INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON EARLY DEVELOPMENTAL PREVENTION OF ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

In her recent 2010 report to the British Columbia provincial legislature, the Representative for Children and Youth, Judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, reported that the government of this province had failed to implement key provisions of the 2006 Hughes Royal Commission Report (Leyne, 2010). This failure, she asserted, put too many children at risk for abuse – or even death – especially within the most vulnerable families, such as those headed by impoverished, ill-housed, young and/or single mothers with little of the social capital typically needed to raise healthy children within B.C. communities. Further, a recently released federal report stated the Canada had among the highest rates of child poverty among the leading advanced industrial countries (UNICEF, 2010). Finally, while incarceration rates for young offenders in Canada, generally, have dropped substantially during the last decade, those youth in custody disproportionately have been from the above multi-problem families, especially Aboriginal families (e.g., Doob & Cesaroni, 2004).