Man spared jail sentence

When is jail not an appropriate penalty?

That was the question a judge had to decide Thursday in the case of a 24-year-old man who appears to be turning his life around after a life of crime.

“Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result,” Judge Fergus O’Donnell told Kristopher Waines in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines.

Waines, who had pleaded guilty to a charge of assault, has a lengthy criminal record which includes a number of stints behind bars.

“The go-to reaction is incarceration but that hasn’t worked in the past and if it hasn’t worked in the past what makes me think it will work in the future?” the judge said, before placing Waines on probation for three years.

Court heard Waines suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome, a condition that wasn’t diagnosed until he was an adult.

“Had people known early about the fetal alcohol diagnosis, it’s not that you would have had an easier life but people could have understood your behaviour and you had the potential to access resources to help you cope,” O’Donnell said.

The judge said most defendants come before the courts with a ‘back story’ as to what led them down a criminal path.

“Some people are just selfish, greedy, rotten people,” the judge said.

Others, like Waines, end up in court due to circumstances that are beyond their control.

“This is something your mother did to you,” he told the young man.

People affected by fetal alcohol syndrome are more likely to have legal problems, participate in highrisk behaviors, and have trouble with alcohol or drugs.

Court heard Waines is now doing well and has support from community resources.