Lee Bruno Abel is the type of criminal known as a 'bad actor' in the justice system.

Even before his most recent convictions for forcible confinement and assault causing bodily harm, he had 13 prior convictions -- three for crimes of violence, including assault with a weapon and resisting arrest.

Abel recently pleaded guilty in territorial court to beating, threatening and terrorizing a woman for five days in a Ndilo residence.

You might have thought the justice system would come close to throwing the book at this repeat offender, who has demonstrated himself to be a violent predator.

You might have thought that, but it's not what happened. Crown prosecutor Andrew Fox requested a sentence of two years less a day, which would allow Abel to do time in Yellowknife.

Judge Michel Bourassa, in passing sentence, bumped that up two months to 26 months -- an increase so slight it hardly keeps him off the streets much longer -- but enough to at least send Abel into the federal penitentiary system where he belongs.

He'll be eligible for full parole in a little over eight and a half months and day parole in a little less than four and a half months.

Judge Bourassa reportedly called the crime one of the worst he had ever heard of. "The woman, a prisoner in the house for five days, afraid to leave...this accused is not fit to be in society."

Perhaps then Bourassa -- and Fox in his submission for the Crown -- might have glanced at the Criminal Code, where the maximum sentence for both crimes Abel was convicted of is 10 years each -- 20 years if consecutive sentences were imposed.

Judges do have to be guided by previous cases in sentencing and maximum penalties exist for the worst examples within categories of offenses.

Were Abel's crimes deserving of the maximum penalty? Probably not quite, but few reasonable people would think such crimes call for a light sentence.

The courts are there to protect society and punish the criminal enough to discourage them from committing the crime again. We think the sentence imposed on Abel fell short of both goals.

Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

The hamlet of Rankin Inlet is to be commended for the way it's going about collecting on some old debts.

Not only has the hamlet managed to recoup $100,000 so far, it has done so in a way sympathetic to the financial status of those owing.

As fair as the hamlet has tried to be in reaching agreements with those in arrears, there are still a number of residents forcing the issue.

We agree with Coun. Justin Merritt when he says anyone who hasn't responded to three notices is simply ignoring a situation and hoping it goes away.

However, how do people reach that point?

In this particular situation, it could be a case of old habits are hard to break -- and this old habit is one of not having to pay.

When hamlets first began taking over land leases from the GNWT about five years ago, they did so in groups or sections.

The first section the hamlet of Rankin Inlet took over contained about 100 lots.

It quickly became obvious the GNWT hadn't been making much of an attempt to collect on monies owed.

In a nutshell, the government of the day had become lazy and downright careless in dealing with the accounts.

That indifference has rubbed off on a number of residents.

To their way of thinking, they never paid the territorial government, why should they pay the hamlet?

So, just how indifferent had the GNWT become?

When the hamlet asked the GNWT for a receivables list on the people who owed money on the first 100 lots, the government handed over a box full of what looked to be recipe cards.

People working for the hamlet at the time say it resembled what someone might use to run a hockey pool.

Your tax dollars at work!

Apparently, the way this high-tech system worked -- when a person came in to pay for a year, whomever was handling the accounts would take a marker and scratch that year off the recipe card.

In short, the hamlet was left with no way to verify the money owed on the lots without invoices or statements of accounts.

Seeing what it was given to work with at the beginning, the hamlet's progress in collecting past due accounts becomes all the more impressive.

The hamlet is giving everyone a fair chance to pay in a manner they can afford, and that's the right approach to take in this situation.

As for how it ever reached such a ridiculous point and the length of time involved -- let us borrow a line in saying, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Editorial Comment
Terry Halifax
Inuvik Drum

Ed's booked solid doing drug testing and education all over Alberta and the North, but this is one business we'd all like to see go out of business.

During his presentation, Ed played a video about the adverse health effects of smoking marijuana and it took me back to Grade 8.

When I was in junior high, we got all the usual low-grade health films about the evils of booze and drugs and they were a joke to us then and would be hilarious to watch today.

