other offences against visitors the most expressed sentiment seems to be "birch them''. Desperation to find a solution has caused the usually liberal Quinton Edness, Public Safety Minister, to advocate birching for handbag snatchers.

Clearly we need a solution but it probably does not rest in birching a number of young men who are already angry and prone to violence. A reader has sent us a clipping from the distinguished Toronto Globe and Mail which may contain an ideal solution.. .sentence selected young offenders to "boot camp''.

The camp would be conducted under strict discipline on a 16-hour per day regimen, seven days a week, using group therapy, vigorous exercise, literacy training and uniforms. The suggested boot camp would be strict but not adversarial. What Ontario has is an adaptation of the very harsh boot camps in some US states which did not reduce recidivism.

This boot camp would ban games, television and escapist literature like comic books, except for the educational type. These violent young people would be too busy to watch violence on TV. We think the literacy training is very important to the mix because a person who cannot read or write is automatically an outsider today.

The idea is to cut down on high recidivism rates and the Ontario system hopes to cut recidivism from above 60 percent for young offenders sentenced to the present system to about ten percent. In other words, it is designed to restructure young lives with discipline and training and to save them from a life of jail cell after jail cell. We think trying to save people from jail is a good deal better than whipping them.

It has been suggested that the Canadian facility should have a positive name and the name suggested is the Ontario Life Skills Youth Academy.

Interestingly, the article points out that in Ontario the programme is being created with funding from existing ministry budgets and without extra funding.

We say that because every time something constructive is suggested in Bermuda you can bet it will be opposed on the basis of funding. This is boot camp and not holiday camp. Any work on the facility can be done by the people themselves as part of the discipline, including all maintenance and cleaning.

You would be dealing with only a small number of people under controlled circumstances. Murderers and the mentally ill would not be included. This idea should be thought of not as a new prison or as a large project but as an experiment with a new system. It should not be an excuse for a new ministry, or 20 civil servants or five new GP cars. Staff would be seconded from other ministries. We hope it will not mean five free trips each for ten civil servants to Ontario to look at what they have there.

We think that in Bermuda it might be more sensible to turn the programme away from the army style and toward the water. The facilities need not be anything other than barracks style. It might be possible to do the programme on an island or, with some reorganisation, at the Prison Farm, or on a small part of the base.

This is a real possibility to help young offenders get back on their feet and turn their lives around.