SAVING KIDS FROM DRUGS, BOOZE, WEAPONS AND CRIME

I love the idea of wilderness camps for punk criminals who repeatedly
flout the law and thumb their noses at the courts.

The idea, which is long overdue, was approved as policy by the
Manitoba Tories at their annual general meeting last weekend.

The resolution calls for the use of wilderness camps for young
offenders as an alternative to conventional youth jails. It's a great
idea that would go a long way towards ensuring young criminals are
held accountable for their actions while providing them with the best
chance possible at rehabilitation.

One of the fatal flaws of Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act is its
over-reliance on community sentences. The official argument from the
pointy-headed social workers who have hijacked our criminal justice
system is that jail doesn't work and community sentences are the
preferred choice for rehabilitating little Johnny.

The real reason community sentences are used is to cut costs.
Incarcerating offenders is expensive. So in order to control
expenditures, governments have happily bought into the drivel that
locking up dangerous young offenders is inappropriate and does
nothing to reduce reoffending.

The only problem is that the evidence shows this approach is not
working. We see the same repeat, violent offenders break the law over
and over again.

The major flaw in the community sentence approach is that offenders
find themselves back in the same poisonous environment that led to
their life of crime in the first place.

Probation restrictions are repeatedly violated -- laughed at, mostly
- -- and offenders are returned to the same drug-addicted, criminal
environment they came from.

It's not that complicated. Stick young offenders back into the
poisonous petri dishes from which they were spawned and you can
expect them to carry on with their violent, criminal ways.

Put GPS ankle bracelets on them to track their whereabouts and they
take them off.

Wilderness camps, or boot camps, would take an entirely different approach.

First of all, offenders would be removed from society for public
safety reasons. Somehow, public safety has taken a back seat to the
warm-and-fuzzy objectives of restorative justice and community
sentencing. That has to change.

The overriding objective in sentencing should be to segregate
dangerous, repeat offenders from society. Wilderness camps would meet
that objective. But they would also have rehabilitative benefits.
Removing young offenders from their harmful environments would
immediately unplug them from a life of drugs, alcohol, weapons, gangs
and crime.

From there, teachers, counsellors and therapists could take their
best shot -- through school, work and sports settings -- at providing
them with the moral foundation their parents failed to.

If dangerous, repeat offenders have any chance at all at changing
their ways, it would be in this kind of setting.

Naturally it would be expensive. Very expensive. Which means
governments would have to shift wasteful spending away from bloated
bureaucracies, corporate welfare and useless programs such as the
long-gun registry and devote those resources to wilderness camps instead.

It wouldn't cure all the ills of the youth criminal justice system.
But it would at least help change some lives and most importantly,
keep dangerous offenders off the street for as long as possible.