HARPER'S GET-TOUGH POLICY MAY NOT WORK

OTTAWA -- As Parliament prepares to pass Criminal Code changes that
would lengthen penalties and expand mandatory minimum sentences, a new
report says the American experience with similar measures has been a
costly waste of money.

Due largely to tough-on-crime policies, the Unlocking America report
says, there are now eight times as many people in U.S. prisons and
jails as there were in 1970.

Yet the crime rate today in the U.S. is about the same as it was in
1973, and there's little evidence the imprisonment binge has had much
impact on crime, says the report by the JFA Institute, a
Washington-based organization that does criminal-justice research.

In fact, the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates generally
have the lowest crime rates, it says.

Since 1990, the growth in American prison populations has been driven
by longer sentences, including mandatory minimum sentences and laws
that require offenders to serve most of their sentences in prison.

The report calls on American lawmakers to embark on a concerted
program of "decarceration" by shortening sentences, eliminating the
use of prison for technical violations of parole or probation, and
decriminalizing "victimless" crimes such as drug offences.

The recommendations run directly counter to measures in the Harper
government's omnibus crime bill, which increases mandatory minimum
sentences for a variety of violent offences and includes reverse onus
provisions that could keep repeat violent offenders behind bars for
life.

The bill, which the government has designated as a matter of
confidence, passed through committee this week without amendment and
is expected to receive third reading before the House rises Dec. 14.

The report's proposals also fly in the face of legislation introduced
this week that would provide mandatory minimum penalties for various
drug crimes and double the maximum penalty for cannabis production to
14 years.

Critics accuse the government of relying on the same tough-on-crime
strategies that have failed in the U.S.

"We hopefully don't want to start importing crime policies that have
been demonstrated to be ineffective and counter-productive in the
United States," says Don Stuart, a law professor at Queen's University
in Kingston.

Rather than looking for effective ways to deal with crime, says
University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob, the government has
opted for simple changes in the criminal law "which obviously aren't
going to do anything. But they sell the public on the idea that these
things are going to be effective."

Unlocking America's nine authors are leading U.S. criminologists and
sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment.

"We are convinced that we need a different strategy," they
say.

With 2.2 million people behind bars on any given day, the U.S. leads
the world in imprisonment. China, with 1.5 million imprisoned, is second.

American taxpayers now spend more than $60 billion a year on
corrections, says the report.

"The net result is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on
imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of
taxpayers' money from more effective crime control
strategies."

Much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities.

Blacks and Latinos make up 60 per cent of America's prison
population.

According to the report, eight per cent of American black men of
working age are now behind bars.