Absolutely not. That's one of the things we identified back in 1999 and continue to try to identify today to anybody who will listen to us. By housing individuals in youth facilities without making clinical intervention or programs or rehabilitation programs mandatory, we are not achieving any objective. It is not mandatory.
We speak to prison guards, to jail guards, to workers within youth custodial environments who have told us time and time again that they get the finger and they're told to shove it when they ask a particular individual to attend their counselling classes. There is nothing they can do; absolutely nothing. There is no mandatory requirement for completion on warrant prior to warrant expiry.
I think it would be a massive step forward in releasing individuals back into our community to give them--and society--at least a greater chance of reintegration without recurring recidivism.
Recidivism under young offenders is an almost impossible benchmark to try to ascertain, because no statistics are kept. All we do is we look at 56 prior convictions, 29 prior convictions, 40 prior convictions. We don't know. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if we cannot change those individuals and rehabilitate--or, let's face it, habilitate--those individuals, we are not solving any problems; we're just making things worse.