Yes, absolutely.
In 1995, with the way the law was, the most you could get for manslaughter was three years. It took 14 months to get them to sentencing. Did you know that within that 14 months, they are not obliged to have psychiatric help, not until they are found guilty? They can refuse all that help.
What happened in our case, and I'm sure in many others, was that psychologists and psychiatrists could not force treatment upon these youths, so at half the term.... They were sentenced to three years, but after 18 months they were finally found guilty, and that left another 18 months to deal with them, or with one of them, anyhow. However, the first thing you know, he's up for review. Oh, then he can have weekends off, and if he has been pretty good, the judges might let him off and send him to open custody.
Today there's no such thing as open custody. From what I understand, it's three years for manslaughter, and you can go home after 18 months. Where's the treatment? Where is the incentive to turn your life around? This is not right. If you plea bargain second-degree murder to manslaughter, you're getting away with 18 months' incarceration for second-degree murder. We have to think about this. We should think about this seriously. That's not enough time to....
I spoke with a psychiatrist who's always on television. He's very well known and is always speaking on youth, youth crime, and so on. I asked him, “What do you do, sit in your office and figure out, okay, three years is proper to turn a youth around and rehabilitate him?” He said yes to that.
I asked him if he knew that the system lets them out after 18 months. He said, “What?” I said, “It must be so frustrating for you people who are doing good with the youth and he's starting to come around, and whoops, it's go-home time”. He said, “Oh, yes, it happens all the time”.
So what are we doing? What are we doing here?