Summary
"Empirically, the dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of the relationship between rates of youth crime in Quebec and Ontario and the inclusiveness of their respective provincial welfare states over the twenty year period covering 1981 to 2000. The Quebec welfare state is found to define both the role and identity of citizen more inclusively than its Ontario counterpart. Consistent with this result, the Quebec youth justice system is found to possess a narrower jurisdiction and a more tolerant approach to order maintenance compared to the Ontario system. Both the trajectory of, and the scale of differences between, rates of youth crime in the two provinces are found to closely correspond to the evolving nature of when and how the two youth justice systems are deployed in response to troublesome events. The results of the study therefore appear to largely support the argument of crime rates tending to be inversely related to welfare state inclusiveness."--Page iii.