Gary Mauser

It’s time to crack down on violent criminals and sex offenders. Public safety demands that our dysfunctional justice system be fixed.

Canadians are entirely too lenient with criminal offenders. Our lax attitudes towards protecting the public have led many to think the law is just a sham. But, who to blame? What should we do? Recent articles in the local papers highlight the problems.

The bulk of violent crime is committed by repeat offenders who are out on bail, probation or statutory release. Almost half of sexual offenders are re-arrested within three years of being released. That’s why we have a sex offender registry. A recent article in The Province shows how the sex offender registry failed to protect Canadians. This case of illustrates why Canada's sex offender registry has been called everything from "useless" to "a sham."

Last summer, Steven James Petiquan, a convicted sex offender from Abbotsford decided to take a trip to Calgary. Even though he is a sex offender, he was not required to tell authorities about it. While on holiday, Petiquan allegedly threatened a woman’s life in Calgary and sexually assaulted her before fleeing.

Calgary police immediately initiated a city-wide manhunt for their suspect, while investigators called the National Sex Offender Registry to get Petiquan's last known address. But the address Registry officials in B.C. had for him was wrong. Petiquan had either provided the sex offender registry with a false address or failed to tell them that he had moved. The prime suspect in a sex crime was on the loose and the people who were supposedly in charge of keeping track of him had no idea where he was.

The national sex offender registry was created in December 2004. It was touted as a valuable tool to help police solve sex crimes by identifying possible suspects known to live near the site of an offence. While the theory of giving police quick access to a database of sex offenders was sound, the end result has been far from useful.

The RCMP, responsible for maintaining the registry, struggle to keep track of offenders in the database. Currently, 152 sex offenders in B.C. -- nearly 10 per cent of those ordered onto the registry -- have failed to check in with police. This figure alone should explain why the registry is in desperate need of an overhaul.

Critics say the registry is handcuffed by the Ottawa bureaucracy’s fixation with the privacy rights of offenders. When a convicted sex offender is ordered on to the registry, he must report to the nearest police detachment in his area and provide basic facts and a photo is taken. All this information is entered in the central registry office in each province.

 By Dr. Neelam Verma

Over the years, aggression among teenaged girls have increased. Is the law which is too lax or is it that the youth today know that they can get away with a mere slap on the wrist?
The year 2008 began with the killing of one teenager by another. 14-year old Stefanie Rengel of Toronto was killed on New Year’s Day by a 17-year old boy at the instance of his 15-year old girlfriend. Till sometime back, girl violence against girls raised eyebrows in Canada. Not anymore. Until recently, since females were not considered as aggressive as their male counterparts, they were mostly excluded from any studies of aggression. However, lately, more and more adolescent girls are being charged with violent crimes than before which certainly is a cause for concern for many parents of teenaged children.
Not going too far back, Karla Homolka a woman herself presented her teenaged sister and another girl as a gift to be abused by her husband.14-year Reena Virk was killed by yet another teenager Kelly Ellard who was later convicted. Canadian sociologists have described the case as a watershed moment for a "moral panic" over girl violence by the public in the late 1990s. A 14-year-old girl was savagely beaten by two fellow female students at a school in Sudbury, Ont. About 30 bystanders did nothing; some cheered. More recently, a 12 year old girl, in Toronto instigated her boy friend to kill her family comprising of her parents and 8-year old brother. The case is still in court but the apathy of the little girl towards the sufferings of her parents and sibling, with her watching over her boyfriend’s deeds, is alarming. The cases go on.
Whether it is girl violence or youth violence, it cannot be denied that violence among the young is on the increase. A few years ago, violence would be limited to some fist fights in the school yard leading to maybe a black eye or two. But today, youth- whether male or female, do not hesitate to even use weapons to get back to their opponents and killing is like a game to many. Says Sandra Martins-Toner, Executive Director Families Against Crime & Trauma, who lost her teenaged son to youth violence, “Teen violence is more intense today, escalates far faster and involves groups, girls and weapons more than ever before. It makes you think at times as if they have neither remorse nor feelings for their victims. The way they kill people is like a video game where pawns are shot and the player wins only to start another game. The teenagers don’t seem to understand the severity of the crime they commit.”