GET TOUGH ON RIGHT CRIMINALS

Not All Offenders Warrant The Same Blanket Treatment

It is one thing to throw around a glib phrase such as "get tough on
crime." It is quite another to implement it so that it works properly.

The Harper government has been taken to task by bureaucrats in the
Public Safety Department for its avowed intention to get tough on
crime. The officials claim that research proves a blanket get-tough
approach doesn't work. They are right.

Rather, it must be clearly defined just which crimes merit the added
toughness. Studies done in the U.S. have shown that getting tough on
everything willy-nilly only leads to filling already overcrowded
prisons with people whose crimes don't warrant incarceration and
higher costs to the taxpayer for maintaining those people behind bars.

The spin-off effect also includes loss of income for these inmates'
families with the possible resultant dependency on social assistance,
and thus a greater burden on taxpayers.

A 1997 report by the Washington D.C.-based Urban Institute states that
"using incarceration to control crime may be an effective strategy to
combat some types of crimes, particularly those involving violent
offenders and offenders with long and serious criminal careers."

The key phrase is "some types of crime."

Obviously, keeping violent criminals off the street for longer periods
enhances public safety because that criminal cannot harm anyone while
behind bars.

But whether it acts as a deterrent to other offenders is questionable.
It is unlikely an individual is going to bone up on the latest
amendments to the Criminal Code or even consider that he may be caught
and punished, before he rapes, murders or bashes someone over the head
with a beer bottle in a drunken brawl.

Breaking the law is an opportunistic phenomenon and one linked to an
adolescent-level instant gratification that tends to plunge ahead
without thought of consequences.

"The research shows that prison may be cost beneficial for violent
crimes, but it also shows that it is unrealistic to expect huge
reductions in violent crime with large increases in imprisonment," the
Urban Institute report says.

Another study by the Sentencing Project, which is also based in
Washington, D.C., found that although Texas hiked its rates of
incarceration by 144 per cent during the '90s while New York's rose
only 24 per cent, both states noted the same rate of crime reduction.
Public outrage at the misuse of conditional sentences for offenders
who rightfully ought to serve jail time has fuelled the government's
declared intention to restore law and order to the system by cracking
down on crime.

To be effective, however, such a crackdown must be done by careful
determination of which crimes will be targeted and which are still
best served by conditional or lesser sentences.