Crime pays off in Canada

Maybe this holiday weekend you're putting in another shift to help pay for your child's college tuition.

Maybe you are that student, worried about how you're going to put the cash together for school and your first apartment.

Or maybe you're a victim of crime, and you can't afford the counselling you so desperately need.

Too bad you're not a teen killer, because then you'd be showered -- thanks to the Canadian government -- with more than $100,000 a year.

It's called the Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision program or IRCS and for 24 of this country's worst youth offenders, the little-known federal justice program is akin to hitting the jackpot.

In return for accepting treatment for their mental issues, serious violent offenders can escape adult prison and do easy time instead in a youth facility, like Ontario's Sprucedale, while taxpayers spend $100,375 per inmate for academic courses, counselling, "life skills" and reintegration.

The theory is that these heavily damaged "kids" need intensive help if they are ever to find their way back into society.

What kind of help, you may ask?

Well, there was the $700 piece of wood we purchased for a killer who brutally beat and sexually assaulted 15-year-old Elisha Mercer under the Lorne Bridge in Brantford in 2001. According to a Sprucedale insider, the young murderer was given the lumber to fashion his very own homemade guitar.

"It makes us all want to vomit," says the employee, who doesn't want to be named. "The victims should be getting this money, not them."

When told by the Sun, Elisha's mom was outraged to learn what constitutes therapy for the killer of her only child. "It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous," Wilma Martin says. "These have been very hard years. My husband and I split up because of what happened, he took off and I was left to pay the mortgage and the bills. I came close to losing my home.

"I could have used $100,000."

Instead, Ottawa last year earmarked $3.4 million for the country's worst of the worst young murderers and rapists with psychological disorders.

In 2004, one of the first accepted into the new program was the 18-year-old Hamilton youth who had killed Jonathan Romero the year before. Romero, 18, had gone to Lime Ridge Mall to buy a Christmas present for his mom. Standing on the sidelines when his friend got involved in a fight, Romero was sucker punched by the youth and after falling to the ground, was savagely punched four more times in the head and neck. He died hours later in hospital.

A judge turned down the Crown's request for a 61/2- year adult sentence for manslaughter and instead agreed to just 30 months in custody at Sprucedale. The young offender was deemed eligible for IRCS because -- wait for it -- he was diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and mood disorder.

If only every kid with ADD could get free one-on-one counselling and government-sponsored perks.

The Hamilton youth was assigned a "life coach" and various IRCS counselling programs. He was released four weeks ago to a six-month reintegration period, but according to the Sprucedale worker, none of the expensive rehabilitation seemed to have any impact at all. "He felt no remorse whatsoever for his crime and anyone who worked with him over the last three years will tell you the same thing," he says. "He was a poster child for everything that was wrong with the system.

'Danger to society'

"Do I think he still poses a danger to society? You bet I do. At that summer camp, he didn't learn a thing."

The youth, stung by a previous article slamming easy time at Sprucedale, insists he's a changed man in a letter published in the Sun. "Every achievement that I completed here is to the memory of that boy."

According to his former worker, the letter is just another demonstration of how he's learned to talk the talk as well as how to use the IRCS program to his advantage.

Now 20, the Hamilton killer was boasting to everyone that the federal government will now be paying for his college tuition, laptop computer and his living expenses. On his $16,000 IRCS wish list, he also requested a plasma screen TV and new designer clothing. The insider says he doesn't know if those goodies were granted as well.

"All of this stuff ," says the angry youth worker, "an average family can't afford and these kids are getting it for murdering other kids? It's unbelievable. The public needs to know."

Oh Canada, why are we such gullible souls?