The federal government has significantly increased our investment in programs aimed at diverting young people from involvement in street gangs and in organized crime. Increasingly, young people are used for a series of reasons by criminal gangs, by drug gangs. That has been a focus for us, and that's why the funding was increased so significantly. A commitment list from the last election is being provided. That is done largely through programs in the community.
For example, in January I announced five different ones in Vancouver that were aimed at gang diversion, some at aboriginal youth, some at other at-risk youth, and they are programs that target at-risk youth. For example, they will work together with the school, try to identify young people who are at risk of getting in trouble, and then encourage them to get involved in programs that give them other positive activities to be involved in. Those social activities also reinforce the undesirablility of poor choices in life and encourage them to make the right choices.
I think that kind of investment, if successful—and we will be measuring very closely the results of programs like this to see if they pay off in the long term—are certainly far more efficient and far more effective than any deterrent value in any mandatory prison sentence.
Frankly, I'm one who believes the deterrence value of sentences is fairly limited, because not a lot of young kids go around with a copy of Martin's Criminal Code in their pocket. What they're concerned about is: Are there enough police? Am I going to get caught? Am I going to get away with this?
By the time they're worrying about what's in the Criminal Code, they're already pretty deep into it. So we want to keep them from getting there in the first place.