Designed for Disparity: The Racial Inequities of Canada's Youth Justice System

"I think it's important for us as a society to remember that the youth within juvenile justice systems are, most of the time, youths who simply haven't had the right mentors and supporters around them - because of circumstances beyond their control." ~ Q'orianka Kilcher

"Experts say that if children can't read by the end of the fifth grade, they lose self-confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to enter the juvenile justice system." ~ Dirk Kempthorne

"My first two books, Letters to a Young Brother and Letters to a Young Sister, were... distributed pretty widely. Judges in juvenile justice facilities started citing the book as required reading." ~ Hill Harper

"Just in general, when we look at our school system, there is so much overlap with our criminal justice system in terms of our low-income youth." ~ Dana Goldstein

You look at the numbers, but they are not mere statistics.

They are lives, stories, futures determined by forces initiated long ago, before these young people were even born. The Canadian youth justice system does not capture all young people alike. It extends with overreach into Indigenous and Black youth, entangling them in circles that appear impossible to escape. This is not by fluke; it is a system operating as intended. You need to understand that Indigenous youth, who comprise just 8% of their age cohort, constitute half of all young people admitted to custody. For Indigenous young women, the disparity is even more profound at 62%.

No, this is not an accident, nor a simple failure of men.

It's the result of centuries of oppression: residential schools that broke families apart, systemic racism that closes the door before one has a chance to open it, and economic barriers that guarantee struggle is inherited as birthright. The youth are not in the justice system because they were born criminal; they are there because history has laid out the path for them.

Black youth are no different. In Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, they comprise 18% of youth admissions to custody, while being only 4% of the population. Oh Canada, history's hand is at work. Over-policing of Black communities, the residual fallout of disrupted families due to mass incarceration, and economic marginalization all drive these youth to the periphery where the justice system lies in wait to welcome them.

Teenagers and Economic Barriers

Although the law targets 12 to 17 year olds, it disproportionately affects older teens, 16 to 17 year olds. They are more vulnerable to this because they have more freedom and more exposure to risk and fewer support structures, which exposes them to being arrested. Society is ironically punishing these teens for the same condition that society itself generates. The economic barriers between a positive extracurricular activity, with sports and arts programs running well over $4,000 a year, only compound this risk, leaving many teens with fewer constructive outlets.

The Business Model of the Canadian Youth Justice System

The information is not always comprehensive, differing from province to province, but the reality cannot be disputed. The system was designed to please some and disillusion others. You cannot tear down this reality without acknowledging its design first. Change does not happen with modifications, it happens by changing the foundation and starting from scratch.

Power is not only in influence but also in the ability to control the flow of resources, and nowhere is this more transparently evident than in the eye-watering cost of the Canadian Youth Justice System. A monster of gigantic size, it consumes over $1.1 billion annually, a figure that, broken down, reveals the power of control behind it.

Its enormous cost burden decides the system, $420 million into police forces, so the first line of enforcement is continuously on duty; $70 million into youth courts, where judicial justice pretends to be equity; and $62 million into prosecution, the agents of state power who determine the fate of those ensnared. But the most revealing cost is the $730 million for so-called youth justice programs and services, bureaucracy masquerading as reform, control yielded not by iron bars but by constant supervision and intervention. Youth justice is not simply a provincial investment but a display of power.

The price of the Canadian Youth Justice System is not a static but a dynamic one, varying with crime levels, reform of the law, and political policy. To understand these sums is to glimpse machinery of power, how finance decides justice, how young people are turned into commodities in a system that gains from their deviance, and how, in the rhetoric of rehabilitation, there lies a system nourished by the very evils it claims to treat.

To combat this crisis, you have to think outside the sphere of punishment. Prevention is the answer, in community interventions, in support systems based on culture that break cycles rather than perpetuate them. Restorative justice, economic investment, and combating systemic bias, these are the instruments of genuine change.