Canadian Justice System

[countryguy]

I know this isn't really a rural issue but it is one that could affect each and everyone of us at one time or another.After countless news stories about violent attacks and after watching that Jonathon Wombak story the other night I am sickened by the amount of violence in this country,and more importantly what ISN'T being done about it!

I don't think it's a coincidence that when society reduced/stopped diciplining children that the crime rates went up.People aren't scared to do anything anymore because they know all they'll get is a slap on the wrist.

I think it's high time the justice system in this country started punishing people the way that they should be punished.I don't think you would see too many repeat violent attacks after recieving 10 or 15 lashes for the first one.Murdurers who we know that are guaranteed guilty should be put to death no questions asked.Rapists and child molestors should be "fixed" if you know what I mean.Why should the Canadian taxpayer be shelling out $40K a year on these lowlifes keeping them in jail?

People nowadays have lost respect for life.We on the farm marvel at the fact of a seed germinating or young stock being born,and will do all we can to see it through till the end.And money is not the only reason we do it.City people just do not understand this.As more and more people are moving to the city and lose contact with the essence of life I feel our problems are only going to get worse unless we start to do something about it.

[cowman]

I think a good part of the problem is the damned baby boom! Somewhere along the line we lost all the values that shaped our society! We raised our kids to respect nothing and to be very selfish.
I don't understand what motivates some people. I guess we've always had perverts and crooks around, but what really bothers me is these guys who kill their families. That I do not understand.
A good part of the problem is the complete lack of respect for authority...and why would anyone respect our leaders? When they are the biggest thieves in the country? What happened to the true statesmen? Men like Aberhart and Manning(Sr.). Instead we have crooks , liars and con artists!

[Muttley]

People hide behind our justice system. We are allways hearing of a thief getting away with stealing money then blaming it on drugs or perhaps a gambling problem. The system let's them off easier.
Young offenders is what really gets me. Kids can do almost anything and know they will not have to face much punishment. I think in many cases if the parents were held for more responsibility that perhaps they would "make their kids think twice" before doing a criminal act.

[Deb]

I understand your frustration. Sometimes I think Paul Bernardo should be hung. I wonder if he can be rehabilitated. i doubt it.

Recent studies show that most criminals in jail suffer some kind of mental illness. So many are fetal alcohol effect and fetal alcohol syndrome men and women. They do not understand that the things they do will result in consequences. I've known 3 of these kinds of children and the anti-social symptoms don't really show until they reach puberty and wow, do they explode.

For the other people in jail, they grew up in violent households and from childhood have felt unloved or even evil. They think they deserve evil and that they should show evil. So they hate themselves and they act out that hatred in the form of self-inflicted wounding or against other, more vulnerable people in society or the society that did not protect them from child abuse or neglect in the first place. High stress, plus low self-esteem is a recipe for disaster. When a person does something wrong, the best cure is to have them come face to face with the people they hurt, and work for those people until the lawbreaker feels remorse and has done all he can to repay them. At the same time, the lawbreaker has to understand why he has this rage inside his heart and he must understand his past.

If he was raised in a cruel home, that is what he becomes. If a child is loved and told that they are good, smart, compassionate, etc., that is generally the way they will grow up. If you beat a puppy every day, it will grow up biting people. Beating the grown dog that bites will not make him gentle. Punishing grown humans will only make them more full of hatred. Bullies were once bullied themselves and will continue to bully until the cycle is broken by love or at least understanding.

Some lawbreakers are incurable simply because it is too painful/difficult/frightening for them to confront the ghosts and cruelty of one's childhood. If the lawbreaker is not intelligent enough to understand what they have to do to cure themselves, then they should stay in jail and keep being persuaded to think about why they are there and what must happen to their conscience, spirit, or whatever, that will let them out of their prison cell (and the one in their head). Love conquers all.

The fact that we romantisize violence in our culture (on TV and in movies for example) does not make for a peaceful, non-violent society. We become what we are told we are. It's called the power of suggestion.

