When will they ever learn?

Once again the politicos are trotting out tough law and order platforms to mollify Canadians. The federal Conservatives, caught up in an election campaign, promise hard time for recalcitrant 14-year olds, five to 10 year mandatory minimum sentences for dozens of crimes, and hiring hundreds of new cops. Ontario's Liberal government plans to spend $51 million dealing with gun crime, the money to be spent on more police officers, prosecutors and judges, with not a penny for programs to help poor, single mothers raise their kids. Only the federal NDP promise a package that includes more money for mentoring programs and aid for victims than for enforcement.

Maybe sentences for gun crimes should be stiffer, maybe not, but putting more people in prison for longer periods is futile. If it worked, the United States would have the lowest crime rate in the western world. With over two million people in jails and prisons, and probably the world's highest incarceration rate, it's a wonder there are any criminals left on the street. But there are. And they are nasty. The United States murder rate is over three times as high as ours.

More enforcement may suppress crime, people may be a little safer on the street, but this is dealing with symptoms, not the core problem. And it's very expensive. It costs $88,000 a year to keep someone in prison and $52,000 to keep someone in jail, money that could be better spent to deal with cause rather than symptoms.

The cause is dysfunctional family life. Deal with this and we can cut crime off at the root. By ensuring that every pregnancy is a healthy pregnancy, every infancy a healthy infancy and every childhood a healthy childhood, we can preclude crime. The tools are available: tried, tested and proven effective. Programs to assist single mothers at risk have achieved great success in creating healthy family life, programs such as the Parent-Child Mother Goose Program and Hawaii Head Start. Quite aside from offering young people better lives, these programs are sound economic investments. By reducing crime, drug abuse and early pregnancies, and by turning boys away from a life of crime and toward a life as productive tax-paying citizens, they offer a handsome return on each dollar invested.

So what is it to be? Prevention or punishment? Do we help families or exact vengeance? The politicians have made their choice, and I fear it's the wrong one.