Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/96

Contributor - John Moerman

Title - What Shall we Do About Canada's Youth Crimes

Topic - Crime

The Basic Question!

We begin by asking, 'What has taken place? Why, in a span of approximately 30 to 40 years, have crimes of violence per capita risen 300% and property crimes 500%?"

Early 1996 reports now tell us that in a number of major cities, crime figures involving young offenders are rising again. Four out of every 10 people charged with robbery in metropolitan Toronto in 1995 were between 12 and 27 years old. Ten years before, it was only two out of 10! Where have we gone wrong?

We cannot arrive at the root of this problem without raising serious questions. When fire destroys an apartment block, we launch an investigation to find the cause. And when water comes into my basement, I look for the reason.

It is the same with our young offenders problem. The modus operandi is Cause and Effect. Nothing takes place in a vacuum or in isolation. We, therefore, must focus our attention on links, connections, and reasons for the increase in juvenile crime. We cannot set chart and compass by the tip of the iceberg, which we can see. It's what is below the surface that counts!.

Self-examination?

We believe that most of our youth crime problems have their roots in behavioral poverty. Some refer to it as "moral poverty." The main causes are alcohol and substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, domestic violence, broken homes, divorce, single parents, wasteful life-styles, an outdated welfare system, life without purpose, and perpetual unemployment.

Obviously, throwing more money at such problems is of no benefit. This, because of what humans are on the inside, determines how we behave on the outside. The real problem is the human mind and heart. The battle ground is within. Thus, the psychology of denial and excuse will not benefit anyone.

Self-examination is the better solution-this and the help of 'no nonsense counseling and a solid education process," will lead to the acceptance of personal responsibility and behaviour.

My wife and I grew up with poverty, a poverty much greater than is generally experienced today. Our childhood was during the Great Depression in Europe. During those years, our family was very poor, in today's terms.

We also know the experience of war, hunger, occupation by a foreign army, and shortage of everything. And after the war, like most Dutch immigrants, we arrived on these shores with only a few dollars in our possession. God enabled us to raise a family of six biological and two adopted native children. We are also the grateful seniors of 24 grandchildren.

We Are On A Collision Course With Destiny!

We believe that youth crime is the result of a moral decay in society. Claiming as we do in the Charter, "the Supremacy of God and the rule of the law" is one thing, but implementing this noble phrase in our lives and institutions is quite an other thing.

Let us acknowledge that private choices always have public consequences. Driving on the wrong side of the road involves not just myself. Thus, when God's Commandments are ignored as the only rule of faith and practice, individuals and institutions inevitably plunge the entire nation into serious consequences.

Consider the banning of God, the Bible, prayer, and discipline from our schools. Now there is vandalism, beating, stabbing, pregnancies, drugs, abortion, drop outs, condom machines, and the required presence of police in a number of high schools.

Jewish and Christian educational institutions are not plagued by such results. This clearly tells us that we grow what we sow and harvest what we plant.

Therefore, our youth crime problems must be seen as a national wake up call. It says that we have been heading in the wrong direction. We are on a collision course. Our only choice is to change course and get off the wrong side of the road.

Perhaps, I am addressing the issue of youth crime from a different perspective than many others. This is because my wife and I have always put more faith in the 'ounce of prevention" than in the belated "pound of cure." It always is wiser to prevent a war than to fight one. Youth crime is no different.

There Are Specific Reasons For Our Nation's Youth Crime Problems:

The exclusion of God from our lives, homes, and institutions has brought us forms of nihilism, i.e., a rejection of belief, truth, morality, religion, and absolutes.

Further, when relativism replaces God's rules and directions, we strip the nation of ethical and moral guidelines, which for centuries have proven to be the health and stability of our country. While human values tend to change, divine truth and absolutes do not.

Government policies are becoming more and more anti-family.

We are seeing the evolving of a selfish, greedy, and materialistic society. We should have known that "the craving of money is the root of all evil.' Also, it was in this context that election promises brought a gullible electorate 'big government" and burdensome rises in taxes, negatively effecting the raising of children in traditional family settings.

