When you write an editorial you hope that it engenders thought and reaction. Obviously, how crime affects our social fabric fits the bill.

I appreciate Dr Williams’s opinion and I wonder if he has been to Vancouver, where we have several hundred criminals with several hundred convictions who have never done any jail time. Each of them costs about $750 000 per year in stolen goods. Dr Williams may feel that the programs he has suggested would eradicate this crime, but we have many such programs and the problem continues to increase. In the current system these criminals carry on with impunity; I suggest that some incarceration may help as a deterrent.

I was more concerned, however, with the serious crime. I bet that, when one looks at cases where a teenager working in a gas station has been killed for a tank of gas, or innocent bystanders have been killed by street racers, or children have been beaten unconscious and given permanent brain damage by hooligans, even the people of Willowdale might want to see jail time measured in years rather than months.

If those sentiments make me mean-spirited, then, I’m guilty.