IN THE last two weeks, our son was mugged and assaulted twice.
The second time, over Thanksgiving, he was stabbed and hospitalized. In between, his car was vandalized.
These events were unconnected. Our son wasn’t engaged in risky behaviour. The stabbing took place in his own backyard as he was coming home.
No property was exchanged in these muggings. As our son points out, they had the misfortune to pick on a cash-poor student. But a comment made by one of his attackers was telling.
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After stabbing our son, then discovering that he had no iPod and no wallet, the attacker turned to his partner and said angrily, “I thought you told me all the guys on this side of the river were rich.” Both muggings were committed by young men.
Our city, like many others, is socially and economically divided. Both the poverty and the crime tend to be concentrated in an area on the west side.
The 2000 International Survey of Crime Victims found that on average, in Canada, one in four people over age 15 will be assaulted each year. However, the victims and the criminals tend to be concentrated in a relatively small population.
The study estimates that about four percent of the population are at serious risk of being victimized. Among youth, about five percent are responsible for most of the youth crime. It shouldn’t be that hard to identify these folks.
 So why don’t we put some of the billions we spend on law enforcement and justice systems into targeting and treating this relatively small group who are most at risk of being victims or offenders? It would save us so much money and misery.
Britain did. Its crime concern project worked with the 50 most at-risk teens in each of 70 difficult neighbourhoods for a year: sports, literacy training, computers, help handling drugs, gangs and health. The result was a 65 percent reduction in youth arrests. The cost was $8,500 per year, about the same as taking a young offender through the youth justice system for one offence.
But we don’t do much of that here, because most Canadians react to crime like I do. I want to throttle the guys who hurt my son, or at least let the justice system hurt them for me.
You see, it’s really not about prevention. It’s about punishment. After all, I’m pretty sure our son’s mugger wasn’t thinking, “hmm, should I mug this guy, considering that the maximum sentence for theft and assault has been increased from two years to six years?” Only lawyers know the penalties. And what young offender thinks he’ll be caught?
Instead of preventing criminals from forming, we’d rather hurt them after the fact – lock them up with other criminals who will teach them how to break the law more efficiently when they’re released.
Vengeance is apparently more important to us than our own security or our young people’s well-being. It’s pathetic.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