This in turn led to a set of two-income families, clay care centres, and latch-key kids. The Foundation for Family Research and Education believes it is no coincidence that with the proliferation of day care centres, emotional illness, crime, drug use, and suicide soared among young people. Canada stands third among all nations in suicide (two per day of those below the age of 24), surpassed only by New Zealand and Finland.

The Welfare State, which has boosted the nation's tax bill from 21% of family income in 1961 to 47.5% in 1994, has also forced mothers into the labour market and away from full time motherhood.

Over-involvement by big government and an expensive bureaucracy has pushed away what, for many decades, families, churches, neighhours, and voluntary agencies have been doing with good success, thereby also destroying well-functioning accountability procedures.

At the same time, the flood gates of "no fault" divorce were thrown open wide, ignoring the fact that parent divorce very often leads to children divorce; the combined result is deep psychological pain, litigations, child neglect, child abuse, and, with it, the further rise in youth crime.

There are TV programs bombarding our homes with sexually explicit scenes, violence, gun-totting killers, et cetera. A large percentage of videos tells us the same story. It tells us that morally, socially, and spiritually, we have lost our way and are like a ship adrift at sea.

Much of the music and lyrics of today's culture tell the same story. For our young people, it has become a moral nosedive into the abyss of violence, inhilism, and fatalism.

The Government's obsession to raise additional monies by enticing people to gamble has a detrimental effect on young people's ethics, morals, and values. In Alberta alone, 23% of our young people are compulsive gamblers. Gambling and youth crime thrive on the same morally sick philosophy and life-style of nihilism, fatalism, materialism, and hedonism.

Canada has an almost god-like Human Rights and Freedom Act, giving people the right to do wrong and the freedom to get away with it. Sadly, there is a great vacuum in terms of human responsibilities. Yet, the facts are that human rights are met only when individual responsibilities are fulfilled.

We cannot have the benefit of the one without the need of the other. Individual rights operate reciprocally with personal duties and obligations. This has been the foundation of civilization. Without clearly defined responsibilities, we detrimentally effect our young people's outlook on life.

Unscrupulous, unconscionable, and money-hungry drug peddlers are victimizing more and more young people.

A foolish and toothless Young Offenders Act has, itself, become part of the widening youth problem. The judicial system tells people that the rights and freedoms of convicted criminals now stand higher than the rights and freedoms of those whom they have terrorized and victimized.

Neither can we effectively fight crime with the politics of a national gun-registration policy.

The pornography industry is mentally, morally, socially, and physically poisoning an ever younger generation.

Permissiveness and a general state of hedonism has invaded our nation's thinking: 'The one who dies with the most toys wins," as expressed in the '70's by Peggy Lee's 'Is that all there is, my friends? Then, let's keep dancing! Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all there is.'

Most young people have too much idle time on their hands. A growing number of them use this to their own detriment and society's harm because of parental irresponsibility and failure in teaching the work ethic.

Political Correctness And Its Slippery Slope:

The bulk of all youth crime can be prevented, provided the Government in Ottawa changes its course. This requires the political will of both 'a comprehensive review" of what successive governments have done during the last three or four decades in terms of the traditional family and the determination to overhaul the entire judicial system.

Failing this, our nation's youth crime will increasingly be a systemic problem, resulting in an ever growing number of juvenile criminals who are, as John Delio of Princeton said, , so remorseless that they can rape, maim, and kill without giving it a second thought."

The Parliamentary Committee, the Minister of Justice, and his Department officials must begin to deal with the fact that there are direct links and roots between the above mentioned points and the nation's spread of serious youth crimes.

We are dealing with a deep malaise in society. A philosophy of life that regards traditional morality as passe is out of touch with reality. Values can be altered; truth cannot. We only shall win the war against rising youth crimes when we learn to distinguish between right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

Let us acknowledge that, for too long, governments have been pointing their guns in the wrong direction. Let us admit that, "as the family goes, so goes the nation,' and 'The family that prays together, stays together.'

