Calling all Eight Ball Award Recipients

At first glance, Jeffrey Giles’ obituary in yesterday’s Freep seems like every other In Memorium in the paper. The heart-wrenching pain felt by the Giles family becomes readily apparent once you actually read it:

Jeffrey Giles
Died January 4, 1998
Jeff, though you live in our hearts and souls we miss you so much. The vermin who took your life will soon be free. Who will be next?
Mom and Dad

I hope the judges who let our criminals coast through the justice system got to read this tribute to Mr. Giles. The pain that society’s monsters create seems to EXPONENTIALLY outlast the actual penance they pay to those they have hurt.

I know that the talking heads for the Manitoba Bar Association think us laypeople don’t understand the nuances of the law. How many times have their talking heads told us as much in the editorial pages of the papers? What we do understand is that as parents and contributing members of society (and yes we are just as educated as the lawyers and/or judges, if not more so), sanctions for negative actions are the fine line that separates order from chaos. Without penal or economic disincentives, the world would be a scary place indeed. The sense of responsibility we try to instill in our own children is increasingly undermined by the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the judges that seem to be cozily removed from the crimes that affect the rest of us.

Perhaps we should be sending these individuals Thank You cards every time their rulings fly in the face of logic. If the Eight Ball Award isn’t enough for our judicial community to give their collective heads a shake, perhaps an avalanche of disdain from us unwashed masses might remind them about who they should truly be looking out for.

To the Giles family – as a father, I cannot even begin to imagine what you must go through, even 8 years after your tragic loss. The law is the mechanism by which the precious fabric of society is held together – we can only hope that the light sentences which allow increasingly emboldened criminals to unravel this fabric and make a mockery of this system comes to an end…