Young car thieves growing up

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This article was published 12/02/2009 (6408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba Justice program lauded for its successes in keeping tabs on high-risk teenage auto thieves in the city could soon experience growing pains.

A large number of the "worst of the worst" car thieves will become adults this year.

And the demographic shift has raised concerns that years of ground gained through the merits of a program called the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy (WATSS) will be lost unless the system is tweaked to monitor the offenders as adults.

The WATSS program, which began in late 2005, was specifically designed to monitor offenders between the ages of 12 and 17, or until their final youth probation orders wear out. Currently, the oldest chronic car thief still involved in the strategy due to a probation order is 20 years old.

All told, more than half of the 146 youth currently identified as chronic stolen car offenders are now 17 or older, program manager Brent Apter said.

But, he added, steps have been taken to address the oncoming demographic watershed. Manitoba is prepared to tackle the problem if it grows larger, Apter said.

"The shift is real, but the sky’s not falling just yet," he said. "The problem is still kids, cars and thrills."

He claims that statistics show that youth stolen-car offenders continue to be the real problem for Winnipeg. By the time they’re adults, many of them have given up their car-stealing ways entirely, or have moved on to committing other crimes, Apter said. It’s because of this that the issue is one to be watched closely, but there’s no reason to panic and start creating a separate, but perhaps similar strategy for adults.

"Youth are still a major issue in this and we shouldn’t willy-nilly go and dump a bunch of resources into the adult side," Apter said.

There’s only been about 15 examples in the past of youth enmeshed in the strategy continuing their auto-theft habits after leaving it, he said, and the problem isn’t being ignored.

In early 2008, Manitoba Justice added an adult probation officer and adult community corrections worker to deal specifically with car thief offenders who are adults. Apter said the adult probation officer has a current caseload of 29 people, with 20 of them being between 18 and 21.

There are also a number of adults who are charged with stolen auto-related offences and are too old to have been part of the WATSS program.

They are eligible to be sent to the adult auto-theft supervision section if they receive probation or a community-based sentence, Apter said, but few are WATSS-style serial auto thieves out to cause havoc on city streets.

In some sense, however, the demographic shift is really a tale of Canada’s two justice systems. The WATSS strategy, its framework of the Youth Criminal Justice Act and emphasis on rehabilitation of youth stands in marked contrast to the adult judicial system and its principles of general denunciation and deterrence.

"On the adult side… you also have the potential for some significant consequence there in terms of (jail)," Apter said. Rehabilitation factors into adult sentencing guidelines, but to far less of a degree than in the youth system.

james.turner@freepress.mb.ca