I would agree that we need some legislative change. I'm certainly not a guy who is soft on crime, but when you talk about the Youth Criminal Justice Act, I find that one of its pitfalls is that....
You know, it allows the police to use other methods rather than putting people into the criminal justice system. We can divert youth on minor offences, and when people are getting involved with gangs, they are starting out with minor offences. The problem with the Youth Criminal Justice Act is that there is no infrastructure. It's nice to say that the police can give official warnings, and we work with that, to start, when it is a minor offence. But as their crimes increase, where do we put these youth? Show me where there are addictions centres for the youth who need help. Show me where the programming is for the youth who need help.
It's fine to write a Youth Criminal Justice Act that allows the police to divert, but we have nothing to divert them to. So once again, we push our youth back into the criminal justice system. Then they are sent to the youth detention centres, where they come out better criminals than when they went in.
I know I sound like I'm soft, and almost academic and theoretical, but I truly believe that if we don't get to the beginning of this, legislation is not going to end it, in my humble opinion. As I said earlier, you can lock people up for as long as you want. You can threaten people if you want. But if they are living in a terrible situation to start with, and if we have no mechanisms to deal with youth without having to shove them into the criminal justice system, then this is the outcome we're going to get time and time again, in my humble opinion.