OFFENDER POLICY STRIKES OUT

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he's introducing a threestrikes-
and-you're-out law for violent offenders because "Canadians from
across this country have told us they want action on crime and we're
delivering." But what the prime minister has been proposing since the
election campaign -- including the three-strikes law -- wouldn't
reduce violent crime.

It would likely increase the populations and costs of our prisons.
And it would impose a reverse-onus obligation on violent offenders
who would have to show why they should not be locked up indefinitely,
offending our legal traditions and probably our constitutional rights.

The only hope is that there won't be enough support in this minority
Parliament for the government's bill to pass.

The government proposes that offenders who have been convicted twice
for one of 11 violent or sexual crimes -- and sentenced to prison
terms of more than two years on each -- should face a new test on a
third conviction for a similar offence. They would be automatically
put away with no possibility of parole for at least seven years
unless they can prove they are not a risk.

At present, our laws say the sentencing judge has to be convinced by
the prosecution that the offender is such a danger to society that he
should be locked away as a habitual offender.

Under Harper's plan, the state would not have to make that case.

It sounds appealing to many people.

But in California, where three-time violent offenders don't get a
chance to talk their way out of indefinite sentences, prison
populations are increasing while violent crimes are dropping more
slowly than in New York state, where there's no three-strike statute.

Harper's proposal also won't address the problem of offenders who
repeatedly commit violent or sex crimes and are sentenced to two
years less a day behind bars. It would do nothing, for example, to
change the status of Peter Whitmore, the predator captured with two
young boys in Saskatchewan this summer.

Good politics, perhaps. But ineffective and unjust policy.