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Editorial: Youth justice needs overhaul
Commentary by Chris Clegg
for South Peace News
Last week, the Manitoba Tories passed a policy calling for the use of wilderness camps for young offenders as an alternative to conventional youth jails.
What a terrific idea!
Why not extend the idea? Judges should also be given options to send repeat probation offenders and property crimes offenders to the camps, not just youth convicted of violent crimes.
I can hear the snickering from the coffee shops now. Build five camps in Alberta and you would have five of the province’s top 10 cities in population.
But I digress.
The idea is sure to spark a big debate among the “out-for-blood” society which wants youth locked behind bars and the “bleeding heart” opposition which insists rehabilitation is the only priority which needs consideration – and dare you not be too harsh on Little Johnny.
I’ve covered youth court proceedings on and off for over 20 years. I’ve first saw how the Young Offenders Act worked, then saw how the new Youth Criminal Justice Act was supposed to be a big improvement.
Trust me, it has not.
The justice system needs to make improvements and I’m not so sure this wilderness camp idea isn’t so bad.
But before we go hammering on the entire system it is worth noting the following:
* reprimands are not an entirely bad thing. Sometimes, a judge will issue a reprimand to give the youth a break. Some crimes deemed petty, it’s not unfair. Sometimes, a second chance is warranted.
* sometimes, probation does work. Sometimes a youth does get a rude awakening, completes probation and the justice system never sees him again. These are the success stories you never read about. It’s only the repeat offenders who snub the system and return to youth court you read about and how horrifically wrong we are dealing with them.
Far too many times youth are in court with repeated charges of thumbing their nose at the system.
These youth clearly need some direction and need it fast before they face a life in and out of prison and a financial burden to society.
Giving sentences to be served in the community is a farce. The offender is immediately back in the same environment that has led to them committing crimes in the first place.
How can anyone expect that to work?
The only real solution is to take them out of the environment which has caused them to commit the crimes in the first place. A double benefit occurs because they are also removed from society. Wilderness camp an hour north of Rainbow Lake is not a place anyone will run away from too soon.
The idea of wilderness camps would not be cheap. It would be very expensive to build “little communities” around each province to accommodate such facilities. Given more and more people’s concerns about the justice system, however, most would rather see their hard-earned tax money spent on wilderness camps rather than the justice system’s pockets, which is a monster feeding itself unlike any other government has created.
It is time we consider a different approach to youth justice. Wilderness camps area a good start.
While what we have works in some cases, I believe we certainly can do better.
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