[countryguy]

Deb

Explain to me why all these kids nowadays that are coming from perfectly good homes are going out in the evening and beating innocent people to near death.Total lack of discipline is what it is!!If they would recieve some REAL punnishment they and others who the precident was set for wouldn't be doing these kind of things again.And by real punnishment I mean lashings,just like the good ole days.

And yes Paul Bernardo SHOULD be hung.........by a certain part of his body in the hot summer sun!!!

[cowman]

Well Deb I'm going to basically agree with country guy although he's a little over zealous even for my taste! Some people just seem to be born mean SOB's no matter what their upbringing. But it always amazes me how we are quite able to accept that heredity plays a big role in the temperment of our animals but not in human beings? Of course this isn't politically correct thinking. Especially if we might mention race!!! So we just won't go there!
In the case of a person like Paul Bernardo I liken him to a mad dog. Now what is best for a mad dog? Just take him out behind the barn and shoot him in the head! Better for him and better for society. Send him back to God and let God deal with him.
Sometimes I am deeply troubled by our human race...I just cannot fathom how some guy can kill little kids, especially his own. I guess I'm just a babe in the woods when it comes to having a diabolical mind!

[Deb]

Cowman you are perfectly right about some parts of the character or emotions being inherited. I inherited my dad's short temper and my son inherited it from me. We get pretty emotional very easily. It has take n my years to learn a little patience and to count to ten before I open my mouth. What taught me was having and raising children. They used to drive me insane and I'd think of ways to kill them and how I'd be happy to go to jail. I got no sleep, solitude or silence around them and I need those things to stay sane and on an even keel. But before I strangled them, my conscience would yell at me to stop thinking like that and go out to the garden and pull weeds or call a good friend and talk to someone who understands. So over the years I changed my angry thoughts to humorous thoughts and I'd think to myself that "someday I'd laugh about this."

I remember reading about a woman who had gone to prison for killing her children in a fit of rage because they were making a mess or doing something that would make her life miserable or more stressful. Then she read a book by Erma Bombeck who is a humorous writer and writes about household disasters and about raising kids and feeling like you're going crazy and Bombeck would turn everything around into something funny. Disasters with dishes or felt pens or toys stuck in the toilet or whatever it was, became funny occurances to the author. It all became very funny. Anyway the woman in prison wrote Erma Bombeck and said that if she had read her book before, she never would have killed her children.

The men who kill their children are almost always (I'd bet 95%) newly separated or divorced from their wives and kill the children just to make the woman suffer, because he was so hurt he wanted revenge. they may or may not kill the wife next and then frequently they take their own lives. It's all about power. The guys want power over their wives and children and if they are forced to give it up, their ego is hurt and they get mad and take it out on the innocent children and/or the wife.

The people I admire most in this whole wide world are women who build up the courage to leave their abusive husbands, and flee with their children to some safe haven with only the shirts on their back, and then struggle for years and years alone, raising the kids on their own, getting back into the work force and living the life God intended them to live. They are so courageous, it takes my breath away. To tell you the truth, I unChristian thoughts about men who kill thier families. When I hear it in the news i sigh with relief whenI hear that after killing everyone, the husband/father kills himself. Besides, his soul must be in tatters and depending on his age and intelligence, he may never recover anyway. There probably are "unsalvagable" people in this world.

Oh yeah, I think there are other reasons for the violent nature of man. One is overcrowding and stress (like too many rats in a cage). The other is chemical imbalance caused by pesticides, in particular insecticides which attack the nervous system. the other is that the "perfectly normal" homes these violent children come from are not normal. The parents may be wealthy and have two or three vehicles and a manicured lawns, etc., but the parents probably work two jobs and come home exhausted and ahve to do laundry, cook, clean, pay bills, deal with all kinds of crap and have no time for the kids when they want to talk. The kids end up like loose dogs on the street. They are smart and well fed, but empty inside, since their parents don't seem to care what they do, they do what they have to to get attention.

Other kids are psychologically badgered by their parents who lord over them and never let them have any happiness. When an overpowering father is overcontrolling of a child and used force to make them obey, the kid grows up and thinks, hmm, where can I find some power of my own. So he goes out and beats up on other people. When he has a kid of his own, he does the same thing. Sad situation and this is where some brave people learn to break the cycle of violence. I admire those people. I have friends who have done it. but it takes courage and self-esteem.

