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Torture and punishment
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

September 6, 2008 at 8:37 AM EDT

Just as there is no rational explanation for why two 16-year-old boys in Camrose, Alta., broke into a home and tortured a cat to death in a microwave, there is also no justification for why the two were set loose by a judge with a community-service order and a requirement that they go for counselling, but no custodial sentence.

To kill a living creature, let alone someone's beloved pet, is an act of such appalling cruelty it often foretells serious violence against people; to torture an animal (it was screaming for 10 minutes as it died) deserves a criminal-justice response that reflects society's horror and sorrow at the crime. These two youths purposely set out to inflict pain on the owners of the home they had broken into.

While the Youth Criminal Justice Act is supposed to keep non-violent offenders out of custody, this crime was acutely violent, and deserved punishment. If, heading into an expected fall election, the Conservatives are looking for a rationale for getting tough on youth crime, they have just been handed one.