Randy Risling / Toronto Star
Order this photo
The Star discovered a disturbing tendency — particularly in group
homes — to turn outbursts from kids usually suffering from trauma and
mental health issues into matters for police.
THE
NAZIS AND THEIR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?
The
Ontario Minister of Social Services; after exposing to the residents of
group’s homes, to psychological and physical torture, have been
incarcerating a very high percentage of adolescents in youth detention
centers. We are witnessing how tormented children are arriving every day
in handcuffs and full of chains to face the state misfortunes in the
courtrooms the “cattle market.” Many of
them are denied of any legal advocacy and are denied most of their
rights to prepare its defense. The trial is no more than a circus and a
plea bargain – because before the court cases, the prosecutor and the
lawyer have already agreed on the victim sentence, and then the judge
always agrees, than he almost always. Justice for crimes against
humanity must have no limitations!!!
Simon Wiesenthal
Toronto group homes turning outbursts from kids into
matters for police
Serious
occurrences involving youth in the care of the Ontario government and privately
run children’s aid societies often involve a call to police.
Randy Risling / Toronto Star Order
this photo
The Star discovered a disturbing
tendency — particularly in group homes — to turn outbursts from kids usually
suffering from trauma and mental health issues into matters for police.
By: Sandro Contenta News, Jim
Rankin Feature reporter, Published on Fri Jul 03 2015
At Libby’s Place, an Etobicoke group
home for troubled girls, a resident of more than a year was “desperate” to
leave.
So she scratched two of the home’s
cars, hoping the vandalism would get her thrown out and placed with foster
parents. In a report on the incident to the Ontario government, staff from the
home urged her legal guardians, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, to find
the girl a “suitable program” as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, the girl’s cry of
distress landed her in police custody with two counts of mischief.
Across town, at a Hanrahan Youth
Services group home in Scarborough, a boy with a “developmental disability”
smashed his bedroom window during a “disagreement” with another youth. Staff
called police, and the boy — also in the care of the Toronto CAS — was taken
into custody and charged with mischief.
Another youth at Hanrahan did no
more than refuse an order to go to his room, according to the home’s report. He
was charged with failing to comply with court conditions imposed for a previous
incident.
The incidents are described in
reports that must be filed to the Ontario government by group homes, foster
parents and children’s aid societies when children or youth in their care are
involved in events considered serious. In 2013, 1,199 separate incidents were
filed in Toronto — all of them obtained by the Star through a freedom of
information request.
The results show a disturbing
tendency — particularly in group homes — to turn outbursts from kids usually
suffering from trauma and mental health issues into matters for police.
They raise concerns about caregivers
being too quick to call police, feeding what studies suggest is a pipeline that
funnels youths in care into the justice system.
There are 3,300 young people in
Ontario group homes.
The Star aggregated the Toronto data
according to the types of serious incidents, a task the Ministry of Children
and Youth Services, which receives the reports, has apparently never done.
Fully 39 per cent of the serious
occurrence reports involved police. In a quarter of those incidents, youths
ended up under arrest.
Child psychologist Dr. Michele
Peterson-Badali, an authority on Canada’s youth justice system, believes
caregivers are calling police for behaviours that most biological parents would
deal with in more compassionate ways.
“These kids who are in foster or
group homes are getting charged because they are living in a particular type of
institutional environment where that’s the consequence for your behaviour,”
says Peterson-Badali, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education.
“By virtue of where they are, they
are far more likely to penetrate the justice system more deeply than they
(otherwise) would,” she adds. “It’s like we’ve set them up. It’s very
distressing.”
Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for
Children and Youth, Irwin Elman, says the high rate of police involvement
reflects “the culture of power and control” that reigns in many group homes.
Kim Snow, a professor at Ryerson
University’s School of Child and Youth Care, believes it mirrors a lack of
staff training in de-escalating situations in which youths act out.
“I can think of nothing worse than
having a group home phone the police on their own children,” she says.
The link between youths in care and
the criminal justice system has been studied in the U.S. but neglected in
Canada. British Columbia is the exception.
No comments:
Post a Comment