Councillor blasts police ‘social engineering’

A police initiative to keep more minor youth crimes out of the courts is being criticized as being “too soft” on the offenders.

Ward 8 (west Mountain) councillor Terry Whitehead made the charge in response to a police report outlining a joint “restorative justice” project with the John Howard Society and Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

Funded by a $150,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant, the two-year program’s goal is to give officers more discretion on how to deal with youths who commit less serious offences, including by taking into account family circumstances.

A youth who commits an act of vandalism, for instance, might repair the harm done in consultation with the victim.

“I read this social engineering and I shake my head,” Coun. Whitehead told fellow members of the Hamilton police board during discussion of the report.

Comments

[shaddupsevenup]

Terry Whitehead is a blowhard who should shut the hell up. What does he know about rehabilitation of at-risk youth? Natural consequences can be the best teacher, so if a vandal has to clean up the crap he spray-painted on someone's fence, he might think twice about doing it again. God, will the ward 8 voters just get rid of this guy? And what's with his hair? It doesn't MOVE. Never trust a politician whose hair doesn't move.

[JonC]

In addition to being a blowhard, he apparently has no idea what social engineering is.