the daily snivel

Thinking back to the recent news that the Conservatives are seeking extend the criminal process to ten-year-old children, Vic Toews has argued that one of the main forces behind such a move is that social agencies are letting these kids fall through the cracks. Here's Accidental Deliberations on it, saving me from having to rant about it while I'm at work on this rainy Sunday:

In other words, Toews tries to justify getting the criminal law involved earlier because of a view that social services aren't currently addressing the needs of such youths. But apparently it would be too easy to deal with such a deficiency by talking with the provinces to try to ensure that appropriate resources exist to provide the needed services. Instead, Toews' solution is not only to raise the spectre of criminal prosecutions for the youths involved, but also to impose his vision of social services on the provinces (and without any additional funding to help provinces meet that obligation).

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the criminal law power should never be used to fix social problems. It just widens the net more and more, triggering penal consequences for people who are being failed by overworked and underfunded social programs and agencies, and straining our overstretched criminal justice system even further from the problems it should be focusing on.