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Councillor seeks tougher consequences for youth involved in criminal activity
Friday July 4 2008
By Cynthia Gamble, Staff Writer
 
Councillor Jane Fogal is fed up with vandalism and graffiti committed by youth who, she says, feel they are untouchable.
Fogal said vandalism is escalating in all municipalities from graffiti and broken lights to “attacking significant public edifices such as cenotaphs, memorials, cemeteries, food banks and churches.”
Halton Hills council approved Fogal’s motion to urge the federal government to review the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Fogal said she wrote the motion in response to incidents that had been happening here and in other municipalities.
“Not in all cases can you attribute it to youth, but a lot of things are happening with youth,” said Fogal, and she believes it because youths feel they’re “untouchable”.
There are no consequences due to the protection afforded under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, said Fogal. Now, as a consequence, she added, adults are recruiting youths into criminal activity because of that so-called protection.
“If kids are getting the message that they don’t have to take any responsibility during that time as youths, it doesn’t change overnight that once you’re an adult you’re suddenly expected to take responsibility,” Fogal said. “I ‘m not suggesting they go to detention facilities... but maybe there’s ways of doing more community service or some other deterrent.”
Fogal suggested that by trying to protect youth under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, it is instead harming them.
“It concerns me that we’re so worried about these kids that do these things that are wrong, and we don’t worry enough about the people who take the brunt of it,” said Fogal.
She cited the example of some residents of Kin Court in Georgetown who tell her they watch kids take their outdoor furniture off the patio and toss it into the ravine.
“But these poor seniors can’t get anything done... and  so they’re upset,” she said.
Another example is the donation of benches to the Seed House Garden, she said.
“It’s hard to keep getting people to donate things because they’d soon get wrecked,” explained the frustrated councillor, and member of the Friends of the Seed House Garden. “It took about five minutes of a new picnic table to go out there before some really horrible graffiti gets put on it, and you know it’s youth. ... You can’t tell me that none of this is happening by youth.”
Councillor Joan Robson agreed 100 per cent citing yet another example in Glen Williams. There, vandals tossed park picnic tables in the river, which community volunteers pulled back out, only to have them thrown back in. Finally, she said, Public Works had to chain the tables.