CRIME CRUSADE 'INEFFECTIVE'

Report Raps U.S. Model Mirrored By Canadian Bill

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 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.

The nine authors of Unlocking America 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.

The report does concede that U.S. crime rates have fallen sharply
since the early 1990s, and are now about 40 per cent below their peak.

It's tempting, it adds, to conclude this decline occurred because
incarceration rates soared during the same period. But a large number
of studies contradict that claim, it says.

"Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any
relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates."

In fact, in many cases crime rates have risen or fallen independent
of imprisonment rates, it says.

"New York City, for example, has produced one of the nation's largest
declines in crime in the nation while significantly reducing its jail
and prison populations."

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.

The Tory legislation calls for longer 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."

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.

"In effect, the imprisonment binge created our own American
apartheid," it says. "At current rates, one-third of all black males,
one-sixth of Latino males and one in 17 white males will go to prison
during their lives. Incarceration rates this high are a national tragedy."

American prisoners also receive sentences that are twice as long as
English prisoners, three times as long as Canadian prisoners and
five-to-10 times as long as French prisoners, the report says.

"Yet these countries' rates of violent crime are lower than ours."

The report draws three conclusions about imprisonment's effect on
crime: If there is one at all, it's small; it diminishes as prison
populations expand; and the "overwhelming and undisputed negative
side-effects of incarceration far outweigh its potential, unproven benefits."

Incarceration in the U.S., it says, has had numerous unintended
consequences, ranging from racial injustice and damage to families to
civic disengagement and worsening public health.

Incarceration can even increase crime, the report says. One study
found that after incarceration passes a certain tipping point, it
becomes counter-productive.

"When too many men are removed from a community, family and social
life are destabilized, leading to higher crime rates."