Juvenile crime: truth
but no consequences

ON THE night of Oct. 1 last year three sweet little pro-
ducts of this modern, caring society broke into the under-
ground garage of our apartment block in West Van, stole a
car, rendered it undrivable, and were caught by the local

police.

They also broke into five other
vehicles and made off with the
owners’ remote control garage
openers and anything else they
could lay their hands on.

One of those gadgets belonged
to me, and I never saw it again.
Oh well, they only cost $40 and
worse things happen at sea.

1 offer thanks that they didn’t
make off with my car, which was .
about to be traded in. Had they
taken it I would have been severai
thousand dollars poorer, there not
being much of a market for
trade-ins that have been worked
over by infants on the loose.

Juvenile crime is booming. And
why not? Society is saturated with
nonsense thought up by hippy
thinkers in the justice department,
the secretary of state’s office and
in every other office.

So the kids know that under the
Young Offenders Act nothing
much will happen to them. Even
murder brings no more than three
year:

The little darlings in our West
Vau robbery cannot be named

Doug
Collins

ON THE OTHER HAND

hour to bring her under control.

Such children cannot be touch-
ed. That belongs to the bad old
days. Slap them, and the slapper
is likely to be put on the couch
for a mental test. Or end up in
court for child abuse.

The woman running the group

44 Rehabilitation is the big thing.
Deterrence has been consigned to
the garbage can. 99

because those same hippy thinkers
said it isn’t right to point the
finger at young criminals. The less
the public knows the better, see.

I beg to differ. A kid who
doesn’t reaily have criininal urg-
ings in him might think twice be-
fore committing an offence that
could get his name into the
papers; and a kid who does have
them will get his name into the
papers anyway when he grows up
and graduates to bigger things.

The ones involved in our
break-in were two girls aged 14
and a boy aged 13 who came from
casily co-educational group homes
for kids from “dysfunctional fam-
ilies.”’

One of the girls had been ex-
pelled from school twice and is
given to spitting and swearing at
people in authority. She is said to
be uncontrollable, but was very
quiet in court.

It was siated that on one occa-
sion it took five staff members an

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home from which this budding
monster came couldn’t think of
anything to say in the girl’s favor,
even though she was invited to do
so by the judge.

**How can we help her?’’ asked
His Honor. I had a few ideas, out
he was asking the group home
lady, not me.

The boy is apparently a
charmer, even though he didn’t
charm me. An official involved in
his case told me that everyone tik-
ed him, and certainly I saw his
group home worker give him a lit-
tle hug.

All juvenile offenders are now
entitled ro legal aid, which is a
wonderful thing for lawyers. And

9.7

the cases drag on for months, as
this one did. It’s an ill wind that
blows no geod.

The system is a bad joke and
the police throw up their hands.
Fer punishment is now nothing
more than a memory.

“‘Rehabilitation’’ is the big
thing. Deterrence has also been
consigned to the garbage can.

Why? Deterrence has always
worked with me. I am deterred
from not sending in my income
tax, even though I know it is g0-
ing to be wasted on grants to
homos and lesbians, luxurious
embassies in Washington and
Tokyo, and sending convicts out
to play golf.

{ am deterred because sooner or
later the man from Revenue
Canada would be knocking at my
door and it would cost me more
in the end.

Equally, | am deterred from
getting drunk and driving down
the wrong side of the road. The
consequences would not be to my
liking at all.

The consequences for the kids I
am writing about could hardly be
called consequences.

The boy had stolen several cars
and spent a month in detention
before coming up for trial.

He was then put on probation
for a year and has to put in 25
hours of community work on each
of the counts on which he was
found guilty. Big deal.

And get this — he has to be in
at night. He is not allowed out of
his group home between 10 p.m.
and 7 a.m. But winy are kids in
such homes allowed out late any-
way? Is it so that they can pinch
cars in the witching hours?

The hard-case sweetheart ‘‘was
found in three different cars that
belonged to other peopie on three
different days,”’ as the prosecutor
put it.

She was sent for six months to
the delightfully named House of
Concord in Langley, a ‘‘youth
resources’’ establishment for
young offenders which is a kind
of bigger and better group home.

But the judge did tell her she
could be put into a cell if she
started tearing the piace apart.

The other girl had been fined
$20, put on probation for six
months, and instructed to have
nothing to do with the other two.

God bless us every one.

.

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Meader of the Royal Rank Group

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JEREMY DALTON MLA.

West Vancouver-Capilano

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