Madam Speaker, I have spent some of time not only teaching in a regular school, but also working with juveniles who have been incarcerated in prison. My experience is that the people who have ended up in jail have committed crimes. I am not saying they were innocent when they went in there, but it is how we deal with people and at what level we deal with them. This legislation enforces mandatory sentencing. That is just plain wrong.
I would add one other point. I did not blame society for all the ills of whatever anybody has done. Absolutely, human beings make choices. However, we as a society cannot escape the fact that there are certain conditions, whether they be medical conditions that one is born with or societal issues, that lead to greater levels of crime.
Try working in an inner city school and see the pressures on the young kids. Try dealing with a young man who, at the age of 14 in order for his mother to make a living, has to go out in the evening to find customers for his mother who is a prostitute. They are living on the run and they cannot afford to stay in one place more than one night. Those kinds of conditions are created by communities.