[cowman]

Well I've used a lot of pesticides and I guess I won't go out and murder anyone today!
I do agree that the stresses of our modern society have caused some major problems. Something really went wrong somewhere along the line. Perhaps the biggest change was "womans lib"!!! Now before you get out the rope for my public lynching, hear me out!!!
First of all I don't blame women one iota for not wanting to be stuck at home with a bunch of rugrats!!! That alone would be a good reason for insanity!!! But at the same time when things changed there was a definite blurring of the roles and a lot of men just had a hard time adjusting!!! They were thrust into a new role too...and they weren't too happy about it! As a society we went through some pretty radical changes in a pretty short time!
Now having said all that, I will tell you I raised a girl from 3 months old to 4 years old. My spouse did not need to work, she chose too(actually insisted on it!). And though I kicked like hell about it I wasn't going to let my daughter be raised in a child care facility. So it was a little space behind the tractor seat in January! And she spent a lot of times in a truck out on some remote old oil lease with the dog! And here I come to the auction mart with my bottles and diaper bag!! The original Mr. Mom! Sure was hard on my reputation as a tough cowboy!!! But when it was all said and done I would not have missed the whole thing for the world!!!And you know, I don't think she would either!
When I see something like the woman who drowned her kids I just feel sick to my stomach. And not just for the terror those kids went through but for the mother too. She's a victim too. She has to live with the horror of what she did for the rest of her life. Sometimes I think execution is the kindest thing. And I do believe in execution...but it should always be done in a way that doesn't include revenge or some sort of glee. No matter how evil that killer is once he was someones little baby with a whole life ahead of him. We should feel sad that his execution represents the complete failure of his life.He too is one of Gods creatures!

[Deb]

Excellent story, Cowman, thank-you. I enjoyed it very much. You are right, the cave man was proud to bring back the mammoth meat and then would sit and relax while the women fed him. Every once in awhile he had to defend the clan against a saber-toothed cat which would use up some of his adrenalin... He had an important job taht was very definable. Today, men need to do something to use up that excess energy and sports is good for that. A lot of women work simply because the family needs a second income to make ends meet. More women, believe it or not, are coming around to the idea that staying home would be a great thing to do. They've worked outside the home at crappy jobs and have decided that they'd rather be at home tending the kids, taking them to mom-and-tots every week at the local community centre or church where they can have adult conversations with other women, and do some arts and crafts to keep their right-brain skills honed.

I forgot to mention about the insecticide thing. When I worked on a feedlot, one of my jobs was to dot every incoming animal's back with Spot-On, a systemic insectide. No one ever pointed out taht I shouldn't get any one me. I don't think anyone said to use rubber gloves - I think I just used ordinary gloves but I had to clean out the dispenser under the tap with my fingers so I got a big dose every time.

Then my husband and I decided to have kids. I had two miscarriages and a premature baby that died. I began a search in medical libraries to find out why. I just put it down to a nervous condition or something. then i attended an open house at the agriculture research station and saw a display about insecticides. There was a big board with a photo on it of a cow with an aborted fetus. The sign said not to give a pregnant cow any systemic insecticide like Spot-On. So one dose would abort a cow's fetus, and I probably got a couple of thousand times the dose.

I quit work there and eventually had a full term son who was very hypertonic when born - he jumped at every sound and was extremely sensitive to every movement, etc. He had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and barely made it through school. However, his birth was traumatic too, gettin pulled out by force, so that might have had something to do with it. His sister who was born 2 years later is an honours student today, so my son told her that she's such a genious because he cleaned out my system of toxins for her!

the point is, these toxins are in our food and in the air and water, so there must be people out there who are extra-sensitive to this stuff and since toxins build up in the fat tissue, and they also build up in fetuses I assume. That's what we get for being on top of the food chain.

