The Crime We Choose to See — and the Crime We Ignore

I — The Starting Point

Outrage on a Variable Scale

Cases of child sexual exploitation — particularly online — are on the rise in Canada. Survey after survey, this is the crime the population finds the most morally intolerable. One would expect, then, that the criminal and media response would match this consensus.

Yet the figures tell a different story. Conviction rates remain below average. Sentences are often relatively short. And media attention remains limited, scattered, rarely structuring.

More still: in R. v. Gagnon, 2026 QCCA 583, the Quebec Court of Appeal struck down certain mandatory minimum sentences and instead imposed conditional sentences, despite the seriousness of the offences charged. It is a technically defensible decision, consistent with a familiar judicial logic: nuance, proportionality, individualization.

And it is precisely that logic — nuance, proportionality, individualization — that disappears elsewhere.

II — The Shift

When Crime Becomes a Culture

In dominant media coverage of racialized gangs, the framing changes radically. The headlines speak for themselves.

Here, crime is no longer merely described. It is structured as a collective phenomenon: cultural, territorial, generational. We are no longer simply talking about criminal acts committed by identifiable individuals. We are talking about criminogenic milieus.

The shift is subtle but decisive. It transforms a series of offences into an identity narrative — and, in so doing, it constructs the image of a community to be monitored.

III — The Mechanism

Pathologizing Families, Blaming Culture

One of the most striking shifts is the pathologization of racialized families. In several media accounts, parents are described as absent or overwhelmed, families as disorganized, delinquency as the natural product of deficient supervision.

At the same time, violence is attributed to culture, to the music being listened to, to "social codes" presented as specific to a group. Crime then becomes a cultural expression.

This asymmetry is not innocuous. It organizes, before any analysis even begins, who deserves nuance and who deserves generalization.

IV — The Historical Blind Spot

Biker Groups: A Telling Counter-Example

This contrast becomes all the more striking when we consider the historical presence of criminalized biker groups in Quebec. For decades, organizations such as the Hells Angels have been recognized by police services as among the most structured, influential, and dangerous criminal groups in the country. Their involvement is extensively documented in drug trafficking, organized violence, and the control of criminal economic territories.

These groups have also historically recruited young people — predominantly from the francophone "Québécois de souche" community — into their networks.

And yet.

V — The Refusal of the Systemic

A Case Law That Acknowledges It, A Public Discourse That Denies It

This two-tiered framing persists despite an increasingly clear judicial recognition of the structural biases that run through the system. The courts, for their part, have done the work.

And yet, in public discourse, raising the systemic is still regularly presented as an excuse — as a way of relieving individuals of responsibility. This presentation is convenient. It allows analysis to be replaced by blame.

But it does not stand up to a reading of the decisions. The systemic does not erase the individual: it illuminates the context. Refusing this light is choosing to judge without looking.

VI — The Contrast We Refuse to See

When the Numbers Produce No Discourse

While certain communities are associated in public discourse with criminality, the most morally condemned crimes — those against children — escape any collective logic.

They are neither culturalized. Nor associated with a community. Nor used to construct a moral panic.

And yet, the data are public. According to Statistics Canada, the majority of persons convicted of sexual offences against children are white — approximately 70 to 80%.

VII — The Right Question

Why Explain Some Collectively, and Others Individually?

This imbalance feeds a well-documented sociological dynamic: moral panic. Media amplification. Simplification of issues. The opposition between "them" and "us." The structure is familiar. What changes from one era to the next is only the target.

The question is often asked: who needs to be watched more closely? But this question rests on a fundamental error. Crime is not a property of any group. It runs across all classes, all cultures, all institutions.

Until that question is asked — not as accusation, but as a demand for intellectual honesty — the public narrative will continue to mark certain bodies as dangerous, and exonerate others by default.