Criminology
Above: Mayor Brad Woodside, Dr. Bonnie Priest
Manual Profile of Facilitators and Partners
Criminology Educational and Counseling Skills Course
UP FRONT, REACHING OUT TO TEENS
By Richard Duplain
Daily Gleaner – January 21, 2006
The founder of Positive Heart Living wants the community and government to be more involved in programs to dissuade youth from a life of crime.
We don’t need anymore bandages, said Bonnie Priest.
She recently undertook a study to discover the reasons for youth criminality and what can be done about it. The study has evolved into a criminology counseling skills course.
It’s time for action and solutions with a view to the long term, Priest said. We want youths to be happy contributing members within society and not to feel like they are disenfranchised and relegated to the outer boundaries of the community.
Poverty is most significant cause of criminal activity in youth, she said.
Other factors include sexual abuse and pre-existing cycles of criminal activity within the young person’s family.
Poverty is not just about money. It’s about who we are and how we see ourselves, she said. It’s now time to stop talking about this and start doing something about it.
If people came together, community leaders, teachers, police, councilors and government, than we could take a truly holistic approach to fighting the youth-crime problem.
Priest said grassroots people, including probation and police officers, face the crime problem on a daily basis, but they lack the knowledge and resources to deal with it.
Meanwhile, she said, academia understands the problem and has the resources to study it, but it lacks the first hand experience.
I want this study to help close that knowledge gap, Priest said. Knowledge is power, but the proper exercise of that power is only through wisdom.
Priest, who is a cardiologist, mental health worker and educator, there is wisdom in a community or society working together to resolve a problem.
But first people have to come together in a spirit of inclusiveness and compassion, she said.
It costs as much as 100,000 to keep an inmate in a federal prison, Priest said.
The offender and society would be better served if some of that money found it’s way back into the community for education, addictions counseling and risk assessments, she said.
Priest said sometimes a formal education is not adequate for counselors.
I have a master’s degree required to be a certified counselor, she said. I certainly do not feel I received the proper training to counsel in the field of corrections.
She said many people with social service backgrounds don’t have sufficient counseling programs in their degree program nor do they receive this in their work placements with young offenders.
Unfortunately our prisons are full of men and women who were once adolescents who received ineffective or no appropriate counseling to deal with the plethora of problems in their lives, Priest said.
She said school teachers feel inadequate as they try to counsel young people.
Most people who work with young offenders are very passionate about their jobs but unfortunately they are ill equipped to provide effective counseling.
Priest released her study findings earlier this week at a meeting with government and police representatives at the old Victoria Public Hospital on Woodstock Road.
