BEYOND CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

William M. lives in Vancouver, but his world is so different from
that of ordinary Canadians that he might as well live on another
planet. Born in 1961, he began compiling an adult criminal record in
Ontario as soon as he became of age, committing dozens of property
crimes, violent crimes and minor offences such as breaching bail.

In 1991, William moved west and began offending in the Lower B. C.
Mainland, most often in Vancouver, but also in Surrey and Port
Coquitlam. Now 46, he has been arrested hundreds of times since 1979,
with an astonishing 148 convictions. The vast majority of his
offenses have been property related, driven by the need to get money for drugs.

William is not alone. In cities across Canada there are hundreds of
chronic offenders like him. Vancouver alone has 379. According to a
recent report by the Vancouver Police Department, the vast majority
are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many also suffer from a mental
disorder, generally untreated. As a group, those few hundred chronic
offenders were responsible for 26,755 police contacts between 2001
and 2006 --more than 5,000 contacts per year, 14 a day. The costs are
staggering. Arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations end up costing
some $20,000 per criminal per month. There has to be a better way,
and there is.

A trial program in the Australian state of New South Wales targets
100 repeat male offenders with long-term illicit drug dependency and
an associated life of crime and constant imprisonment. The program
combines a term of incarceration with mandatory treatment and a slow
reintegration into society -- jail followed by custody in the
community with ongoing supervision. Initial results seem positive.

Money is not an issue. By contrast with the $20,000 cost per criminal
per month of the current system--and that doesn't include the costs
to victims -- the cost of keeping a prisoner in a provincial
institution is about $4,250 per month, with reintegration into the
community adding no more than another $1,500. On that financial basis
alone, a program integrating the criminal justice system and the
mental health system makes sense. Working together, the two systems
can at least begin to address the problem, but either system by
itself is doomed to failure.

Because chronic offenders tend to commit minor crimes, drawing fairly
short sentences, their lives shift rapidly between jail and the
neighbourhoods where they find their drugs -- in Vancouver, for
example, the Downtown Eastside. William's sentences, most often for
theft, generally range from 30 to 90 days. Then he's back on the street.

Petty as their crimes may be, collectively William and his fellow
chronic offenders cause enormous hardship. Their victims number in
the thousands.

Those victims are left not only with a monetary loss, but also with a
lingering fear that affects their sense of personal safety and their
trust in the justice system.

We clearly need protection from chronic offenders, and we are clearly
not getting it. But blaming the criminal justice system, as many do,
misses the real problem--our failure as a society to deal with severe
drug and alcohol addiction.

Punishment alone doesn't work for a simple reason. The idea of
punishing criminals for their crimes is premised at least partly on
the concept of specific deterrence. Applied most strongly to property
crimes, specific deterrence assumes that the criminal is a rational
actor who will consider: Is it worth it? In fact, specific deterrence
often works; many offenders actually do swear off crime after fairly
short jail sentences.

The problem is that specific deterrence presumes a rational actor,
which is exactly what we do not have with offenders like those of the
Downtown Eastside, who are drug addicted and often mentally ill. They
do not pause to consider the possible punishment for the crime they
are about to commit. As a result, punishment acts as little or no
deterrent to them.

We could use longer sentences to "warehouse" those too dangerous to
allow on the streets, but that would be using a very high-cost
mechanism to deal with what is really a public health issue. The
criminal justice system is not designed to treat addicts; while
prisons provide some treatment, it is almost always short-term and
under-funded. By the same token, voluntary drug treatment, as
available from the public health system, seldom works either, because
kicking an addiction is extremely unpleasant and demands willpower
and money, both seldom found in criminal street addicts.

The first step is to recognize that the issue is one of both public
health and criminal law. The next step is to include compulsory drug
treatment, as that trial program in New South Wales is doing.

In principle, it seems unfair and arguably unjust for a court to
impose mandatory drug withdrawal and psychiatric treatment. Most
people do not want to be treated against their will, even for a
serious illness. Canadians feel strongly about the right to choose
what to do with their own bodies, and that is usually appropriate.
But our moral intuitions can fail us when it comes to the few hard
cases, which include chronic offenders.

We have to move on from the "war on crime" to an approach that will
protect society while rehabilitating those who can be rehabilitated.
This means making some tough choices. But these choices can be
avoided no longer.