CANADIANS CONCERNED ABOUT SENTENCING

If the Harper government has fashioned its tough-on-crime legislation
to win votes, recent public opinion surveys offer both encouragement
and caution.

Three federally commissioned surveys, posted on a government of Canada
website, show relatively low levels of public confidence in the
criminal justice system, qualified support for stiffer sentences and
high concern about organized crime.

Yet a closer reading of the surveys, along with recent research on
Canadians' attitudes to sentencing, suggests that public opinion may
be more nuanced than it appears.

The 2007 National Justice Survey, which polled 4,502 Canadians between
Feb. 27 and March 29, contains some findings to warm the hearts of the
most fervent tough-on-crime advocates.

Canadians have relatively high confidence that police will solve
crimes, courts will convict the guilty and prisons will contain them,
it says. Confidence plummets, though, when people are asked about the
appropriateness of the sentence offenders receive. And it hits rock
bottom when it comes to their release through parole.

A March survey of 4,503 Canadians by Ekos Research Associates for
Justice Canada supports those findings. It found that just 37 per cent
of respondents express high confidence in the criminal justice system
- -- well below levels of confidence in the education system (62 per
cent) and the health care system (52 per cent).

As well, research done by Julian Roberts, a former University of
Ottawa criminologist now at Oxford University, and Nicole Crutcher and
Paul Verbrugge of Justice Canada, found that three-quarters of
Canadians think sentences are too lenient -- a finding that has varied
little over the past three decades.

That perception only grows for more serious crimes, the authors
reported in a paper published in January in the Canadian Journal of
Criminology and Criminal Justice. For example, four-fifths of
Canadians endorse the view that "judges are too lenient with criminals
convicted of gun crimes."

According to the National Justice Survey, most Canadians don't even
trust official criminal justice statistics, such as parole release
rates.

Two-thirds say they support the Harper government's approach,
including strengthening sentencing laws and tougher penalties for
serious drug offenders.

About one quarter of Canadians endorse mandatory minimum sentences
even for relatively minor crimes, while about half back them depending
on the circumstances of the crime and the offender. But another 25 per
cent back the use of non-custodial sentences, such as house arrest,
even for very serious offences.

A March 2007 Ekos survey of 1,337 Canadians done for Public Safety
Canada found that 84 per cent see organized crime as a serious
problem. And seven in ten think the federal government's response
could be improved.

The measures most favoured to combat organized crime include longer
sentences and reduced eligibility for parole.

Focus group research done in July for the Privy Council Office found
that crime was not top of mind when participants were asked to
describe the community or neighbourhood in which they live.

Yet almost everyone, regardless of age, felt crime was worse today
than when they were children.

But other findings suggest limits to public support for a purely
punitive response.

The National Justice Survey, for example, found that Canadians think
the three most important goals of sentencing should be repairing the
harm caused by crime, making offenders take responsibility for their
actions and rehabilitation. The first two are more closely associated
with restorative justice ideas than with the traditional punitive
approach to justice.

While most Canadians support tougher penalties for serious drug
offenders, more than half also support treatment and prevention programs.

As well, Canadians are less likely to endorse aggressive anti-crime
measures for less serious crimes, the survey says. "Support for
mandatory minimum penalties is directly related to the seriousness of
the crime, while support for conditional sentences is inversely
related to seriousness."

Making offenders take responsibility for their crimes and repair the
harm they have caused were rated as the two most important purposes of
sentencing in the research done by Mr. Roberts, Ms. Crutcher and Mr.
Verbrugge.

The public ranked both objectives far ahead of such traditional
justifications for incarceration as general deterrence, incapacitation
and denunciation.

"These findings suggest that Canadian attitudes toward the purposes of
sentencing offenders may well have evolved away from a punitive and
toward a restorative approach to sentencing," the researchers conclude.

As well, questions in their survey about mandatory minimum sentences
found strong public support for the concept of some degree of judicial
discretion.

Their conclusion: even existing mandatory minimums, let alone the more
punitive ones proposed in the Harper government's legislation, "are
inconsistent with the views of the Canadian public.

"Politicians' interpretation of public opinion in this area may be
erroneous; public support for mandatory sentencing may not be as
strong as many suppose."