BOOT 'EM INTO CAMPS

Boy, Canada's youth crime laws are working well, aren't they?

The pointy-headed, social worker gurus who have hijacked our criminal
justice system have been telling us for years how coddling young
criminals, keeping them out of custody and rehabilitating them in the
community is the only answer to kiddy crime.

You can't incarcerate 12-year-olds and expect them to return to the
community and be grounded, responsible members of society, the social
worker types say. No, you've got to keep them in the community where
they can continue to develop their ties with gangs, drugs and
dysfunctional family members.

Yeah, that's working well.

Canada decided some years ago that keeping young criminals in custody
was wrong and that parole orders were the preferred choice for
dealing with kid criminals, even violent repeat offenders.

And where has that brought us?

How about the three young girls -- one aged 12 and two aged 14 -- and
a 15-year-old boy who allegedly attacked and killed a Winnipeg woman
like a pack of wild dogs.

Kids who were out at 2:45 a.m. last weekend, evidently with no
parental supervision.

The kids allegedly beat the woman repeatedly, kicking and punching
her, leaving her for dead at her Spence Street home, only to succumb
to her injuries in hospital.

It was brutal, unthinkable and exceptionally violent for a group of
young kids who should have been tucked away in their bedrooms,
resting up for Sunday morning hockey and ringette practice.

It was, in a word, evil.

It's not an isolated incident, either. Cops say they're seeing an
increase in violence from young kids, especially from young girls who
are falling deeper into the world of violent crime.

We can come up with all the reasons in the world why these kids are
doing this -- screwed up parents, bad neighbourhoods, domestic abuse,
boredom, etc. And they all have validity.

But you can't tell me these kids don't know if they're caught doing
something really bad that very little will happen to them.

After a while, it becomes street knowledge that if you're under 18
and you commit a serious crime, you're going to face few, if any,
consequences for your actions. It's human nature, and these kids aren't stupid.

Especially kids who have already been through the system.

That's what the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and how it's applied in
the courts, has brought us.

It's a social experiment that has failed miserably.

There's only one answer for kids who commit serious crimes -- we need
some form of military-style boot camp.

You have to take these kids -- whether it's chronic car thieves,
arsonists or murderers -- out of the community for public safety purposes.

And you have to put them in a controlled, disciplined environment
where there is structure, sobriety and education.

In many cases, these kids have little or no parenting in their lives.
And if you want to turn their lives around, you have to try to fill that gap.

The only way to do that is to remove them from the destructive
environments they're living in and give them discipline, life skills and hope.

There's no other way.

These ridiculous parole sentences where kids go back to their
communities and hang out with the same destructive people who got
them into a life of crime in the first place don't work.

They do nothing to help rehabilitate kids and they send a message out
to the public that if you're a kid and you commit serious crimes,
virtually nothing will happen to you.

It's time for boot camps.