[cowman]

Well Deb, I will bow out to you on that one. I don't know about spot-on but I use Ivomec every other year on all my pregnant cattle and have never had a problem. Someone screwed up by not telling you to use rubber gloves. Maybe one of the best arguments there is for anyone handling pesticides to have an applicators license. You would not believe how some farmers handle herbicides (although the younger ones are usually pretty safety conscious).
I think part of the problem of the whole adjustment to our new society, is people have to be sort of be opened minded and be prepared to thing of the other guy sort of thing. And not to sit there and moan about the good old days(because in fact in many ways the good old days were pretty good for men, but maybe not for women) The whole concept of "womans Lib" requires everybody to buy into the concept!!!And a basic respect for the other person as a human being not as male or female. And unfortunately a lot of men can't get around that idea and that is sad because it can cause all kinds of problems. They think it makes them look like a fruitcake or something...when the truth of the matter is they are a more "complete" human being!!! I think a person who can accept this and not give a rip about what anyone else thinks is the more mature individual.
And also thanks for being a good sport and not getting real mad when I "tweak" you a bit about being a tree hugger!

[countryguy]

I still say that if we had some SEVERE punishment for crimes we would have everyone thinking twice before doing something stupid.There is absolutely NO justification for alot of these crimes.I don't care what kind of upbringing a person had there is just no excuse for beating,killing,raping someone,etc.Poor upbringing and insanity are just loopholes for criminals these days.Maybe if we had some real consequences for crimes people wouldn't commit them and in turn we wouldn't have to worry about how their families feel now would we?

[countryguy]

Countryguy: You can thank the great Pierre Trudeau for most of our toothless Justice system we have in Canada today. He produced a Bill of Rights that transformed basic society rights into rights for the individual.

Societies rights have taken a back seat to individual rights and freedoms which has created this worsting crime and violent society.

Trudeau changed our laws to protect the individuals who are the parasites of our communities. We were all led to believe that our individual rights superseded our neighbors rights. This is leading to the very unjust society that we have today.

The rights make individuals believe they can do what they like to our communities and get away with it which they do(get away with it).

We have to many do gooders working against a free and just society. But that is mother nature at work, proving to us once again that humans are just animals with a large brain who can think up more ways to destroy ourselves than anyother living thing on earth.

God is not a person but is mother nature itself.

The Kernel.

[cowman]

Rights for the individual are not a bad thing! They protect us as individuals from what you call societal rights or mob rule. The so called bill of rights has turned out to be a joke as it in no way protects the rights of the individual but usually the "priveledges" of some minority. Along with a Bill of Rights there should be an equal "Bill of Responsibilities"!!
Democracy, as we know it, is basically mob rule. So when the government decides to take away your property for the good of the mob, with no fair compensation then that is okay. Example: the new gun law!
In a republic, like the U.S., the rights of the individual are paramount. So we see in the U.S. constitution, things like the right to own property and to enjoy it. No such right here!
The right to own guns is a big problem in the States. Their constitution clearly allows them to own guns. What most people don't know are the exact words which state it is not only the right to keep and bear arms but the DUTY to keep and bear arms! Why? Well the constitution is also very specific on this...To PROTECT yourself from the GOVERNMENT!!!
Now in Canada they have perverted the rights of the individual and convinced us that we are all part of the hive. It is the typical tactic of countries sliding into socialism. We give up our rights and freedoms for security. And one day we wake up and we are slaves again! Read Jerry Spences'(lawyer for Karen Silkwood,Ruby Ridge, etc.)book "Back to Slavery"!
And God is not mother nature but a very real and certain entity."mother nature" is part of his creation and man is the sole reason for this creation! We are not animals with a bigger brain but Gods ultimate creation. And yes we are accountable and we will answer for how we lived this life! This life is short and we can be a bastard and go around doing things we know aren't right. Or we can do the right thing and try to live up to the principles God laid out for us!

[bombay_43]

Cowman: There are those of us who never did believe in "Womens Lib".

Why fight to become mans equal, when we've always been superior???

[cowman]

Bombay: I suspect you could be right!!! I had 5 sisters and they all could beat the hell out of me! And when I finally got old enough where I was a match they decided to quit!
I've always said I'd never buy a male dog or horse because they are just too damned dumb... and I suspect humans aren't a lot different!