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Oh dear God, you must be kidding me....

Cdn Blackshirt

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I've read of some absolutely assinine programs over the years, but this may take the cake.

Anyone who doesn't think we need to de-Liberal the bureaucracies of this country is simply not paying attention.


Matthew.  >:(

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/07/01/4304724-sun.html

Young offenders offered top treatment
Fed program earmarks big bucks for 24 of this country's worst young offenders
By MICHELE MANDEL
   

Maybe this holiday weekend you're putting in another shift to help pay for your child's college tuition.

Maybe you are that student, worried about how you're going to put the cash together for school and your first apartment.

Or maybe you're a victim of crime, and you can't afford the counselling you so desperately need.

Too bad you're not a teen killer, because then you'd be showered -- thanks to the Canadian government -- with more than $100,000 a year.

It's called the Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision program or IRCS and for 24 of this country's worst youth offenders, the little-known federal justice program is akin to hitting the jackpot.

In return for accepting treatment for their mental issues, serious violent offenders can escape adult prison and do easy time instead in a youth facility, like Ontario's Sprucedale, while taxpayers spend $100,375 per inmate for academic courses, counselling, "life skills" and reintegration.

The theory is that these heavily damaged "kids" need intensive help if they are ever to find their way back into society.

What kind of help, you may ask?

Well, there was the $700 piece of wood we purchased for a killer who brutally beat and sexually assaulted 15-year-old Elisha Mercer under the Lorne Bridge in Brantford in 2001. According to a Sprucedale insider, the young murderer was given the lumber to fashion his very own homemade guitar.

"It makes us all want to vomit," says the employee, who doesn't want to be named. "The victims should be getting this money, not them."

When told by the Sun, Elisha's mom was outraged to learn what constitutes therapy for the killer of her only child. "It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous," Wilma Martin says. "These have been very hard years. My husband and I split up because of what happened, he took off and I was left to pay the mortgage and the bills. I came close to losing my home.

"I could have used $100,000."

Instead, Ottawa last year earmarked $3.4 million for the country's worst of the worst young murderers and rapists with psychological disorders.

In 2004, one of the first accepted into the new program was the 18-year-old Hamilton youth who had killed Jonathan Romero the year before. Romero, 18, had gone to Lime Ridge Mall to buy a Christmas present for his mom. Standing on the sidelines when his friend got involved in a fight, Romero was sucker punched by the youth and after falling to the ground, was savagely punched four more times in the head and neck. He died hours later in hospital.

A judge turned down the Crown's request for a 61/2- year adult sentence for manslaughter and instead agreed to just 30 months in custody at Sprucedale. The young offender was deemed eligible for IRCS because -- wait for it -- he was diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and mood disorder.

If only every kid with ADD could get free one-on-one counselling and government-sponsored perks.

The Hamilton youth was assigned a "life coach" and various IRCS counselling programs. He was released four weeks ago to a six-month reintegration period, but according to the Sprucedale worker, none of the expensive rehabilitation seemed to have any impact at all. "He felt no remorse whatsoever for his crime and anyone who worked with him over the last three years will tell you the same thing," he says. "He was a poster child for everything that was wrong with the system.

'DANGER TO SOCIETY'

"Do I think he still poses a danger to society? You bet I do. At that summer camp, he didn't learn a thing."

The youth, stung by a previous article slamming easy time at Sprucedale, insists he's a changed man in a letter published in the Sun. "Every achievement that I completed here is to the memory of that boy."

According to his former worker, the letter is just another demonstration of how he's learned to talk the talk as well as how to use the IRCS program to his advantage.

Now 20, the Hamilton killer was boasting to everyone that the federal government will now be paying for his college tuition, laptop computer and his living expenses. On his $16,000 IRCS wish list, he also requested a plasma screen TV and new designer clothing. The insider says he doesn't know if those goodies were granted as well.

"All of this stuff ," says the angry youth worker, "an average family can't afford and these kids are getting it for murdering other kids? It's unbelievable. The public needs to know."

Oh Canada, why are we such gullible souls?
 
This just makes me want to vomit. It only goes to affirm in my mind that troubled youth (and their 'rehabilitation programs') aren't the only thing wrong in our system today ... but the fact that there's obviously some very troubled adults out there granting and approving this bullshit for them.
 
Hmm, and to think my biggest life decision was to reply to my college acceptance letter or to say "yes" to the recruiting center that called the same day.  Either case involved hard work and no free ride!!

Somedays I wish I could work for a different group of politicians...
 
In return for accepting treatment for their mental issues, serious violent offenders can escape adult prison and do easy time instead in a youth facility, like Ontario's Sprucedale, while taxpayers spend $100,375 per inmate for academic courses, counselling, "life skills" and reintegration.

OK, OK, I understand there are big league medical-ethics questions with forcing people to 'accept' treatment but these sh!t pumps are prisoners.  If they, in all their well established maturity, decide to reject treatment then chain 'em all to the walls, feed 'em slops and let 'em out when hell is nicely frozen over.