Easy divorce laws conveyed the mistaken idea that this was the best solution to personal and family problems. Not so! Think of the traumatic experiences victimizing innocent children! The rest of the story unfolds itself in the snowball effect of pain and youth crime!

Listen to the eight-year-old who cried, "My dad doesn't love my mum anymore, and he's found somebody else. But he doesn't know how sad it's made us, 'cos if he did, he would never have gone."

Young people who vandalize and commit crimes are nearly always victims themselves! They are victims of parental neglect, mental and/or physical abuse, alcohol and/or drug abuse, domestic arguments, an absent father figure, temporary marriages, common law stints, et cetera. This is where the "domino effect" of youth crime makes itself widely known.

Raising children in broken settings and problem-oriented situations is devastating and often becomes irreversible. Simply put, juvenile delinquency more often than not is the bitter fruit of adult delinquency.

Governments and Courts Must Quit Fixing What Ain't Broken!

The traditional family isn't broken. Since the beginning of mankind, the word 'spouse' stood for the heterosexual and biological relationship of husband and wife. Changing the definition speaks volumes! Behind it, certain lobbying groups are seeking to change the concept and status of the nuclear/traditional family.

This is also clear from the undemocratic, anti-Red Book, closed door decision of the Treasury Board on November 16, 1995, extending family benefits to public servants in same-sex relationships. This unilateral decision, which bypassed the Liberal Caucus, making it public eight days later, defied the express will Of Parliament's free vote of September 1995. (Motion 264)

The same deplorable thing occurred when this Government rammed through Parliament Bill C33 in June of 1996. The inclusion of "sexual orientation" into the Human Rights Act took place without proper hearings. Neither was there a willingness to consider any amendment nor answer M.P.'s questions in terms of the far reaching effects.

The purpose clearly was to enable courts to give "family" status to certain individuals in order to receive social benefits like heterosexual couples. Obviously, such moves have a profound impact on our culture, economy, and social structures. Also, it flies in the face of natural law and diminishes the critical role of the traditional family in society.

In this way, governments ignore and trample on he unalterable truth that being parents of biological or adopted children is the most important task any man or woman can undertake. The benefits of this are not limited to their own offspring. These benefits are shared equally with all society.

It is an undeniable fact that the traditional family has been the nation's number one crime preventer! The Government's changing of certain laws are a denial of this historical fact.

Recommendations:

1. We believe that this government must establish a new and major high-profile portfolio. Presently, we have a Secretary of State responsible for "Training and Youth.' We also have a Secretary of State responsible for "Status of Women." Yet, our Government and nation has no Minister responsible for the institution and maintenance of the family!

We believe that the above mentioned portfolios should be combined into one highly important "Minister of the Family."'Training and Youth" begins long before high school ends! And by nature, the family includes "Status of Women"!

Such a new and high profile portfolio would be the Government's recognition of the crucial importance of raising children in the best possible setting: the traditional family.

2. A nation emphasizing individual rights and freedoms at the expense f individual responsibilities fails its people. Our nation's young people must be introduced early in life to the 'Charter of Human Obligations, Duties, and Responsibilities" alongside the nation's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms-the one complementing the other.

3. Whereas gambling creates addiction and more social problems in our society, we call upon our Government to bring in measures that will effectively combat gambling.

4. Whereas no pro-marriage and prolife organization has ever received government grants, it follows that Ottawa must end doling out huge sums of tax dollars to groups that seek to weaken and undermine traditional marriage and family life.

5. Full-time motherhood is one of the most important tasks in society. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Yet, our government refuses to recognize it. A single-eamer family with an income of $60,000 and two children pays 25% in Federal taxes. But the $60,000 doubleearner family, claiming the same maximum child care deductions, pays only 15%, which is a difference of $6,700!

There must be no extra tax on mothers who decide to stay home raising children full-time. Such a measure is discriminatory.

