Madam Speaker, nobody is suggesting to ignore some of the causes of crime. However to suggest that all poor people are potential criminals, to suggest that all single parent families are creating criminals is totally unfair. These groups are getting very tired of taking the blame for producing the criminals.
As I mentioned in my speech, crime crosses all socioeconomic boundaries. One man who killed his wife was an engineer. Many of the people in our jails have very well established professions and have crossed the bounds. Yes, drug and alcohol abuse is a cause of crime. We should be treating that not by locking people up in a prison but by treating the illness from which they suffer. Yes, poverty does put people in a vulnerable position but it is not the only cause of crime. To pretend that it is and to hide by saying: "Let us attack the root causes of crime and ignore the symptoms", is foolhardy. We need to do both and one cannot be done at the exclusion of the other. We can address the symptoms of crime now and we can deal with the more long term problem starting now. The results of crime prevention will not be seen in the next year or two. It will take five or ten years for the results of crime prevention to have any kind of impact.