadian youth, as Bernard Schissel points out, have highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in world. If crime rates in Canada have dropped off in recent years, corresponding to diminishing ratio of youth in Canadian population, we still have a lot more lawyers. Prior to Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians had less than half as many lawyers per capita as Americans but now we approach two-thirds of American ratio (Law and Markets 77-81) creating the danger of supply-driven and socially harmful increases in litigation(85). Virtually, all of contributors to Law and Markets bemoan Canada's increasing litigiousness; none defend very quality that brought one of Canada's most honoured citizens to jail. The Fraser Institute has brought together an interesting volume that seems to bear message of Adam Egoyan's movie The Sweet Hereafter; namely, that lawyers as ambulance-chasers are bad news. Law and Markets is concerned not with corporate criminality but with prospect that enterprising lawyers, instigating class action salts on contingency fees, will be able to dupe civil juries, and cut into profit margins. Indeed, Richard Hazelton, CEO of Dow Corning which filed for bankruptcy because of silicone breast implant suit, tells a cautionary tale for Canadian businesspeople. Contributors point out that jurors lack competence to assess scientific and technical evidence about toxic emissions, risks to health, relationship of causality and legal accountability; prejudices about dioxin spills may skew assessment of personal injury caused by spillage. The one exception to anti-litigation view of 17 contributors to Law and Markets is Mark Mattson, an environmental litigator, who argues convincingly that Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs radical revision or abolition. Mattson argues that federal government should either enforce environmental standards or leave private litigators like himself to engage in civil ligation against environmental polluters. Mattson recommends that public interest groups and their lawyers split fine levied on offending corporations or municipalities (135). …

In the last three decades, a number of researchers have undertook the comparison of American and Canadian crime rates. Among them, Lipset (1990) and Hagan (1991) have shown that violence was more frequent south of the border than north of it. To explain why crime was more frequent in the US than in Canada, those authors argued that differences in values and culture of each country's residents was the principal determinant of this situation. Using regional and infranational disaggregated crime rates, this article shows that differences in both country's crime rates are not univocal. For example, crime rates in Canada are not higher than those of Northern United States for three crimes out of four studied. What makes US crime rates appear much higher than the Canadian ones can be attributable to a small number of States and cities which have extraordinarily high crime rates.

Abstract.It is pointed out that in concentrating on the discrimination and low labor participation rates of highly educated married women, the social opportunity costs related to family stability and youth crime rates are not considered.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between digital leisure activities and crime patterns through the development and testing of a "digital leisure hypothesis." Drawing on routine activity theory and empirical data from multiple sources, the author argues that increased engagement with digital entertainment, particularly among youth, has contributed to significant shifts in criminal opportunities by altering how people spend their time. The study presents evidence of strong negative correlations between time spent on digital leisure activities and youth crime rates, particularly for offenses like vandalism and burglary. Using data from the American Time Use Survey and Bureau of Justice Statistics (1994-2016), the research demonstrates that higher rates of digitalization are associated with lower arrest rates, with effects being particularly pronounced among young people. The chapter also explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these trends by forcing rapid adoption of digital activities across all age groups. The author proposes a dual-effect model where digitalization simultaneously reduces opportunities for traditional street crime by keeping people indoors while creating new opportunities for cybercrime through increased online activity. This is supported by empirical analysis showing exponential growth in cyber-victimization correlating with increased digital technology adoption. The findings suggest that the relationship between digital leisure and crime is not a simple displacement effect, but rather reflects fundamental changes in routine activities and criminal opportunities. The chapter concludes by considering how these trends might evolve in a post-pandemic world, arguing that understanding the relationship between digital leisure and crime patterns will become increasingly crucial for criminological theory and crime prevention strategies.

An examination of variation across provinces in self-reported violent and property offending by Canadian youths demonstrates considerably less variation than the rate of police-recorded contacts with youths or the rate of use of youth court for these youths. Official measures of offending by youths in Canada are probably best seen as reflections of the behaviour of adults in deciding how to respond to offending by youths, rather than of the behaviour of youths.

Punishment was initially viewed as a moral event implying that the condemned person was redeemed from status as a delinquent member of society through his or her punishment. This redeeming aspect of punishment was superseded by a penal instrumentalism that transformed a penal sanction into an indefinite process never reaching its end. Comparisons of prison rates between various countries show that they do not directly vary in proportion to external factors such as crime rates. They also suggest that crime rates may affect prison rates through their affective resonance rather than their quantum and that penal policies take a different meaning depending on what they are compared to. Stability of imprisonment rates in Canada results from its traditions of multiculturalism and minority empowerment and by the Canadian consensus for distancing the country from the punitive excess of its American neighbor. Finland’s declining crime rates show that countries may change their penal policies by comparing themselves to their neighbors. Breaking down a country's isolation may be a condition for changing its penal policies.

