Opposition Senator Kim Swan criticised Government?s ?softly-softly? approach to crime and the ?cowboy justice mentality? permeating the Island.

Sen. Swan made the comments as Senators got back to business and after a statement by UBP Senator Bob Richards about Government?s plans to hire sociologist Roy Wright to conduct a study on young black males.

?Young men are taking the law into their own hands and defying it,? said Sen. Swan. ?We have seen a situation recently where two young men were brutally murdered.?

He said violent criminals should not be candidates for alternatives to incarceration programmes. ?The punishment needs to fit the crime,? he said. ?Criminals are travelling with machetes and armed weapons in the community and their community is our homes.?

Sen. Swan discussed the changes in Government that he thought needed to be implemented.

?Government has no connection to the people and the people need to be taken care of by a caring government.? PLP Senator Larry Mussenden asked Sen. Swan to control himself and called the Opposition senators ?Doom, Gloom and Boom? criticising them for what he saw as their negative outlook.

?We live in Bermuda and we have a lot to be grateful for,? Sen. Mussenden said.

He defended the Government, denying that they were ?soft? on crime.

?Government is tough on crime and where necessary will get tougher,? he said.

Sen. Swan interjected that that was a pledge the Opposition senators would hold him to.

Sen. Mussenden said since the PLP has been in power, Police had been given increased manpower and a bigger budget.

?We have a justice system that is an iron fist in a velvet glove,? said Sen. Mussenden.

Sen. Swan said he would like to find the iron fist, ?because the government certainly has the velvet glove?.

Sen. Richards blamed drugs and dysfunctional families for many of the problems that black males in Bermuda are facing.

?The overwhelming majority of the inmates in jail are there because of some connection to narcotics, either possession, stealing to support a habit or trafficking or some other anti-social behaviour that is connected to narcotics? he said. ?I would like to suggest that this issue is in fact a symptom of a deeper problem rather than the essential problem itself. I would like to suggest to my friend Roy Wright that the young black male issue is a symptom of serious problems within many black families on this Island. We have dysfunctional families that produce dysfunctional children that are not being prepared to meet the criteria required for success in the Bermuda economy. You can?t teach children if they come from homes where discipline is an alien concept.?

He said the issue also affected young women, but the symptoms of the problem were different for women.

Sen. Mussenden also said that many white families also had dysfunction and problems.

?There have been many black families who are successful and law abiding in Bermuda, and their successes should be studied also,? he said.