Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on a couple of things the hon. member has mentioned. One is the people who spend their weekends in prison. Very often we sentence people to sentences that may not be appropriate. I would like to put this idea forth.
Many times when we send people to prison, instead of improving on their attitude and their lot and so on, they in fact deteriorate because they get to mix with other people who may be of more disrepute than they are.
With regard to non-violent offenders, possibly the courts could have the option of putting them into work programs rather than sending them to prison. The prisons could be reserved for the worst offenders, the most violent offenders in society. This ties in with the second matter that was raised, how would these people be compensated.
That is where work programs need to be put in place in the prisons. A percentage of the wages these people earn could then be used to compensate their victims. A problem we have is that a victim has to go through the civil courts, through the whole legal and justice system to try to get back some of that money. It is a great inconvenience and very often unsuccessful because the criminal has no income to be able to pay the victim.
If there were a work program this would help solve that problem. Work would also give these people a better feeling about themselves. It is no different for them than for us. When someone meets someone else for the first time, the one thing they ask is: "What work do you do, what job?". It does something for us and I think it would do the same for many of these people in society.