Strategic Priority: Youth

Supporting youth is one of the RCMP's five strategic priorities, along with fighting organized crime, battling terrorism, supporting Aboriginal communities and safeguarding Canada's economic integrity.

Resources for parents and youth

A key objective of the RCMP’s National Youth Strategy is working with young people to prevent crimes involving them either as victims or offenders.

The RCMP helps young people stay safe in their communities by using crime prevention through social development to reduce youth crime and victimization.

The RCMP believes that youth themselves have valuable solutions to offer and is committed to working with all youth to build Safe Homes, Safe Communities.

Plans and Priorities

Our approach focuses on the positive social development of youth. The RCMP works with our community partners — including youth — to provide age-specific education and crime prevention programs. Using restorative justice practices, the National Youth Strategy strives to create a positive learning environment which is committed to empowering youth decision making.

These approaches must be combined with broad-based community programs and school-based crime prevention strategies such as the RCMP’s Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE). The RCMP has appointed a youth contact in every province and territory to support this focus. The involvement and support of parents will also help these programs succeed.

To ensure the safety and well-being of our youth, strong communication is essential between youth, educators, parents, health and social services, organizations serving youth as well as municipal, provincial, territorial and federal government agencies.

The RCMP will:

• prevent youth crime by addressing its underlying causes
• respond to the needs of young persons, especially those in situations of risk
• optimize responses to youth who offend. In keeping with the principals of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (April 2003), the RCMP National Youth Strategy will place emphasis on early intervention, meaningful consequences, restorative approaches and community-based involvement
• will continue to seek input from communities, especially youth and youth service organizations, through Youth Community Plans.
• will continue to provide expertise and leadership in promoting community-wide problem solving with a balance of prevention and intervention strategies.
• ensure data quality, specifically in relation to timeliness, accuracy, completeness, validity and reliability.
• work in partnership with our stakeholders to develop leading-edge policing practices.
• maximize research, information and expertise to refine policing practices for youth and communities.
• develop community capacity to prevent crime and use restorative justice to optimize support and responses to youth victims.
• promote positive social values, reduce risk and increase protective factors while building new and strengthening existing partnerships.
• pursue opportunities to consult, co-operate, co-ordinate and collaborate with various levels of government, non-government agencies, communities and youth organizations.
• inform public policy by promoting the sharing of operational, policy and research expertise, tools and techniques — both internally and externally. This will help prevent crime among Canada’s youth by providing appropriate courses and other learning opportunities to police officers.
• communicate effectively by providing information — internally and externally — on positive policing practices when dealing with youth and the benefits of crime prevention through social development.

See also:

• National Youth Strategy contacts across the country