“Thirteen-year-old Idaho program for wayward boys
has 85 percent success rate.”
Ottawa – Yesterday,
Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, broke new ground in the Parliamentary
debate to replace the Young Offenders Act. “Statistics Canada
reported that in 1998, 106,984 youths aged 12 to 17 were charged with a Criminal
Code offence. The
rate of youths charged with violent crimes is 77 percent higher than it was a
decade ago.” In his speech,
Breitkreuz augmented these alarming statistics with a list of headlines over
that last few months which reported on a number of violent incidents in schools
across the country. “What
happened in the last thirty years to bring about such a dramatic change in how
our young people act?” asked Breitkreuz.
“It’s going to take more than passing more laws to bring about the
changes the public is demanding to the youth justice file.”
Breitkreuz called on the
government to work with communities and churches to develop programs to start to
address the underlying factors that are causing our young people to turn to
violent crime. Referring to a
number of published documents, Breitkreuz offered a direction that the
government programs could take to guarantee success.
A
column by Charles Moore published in the Calgary Herald reported, “A study
conducted from 1993 to 1995 by the United States Department of Justice’s
office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention tracked 4,000 male and
female subjects aged six to fifteen. Among
the studies findings:
Commenting
on the study in a letter to the National Post, Dr. Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser
University added, “Socialization into guns for sporting and hunting
purposes appears to have ‘inoculated’ the adolescents against the criminal
use of firearms.”
Time
Magazine reported that “teachers and counselors affirm that kids taught to
use guns responsibly generally demonstrate more maturity, better manners, and
saner attitudes that their non-gun-using peers.
Teacher Cesario Guerrero, who supervises hunting trips for programs for
kids from tough, inner-city neighborhoods in Houston, Texas, told Time that
these kids often ‘become part of a different crowd,’ as a result.
‘It gives them pride.’”
“Hunting trips for
troubled kids gives them pride. Who
would have thought?” asked Breitkreuz. “Well,
anyone that hunts would understand why. So does Randall Eaton, author of The
Sacred Hunt: Right of Passage.” In fact, in an interview with Mr. Eaton last month, the
Toronto Star reported an Idaho program for wayward boys that has been running
for 13 years and has a remarkable 85% success rate.
Breitkreuz concluded, “This is a program worth looking at.
This is a program that every Wildlife Federation in every province would
likely be willing to sponsor and manage. This
is a true young offenders program - one that sets kids back on the right course
- one that brings about real change – societal change.
This is a true crime prevention program.”
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