6. For the sake of the well-being of our country, and for society's youth crime in particular, it is past due that our national government undertakes steps eliminating shootings, murder, and all further violence from TV. We must leave no room for the disgraceful philosophy of 'blood and gore makes the ratings roar."

Horror films and gratuitous violence have no place in society. The traditional family cannot condone to have their children exposed to this rot. Smut on TV only because "sex sells' is outrageous. Flouting moral restraints must be brought to an end.

The correction of these evils are past due. It must not be left to Keith Spicer or the producers. The V-chip is a commercial alibi. We must remember that violence and promiscuity are no less harmful to those above the age of 12 than children below this age. We must recognize that those who learn to live by violence die by violence.

Of course, we are to ignore cries of "censorship," whereas such regulations far outweigh the mind poisoning of tots and teens. We have to get away from 'garbage in, garbage out." The same applies to the billion dollar pornography industry.

The Saskatoon trial of Sandy Charles for killing a seven-year-old tells us that movies such as Warlock, Poltergeist, and the like must be banned. They are demonic and highly dangerous, especially in the settings of occult practices.

7. There also is a direct link between the nation's appalling rise in youth crime and the belief that discipline at home and in school is detrimental to the training of the child.

Those who hold such views ignore and overlook the fact that normal discipline is a natural part of raising children. This is not a form of abuse. Rather, it has everything to do with family standards, boundaries, benefits, consequences, and rules, all of which are intregal facts of life.

We, therefore, beseech the government to reject the "child rights' campaign to delete section 43 of the Criminal Code that gives parents the right to use "reasonable force" in the raising of their children.

We have seen what lack of discipline has brought about in the public school system: disobedience, vandalism, and crime. It should be clear that we cannot fight youth crime without having normal measures of discipline in place within the family.

8. Finally, if the Government effectively wants to fight youth crime, it must broaden its scope into the nature of violence itself. Governments must ask, "What constitutes violence? Doing so will bring us to admit that abortion is violence in the extreme. Furthermore, it speaks of a wholesale cheapening of life at its earliest stage. Abortion is a type of child abuse that is intended to be fatal. It has become a national shame and curse.

All governments must ask themselves, "Where is the moral horror when annually more than 100,000 pre-born babies are poisoned, crushed, dismembered, and disposed of like garbage?"

A further disturbing question is, "What do such horrible deaths tell our nation's young people about violence of the worst kind?" We cannot close our eyes to one kind of violence and later on in life effectively fight another kind of violence.

Recommendations In Terms Of The Young Offenders Act Itself

1. The Young Offenders Act must undergo a comprehensive review and not a mere tinkering. Ever since the Act became law 12 years ago, it has been a toothless instrument. To young criminals, the Act is a joke. They openly say so. We wonder whether our Government is listening.

2. The Young Offenders Act must be changed to include 'little criminals," the 10- and 11-year-olds. Parents must be held accountable for their vandalism and crimes.

3. The 16- and 17-year-olds who commit adult crimes must get adult sentences. Doing the crime must mean doing the time. (Youths aged 12 to 17 now represent 11% of homicides, the highest proportion in 10 years, and rising still.)

4. The names of young offenders must be made public. It will bring reality into their lives and be a protection to society. They must be held liable for their actions, which should include paying for damages.

5. At all times, punishment must fit the crime, all the way from working in boot camps to learning about absolute rights and wrongs. It is essential that young offenders learn what the consequences of their actions are.

6. All sentences must be severe enough to stop others from doing the same.

In Conclusion:

The battle against youth crime can be won. However, it will take more than just the judicial system. The Department of Justice is seeing a lot of smoke, but the Minister and his officials appear to be confused about the origin of the fire.

For our Federal Government to effectively combat our nation's rising youth crime, it is necessary to simultaneously deal with the obvious links as well as the roots.

We must recognize that what parents, churches, communities, educational institutions, governments, media people, and judicial bodies hold before the nation's children today is what they as teens will show themselves to be tomorrow.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

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