Multiple-offender given a $1 sentence for breaching curfew again

It will certainly be the luckiest loonie she's ever spent.

As QMI Agency reports, a 16-year-old female delinquent got off for less than the price of a coffee after a Winnipeg judge decided the teen didn't deserve the 30-day sentence the Crown had sought for breaching her court-ordered curfew.

And it's unlikely Judge Judith Elliott's decision will encourage her to keep it, either.

Since the girl was convicted in October 2011 for assaulting police and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, she's breached her curfew six times.

"At some point, there has to be some responsibility taken for the breaches she (has committed)," Crown attorney Wendy Friesen told Elliott during the trial. "The Youth Criminal Justice Act speaks to meaningful consequences and clearly, in my submission, the consequences have not been meaningful (to her) up to this point."

The young offender was sentenced to one day in custody and 18 months probation following her criminal activities. In the period between Dec. 19, 2011 and May 31, 2012 she's been back in custody half a dozen times for skipping out on the youth centre where she's currently staying.

Her most recent flight occurred on July 13 when she took off after an appointed visit to her birth mother at a Winnipeg hotel. Police found her and hauled her back the following day.

Justice Elliott argued that she couldn't put the girl in jail as the Youth Criminal Justice Act can only be applied if the offender has "failed to comply with more than one non-custodial sentence."

"I understand the Crown's frustration and I understand the police's frustration, but the court is not to be detaining people for social measures, which I think is part of what is going on here," Elliott told Friesen.

She gave the girl three months to scrape together the change to pay her fine.

Though unusual, this wouldn't be the first time Canadian courts have handed down strange sentences.

In 2007, Steven Cranley was legally barred from having a girlfriend for three years based on the Peterborough man's history of violence toward the women he dated.

That condition clearly didn't hold. In 2009, Cranley was sentenced to 21 months in jail for assaulting and unlawfully confining a 19-year-old woman in his home.

And our friends south of the border have a special gift for meting out creative punishments.

Judge Paul Sacco of Fort Lupton, Colo., forces loud music blasters to sit in a room for an hour and be subjected to a medley of Barry Manilow, Dolly Parton, nursery rhymes and classical music on full throttle.

Painsville, Ohio, judge Mike Cicconetti may go down on record as the most inventive justice deliverer.

Some of his past sentences include forcing three men who solicited prostitutes to stand on the street for an hour dressed like chickens, and making a man who offered a choice epithet toward an officer hang out at an intersection with a 350-pound pig wearing a sign that read: "This is not a police officer."