Page 4296 - Week 14 - Thursday, 24 October 1991
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think society should lean towards reformation rather than retribution. That is the general sentiment that many people in the law enforcement area find so frustrating. I include in that the people whose homes are daily broken into; the older people in our community whose sanctuary is violated in the knowledge that they are no longer safe in their own home, particularly people whose homes are burgled.
Burglary is a night-time offence by law and there is a great invasion of their privacy because they are sleeping. They have been invaded whilst they have been asleep in their own premises. It has an horrific effect on their psyche and the damage usually is far greater than the property taken. We do have youngsters who, almost just after leaving court sometimes, are back in through someone's laundry window.
I share Mr Stefaniak's frustration; but I enjoin the Minister to continue the steps we were taking to get real reform up in the juvenile offender area, particularly places to hold youngsters that have to be held and society protected from, but additionally to try to get up those programs that have dropped out of the budget.
I will not start again, because Mr Berry will pay attention, but the wilderness program that we trialled received nationwide support and publicity. It was aimed at the youngsters that we cannot effectively get to work and are only sentenced effectively to short periods of reformation. We wanted to get them to show nerve; to be able to do rope work; to do Outward Bound sort of work.
I know that a lot of people criticise that. It has a ring of conservative, British imperial institutional activity about it. The Chief Magistrate, Ron Cahill, was a great patron of that excellent program out at Pialligo. It was a success for many of those youngsters who were unruly, had excess energy and needed to be put up a rope and frightened into getting down it, and so on. That should be done.
Mr Speaker, the Rally does not support this amendment. It is not the answer. Mr Stefaniak did well, though, to signal again to our community that we still have a gap in what the community expectation is. The gap is that the children are getting away with offensive conduct unpunished. They are getting away unpunished and that has a very bad effect for the future on their conduct.
The punishment could be community service orders. They can mow around the lampposts; they can do the work. The Trades and Labour Council has been quite accommodating with the CSO program in the adult area, but we do not have a community service order program in the juvenile area yet. The Bill presents prospects of that elsewhere. Mr Speaker, we oppose this amendment.
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