Clearly we have to focus our efforts on programs that will prevent youth at risk from getting trapped in antisocial behaviour. We have to help disadvantaged families. We have to work on access to education. There is a lot of crime or delinquency in the schools. We have to work on programs that focus on dispute resolution. We also have to teach young people how to react to and identify violence. There have been very interesting experiments on this subject. We have to allocate the resources.
When you work with victims, you are also concerned with what is called prevention, how can I put it... In fact, it isn't really prevention, because we are at a third level. In other words, when a person has already been a victim, we have to ensure that the consequences and impact of the victimization are not aggravated. That is why I stressed the importance, in my presentation, of humanizing the justice system, of supporting victims and giving them information.
A lot of things have been done in the adult justice system, for example with the Conditional Release Act, in the entire correctional system, to provide more information, to make sure that victims know what is happening. In terms of prevention, one concern is the victim's psychological state. We know that the justice system often victimizes the person again. There is a lot of secondary victimization because the job is not done well and we don't know how to treat victims. If the job is done better, we will avoid victims having as negative a view of the justice system. They have to feel that they are being treated better and they have to be able to continue their process. Victimhood is a temporary status. A person should not remain a victim all their life. A victim stops being a victim when they separate themselves from the offender. To help them separate themselves, we have to do our job well at every stage. That is what organizations that assist victims keep hammering away at. The job has to be done well at every stage. The problem of victims of crime is not going to be solved by locking people up and doing nothing, because the victims will be even more enraged. We also have to address the question of safety.