TORONTO – The quantity and quality of education offered to youth in Ontario detention centers varies widely by facility, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased those discrepancies, according to a new report from the Canadian Association of Detention Centers. Civil Liberties.
The report, based on interviews with youth who spent time in facilities and adults involved in the juvenile justice system, says that there are vast differences in the number of hours of education available to youth at each facility.
There are also differences in the scope and depth of programming available, with participants in some facilities expressing concern that youth were awarded high school credit without having learned the material to make the center “look good,” he says. .
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Combined, these lead to “very different educational experiences and opportunities for a young person, depending on the facility in which they were placed,” says the document released Tuesday.
The quantity and quality of schooling at the facility was also markedly different from what is offered to students attending mainstream community schools, where the standard school day is five hours excluding breaks, according to the report. .
It points out that Ontario school boards are not legally bound to provide education in youth detention centers, but instead do so through voluntary associations that can be discontinued at any time, “resulting in significant disruptions to youth education. “.
“The idea that juvenile prisons could be schools, places of hope, places of education and places of growth is supposed to be the silver lining behind the heartbreaking story behind every child behind bars,” Michael said Tuesday. Bryant, executive director of the CCLA. .
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“The good news is that in some institutions, people are working very hard to provide the best education possible for incarcerated children. The bad news is this: I regret to report that in some institutions, juvenile prisons are little more than human warehouses, a place where children do not get better and are likely to get worse.
The report says that the discrepancies have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but appear to be caused by differences in organizational culture.
Some facilities appear to treat youth as “security threats to be dealt with,” rather than as students who deserve an education, particularly where the majority of youth are black, the report says.
At a security-focused institution, the decision was made to separate young people living in different units because of the belief that allowing them to mix would pose a security threat, the report says. As a result, school hours were divided among the housing units, meaning that one group could only attend in the morning and the other in the afternoon, he says.
The document presents 19 recommendations, including the establishment of minimum standards for education in youth detention centers and an audit of the educational programs currently available there.
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The research project began in 2016 and involved more than 50 interviews, about a quarter of them with young people. All participants were self-selected volunteers.
All youth who participated must be 16 years or older and have spent time in a detention center in the past five years.
The CCLA says it was given access to conduct interviews at four facilities earlier this year, which meant they had to be done remotely due to the pandemic. By comparison, the interviews with adult participants began in 2017.
It also says that only young men identified as men volunteered to participate in the project, and no indigenous youth participated, meaning that “many critical perspectives of youth are lacking.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services said it is important for the province to provide young people with “the appropriate supports and interventions that respond to their unique needs, while ensuring accountability.”
“Youth in custody have access to education through local school boards, to ensure continuous learning,” Krystle Caputo, Merrilee Fullerton communications director, wrote in a statement. “We also offer programs to help young people develop their strengths so they can become positive and productive members of society when they are released.”
© 2021 The Canadian Press
Reference-globalnews.ca