I said elsewhere I don't favour prison time for most white-collar criminals - for violent offenders, on the other hand, I favour nothing but jail.  Lock 'em up, for very, very, very long times, stop worrying about 'em (or their parents' family visit 'rights') and get on with sweeping the trash (human and inanimate) off the streets.
 
Maybe if we make youth "prisons" a place of punishment, then we just might not see them reoffending again as adults - committing much more violent crimes. Who the hell thought up a reward system for criminals? Wouldn't you want to reoffend just to get back into someplace with all the luxuries like video games on big screens? And then we wonder what this world is coming to???  >:(
 
teddybear said:
Maybe if we make youth "prisons" a place of punishment, then we just might not see them reoffending again as adults - committing much more violent crimes. Who the hell thought up a reward system for criminals? Wouldn't you want to reoffend just to get back into someplace with all the luxuries like video games on big screens? And then we wonder what this world is coming to???  >:(

You see teddybear, you have common sense. Some decision-making adults obviously do not.

Who'd have thunk it?? Actually punishing people when they do something wrong ...

It's a pretty sad state out there...
 
E.R. Campbell said:
OK, OK, I understand there are big league medical-ethics questions with forcing people to 'accept' treatment but these sh!t pumps are prisoners.  If they, in all their well established maturity, decide to reject treatment then chain 'em all to the walls, feed 'em slops and let 'em out when hell is nicely frozen over.

I said elsewhere I don't favour prison time for most white-collar criminals - for violent offenders, on the other hand, I favour nothing but jail.  Lock 'em up, for very, very, very long times, stop worrying about 'em (or their parents' family visit 'rights') and get on with sweeping the trash (human and inanimate) off the streets.

There used to be lovely old sentence:  "Detained at the Queen's Pleasure".  You were released when the Queen (or her agents the Government) saw fit.  You had to prove that you were fit to rejoin society.  It was used for criminals in prisons and in Institutes for the Criminally Insane.

Where did the Good Old Days go?
 
You want a rehabilitation program to get their heads back in gear? How about an "Outward Bound" type program somewhere in the high arctic so they learn and understand concepts like looking out for others (or you'll starve/freeze to death)? At least a graduate of my rehab will be able to do more than "talk the talk", and the fact they are there in person at the end will be the proof that it worked.

Of course, that is only some utopian speculation..........
 
a_majoor

You should put a proposal together and apply for a billion dollars, it would be a better use of the money.
 
I agree. The system is broken. This is a prime example, but its not just this.

We need to figure what we are willing to spend money on and what we are trying to do.
 
Its a clear message to criminals in this country that "crime does pay".

I wish we would go to a prison system like the US has, brutal, uncompromising and unfettered by political BS. You walk in , but you may never walk out. And bring back the death penalty for violent crimes.

Our prisons are run like Holiday Inns compared to the US. Prisoners in Canada have more rights than their victims.
 
All that wasted space on Hans Island, too.  What a wonderful gulag that would make.
 
retiredgrunt45 said:
Its a clear message to criminals in this country that "crime does pay".

I wish we would go to a prison system like the US has, brutal, uncompromising and unfettered by political BS. You walk in , but you may never walk out. And bring back the death penalty for violent crimes.

Our prisons are run like Holiday Inns compared to the US. Prisoners in Canada have more rights than their victims.

Why stop there? Why dont we imitate all the countries all you right wingers love to put down on this site, we can go USSR/Russian style, or Chinese style or North Korean style, or Syria, or Iran style.

 
rz350 said:
Why stop there? Why dont we imitate all the countries all you right wingers love to put down on this site, we can go USSR/Russian style, or Chinese style or North Korean style, or Syria, or Iran style.

Yes....because we all know that right wing ideology in the criminal justice system is the fundamental reason we're having the problems described, right?


Matthew.    ::)
 
rz350 said:
Why stop there? Why dont we imitate all the countries all you right wingers love to put down on this site, we can go USSR/Russian style, or Chinese style or North Korean style, or Syria, or Iran style.

I hardly think that criticizing the prison system in Canada as being too soft warrants to have that said. Prisoners are in prison for a reason. Some don't deserve to be treated the way other prisoners should be  --- A man who doesn't pay taxes shouldn't be put into the same system as a serial killer, and everyone knows that. But saying that our system is too soft on violent criminals doesn't deserve to have that thrown at it.
We all know that prisons in Syria and Iran are brutal and torture is common amongst criminals, but wanting a violent criminal in prison to have a hard life while in prison doesn't mean torture.
 
rz350 said:
Why stop there? Why dont we imitate all the countries all you right wingers love to put down on this site, we can go USSR/Russian style, or Chinese style or North Korean style, or Syria, or Iran style.

Well, we have a North Korean style rationed health care system and we're really proud of that, maybe their prison system is equally 'good.'

And, while we're at it: what is the recidivism rate in China?
 
My point is, the US system is not the best. I dont think a 18yo who shags his 17 yo girlfriend needs 10 years in a texas pen.

I would advocate harder on violence and sexual( as in rape or real peadophilia..not 17 and 18 year olds) criminals, but not a full fledged USA prison system with YEARS in prison for smoking pot or tax fraud on a personal level.
 
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