How should social services respond to a young hooligan who holds up a convenience store with a carving knife? Denmark has the answer: Send him on a Caribbean cruise for a year. Local councils in the country have spent a combined £4-million (R77-million) sending youth criminals and drug abusers on sailing voyages in the Caribbean, according to MetroExpress newspaper."I climbed volcanoes twice, went jet-skiing many times, and made excursions into the jungle, although I didn't manage to completely finish my diving certificate," Christian, the boy who robbed the convenience store and who is now 22, reportedly said.According to the paper, 59 young criminals have spent a year or more aboard the two Danish sailing ketches operated by the rehab company Den Maritime Base, at a cost of nearly £70000 each to the Danish taxpayer.Flemming Olsen, director of family affairs at Frederikssund council on the island of Zealand, who has put 12 youth on the programme, said he had no regrets."The Caribbean might sound like an exotic place to go, but it's important to stress that we are in no way talking about a holiday," he said. "We are doing this so that they can get away from an environment of drug abuse. They are maybe caught up in crime, such as drug-dealing and theft."Mayor John Schmidt Andersen defended lavishing money on the troubled youth at a time when his council is being forced to find £3-million in cuts, saying it was worth it if the youth stopped abusing.Christian told the newspaper that he had found it easy to get hold of marijuana during his year on one of the ships."The Caribbean is probably the world's marijuana capital," he said.And when he returned to Denmark, he had begun dealing drugs and joined a street gang.Ole Jacobssen, CEO of the Frederikssund council, claimed that Christian had been sent home early from the project after threatening the captain of his ship...