They showed us films portraying pot smokers as raving lunatics and drinkers as slathering boobs.

My friends and I tried pot and booze somewhere around that time and we collectively thought, "Our teachers lied to us!"

We felt that if they lied about pot and booze, they probably lied about that other stuff too, so off we went into our senior high years experimenting.

I was a lucky one. I never had much of a penchant for waking up broke and stupid, but as I grew older, I lost many friends who died drunk behind the wheel or overdosed on cocaine.

A guy I grew up with lost his house, his BMW and his carpentry business because of his addiction.

Those movies we watched in health weren't of much benefit to my friends and I and maybe even served us more harm than good.

Drug education has to be real to young people if it's going to have any effect.

Our schools are always eager to bring in shining examples of good citizenry, but if the students saw a few bad examples it might go a long way to preventing a problem before it becomes one.

If my health class had some guy come in and tell us how he lost his house, business and BMW to cocaine, who knows, I might have a few more friends today.

Renaissance revival

It's been a long time coming, but it's great to see the GNWT has finally made a commitment to an artisan training program for the territory.

While still in its infancy, the Aurora College program shows some real promise to future artists.

The beauty of the artisan program is that it offers students the full spectrum of arts that will give them a better understanding and appreciation of their own and other's work.

Whether carving, beading or sewing, these art forms carry a big part of the heritage of this area and recognizing that, the government will see their dollars come back through taxes paid and will help preserve a culture that needs all the help it can get.

Let's hope the next budget makes room for art.

Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum

The new Fort Simpson youth centre was hopping on Friday night.

The old Fort Simpson youth centre, located upstairs at the recreation centre, was also a very lively place once upon a time. It opened to great fanfare a few years ago but interest gradually waned.

A committee of adolescents was struck to help guide the youth centre, but committee members stopped showing up for meetings. The youth centre was eventually closed for good. Rec staff of the day claimed that there wasn't enough interest to keep it running. Some youth argued that it was shut down prematurely.

Youth centres are a tough nut. If the teens aren't given enough input, they don't want any part of the facility. If they are given the run of the place, then a situation like the one in Fort Liard occurs. There, the youth centre was shut down due to repeated assaults and rampant vandalism.

Let's remember that with teens, what is trendy one day may no longer be trendy the next. "Cool" is fleeting.

Right now the youth centre is hip, or as today's youth would say, "It's da bomb," or "It's off the hook."

However, if we think back to our own adolescent years, we can probably recall different places where it was desirable to hang out. It may have been the shopping mall, a bowling alley or a pool hall. Sometimes friends just walked around or gathered outside of a building, as Fort Simpson teens do at the school or the church, "hanging out" in the evenings. After a while, for some unknown reason, the location tends to change.

The new youth centre is a good initiative. It will give wandering teens somewhere to hang out, for as long as they so choose. Once the winter is over and the novelty has worn off, there will quite possibly be very few visitors to the youth centre.

Then adults will then be faced with a choice: either shut it down -- temporarily or permanently -- or continue to run it even though only a few kids come and go each night.

Either way, the building will have served a useful purpose.

Self improvement

There are those who are rather skeptical of workshops of any kind, but especially the ones that relate to spiritual or emotional healing.

Yet if some individuals insist that a workshop has helped them, how can that exercise be deemed a waste of time?

As long sound judgment is used in contracting facilitators, then it's a good starting point. But that's primarily what most workshops amount to: starting points.

Sadly there are those who tend to bounce from one workshop to another, never seeming to truly achieve a true sense of healing, only feeling better for a short while. For some people a workshop seems to be like a quick fix.

While some workshops do hold value, our long-term interests lie in having permanent local counselling available wherever and whenever possible.

In "Stuck in Africa" Yellowknifer reported that Jim Taylor required $21,000 to cross the Atlantic. Instead, he required $21,000 Zimbabwean dollars to obtain an interview with the Canadian embassy. The cost of a plane ticket is substantially higher.

In addition, Robert Mugabe is the president of Zimbabwe, not the prime minister.