This paper provides causal evidence that labour market opportunities affect theft‐related crime rates in Canada. Synthetic panel data from 2007–2011 combine the Labour Force Survey and Uniform Crime Reports microdata. Low‐skill unemployment rates and corresponding crime rates are measured for age‐city‐specific groups of young males. IV estimates exploit the exposure of low‐skill employment to exogenous demand for exports to the US. Causal estimates of the elasticity of theft‐related crimes with respect to low‐skill unemployment range from 0.357 to 0.654. The use of aggregated unemployment rates appears to bias OLS estimates downward. IV estimates are found to mitigate this aggregation bias.

These fine books on aspects of law and criminality support the platitude that crime does not pay -- except for lawyers, criminologists and insurance companies. Canadian criminals put in more time in jail per dollar stolen in other countries, although these statistics predate the conviction of Alan Eagleson. Another statistic, even less likely to stir patriotic pride, is that Canadian youth, as Bernard Schissel points out, have the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world.If crime rates in Canada have dropped off in recent years, corresponding to the diminishing ratio of youth in the Canadian population, we still have a lot more lawyers. Prior to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians had less than half as many lawyers per capita as the Americans but now we approach two-thirds of the American ratio (Law and Markets 77-81) creating "the danger of supply-driven and socially harmful increases in litigation" (85). Virtually, all of the contributors to Law and Markets bemoan Canada's increasing litigiousness; none defend the very quality that brought one of Canada's most honoured citizens to jail. The Fraser Institute has brought together an interesting volume that seems to bear the message of Adam Egoyan's movie The Sweet Hereafter; namely, that lawyers as ambulance-chasers are bad news. Law and Markets is concerned not with corporate criminality but with the prospect that enterprising lawyers, instigating class action suits on contingency fees, will be able to dupe civil juries, and cut into profit margins. Indeed, Richard Hazelton, the CEO of Dow Corning which filed for bankruptcy because of the silicone breast implant suit, tells a cautionary tale for Canadian businesspeople.Contributors point out that jurors lack competence to assess the scientific and technical evidence about toxic emissions, risks to health, the relationship of causality and legal accountability; prejudices about dioxin spills may skew assessment of the personal injury caused by the spillage. The one exception to the anti-litigation view of the 17 contributors to Law and Markets is Mark Mattson, an environmental litigator, who argues convincingly that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs radical revision or abolition. Mattson argues that the federal government should either enforce environmental standards or leave private litigators like himself to engage in civil ligation against environmental polluters. Mattson recommends that public interest groups and their lawyers split the fine levied on the offending corporations or municipalities (135). While Mattson may conform to the Fraser Institute's policy on deregulation -- "It is government intervention that stands in the way of a public right to protect community resources" (136) -- his proposals would encourage litigation, diminish shareholder profits and raise citizens' taxes. If the aim of Canadian economic regulation is, as Konrad von Finckenstein puts it, "user-friendly regulation," we are led to conclude that deregulation and user-friendly regulation are not the same thing. If the conflicting interests of Richard Hazelton and Mark Mattson reveal the current contradictions of capitalism, we might also note that the provinces geographically and ideologically closest to the Fraser Institute (British Columbia and Alberta) are the most litigious, while New Brunswick are Newfoundland are least litigious (158-9).An exciting challenge for the Fraser Institute would be to take on the human rights legislation that emerged after the Second World War, arising from a combination of anti-Nazi principle, Keynesian welfarism and acceptance of wartime control of goods and services in the public interest. Since human rights codes abridge several common law rights, of property and contract, specifically the right of business to discriminate in favour of preferred employees, buyers, tenants and customers, the Institute's views on James Walker's compelling account of the role of human rights legislation in limiting racism in the Canadian marketplace would be illuminating. …

Introduction & Objective: Besides age and sex as established risk factors of COVID-19 infection, social factor is found to be a determinant, with people of lower socioeconomic status suffer disproportionately from the disease. The city of Toronto has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in Canada. This analysis aims to explore the socioeconomic correlates associated with COVID-19 infection and the temporal trends among different age groups in Toronto using geospatial modeling.
 Methods: A Bayesian spatio-temporal analysis was conducted using public COVID-19 cases data for Toronto. The case data were modeled using the Besag-York-Mollie (BYM) model, implemented in R-INLA. The model adjusted for age, sex, neighbourhood-level socioeconomic factors, crime rates, and population density. Random effects were included to account for neighbourhood-level variation and for spatial autocorrelation. Temporal trends of COVID-19 cases were modelled using second-order random walks to allow non-parametric estimations.
 Results: The model estimates showed that men are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection. Among neighbourhood factors, higher home prices, education level, and population density are at lower risks, while belonging to an improvement area showed elevated risks. The temporal trends differed by age, with ages 20-59 showed increased risks over time, compared to the youngest and older age groups. Model predictions showed that northwest Toronto has higher risk compared to the rest of Toronto.
 Conclusion: The higher COVID-19 infection risks in the Northwest will require increase public health effort to control disease spread in this area. The ecological correlates identified in this analysis will also help to guide the ongoing vaccination plans.

Are Crime Rates Increasing? A Study of the Impact of Demographic Shifts on Crime Rates in Canada