GETTING TOUGH ON VIOLENCE

Curbing Conditional Sentences Finally a Response to Public
Will

If there was any doubt that the rules around conditional sentencing
need to be toughened, a case in British Columbia shows how far the
courts have gone in delivering soft justice.

In a 2001 swarming, Mike Wilson was beaten, stabbed in the back and
the lower back, and forced to his knees. He looked up to see a meat
cleaver coming down on his head. When he put his arm up to protect
himself, his elbow bone was sliced in two. The victim eventually
escaped and an ambulance was called.

His assailant, Jesse Evan Hall, was found guilty of aggravated assault
and several other charges. He received an 18-month sentence for
aggravated assault as well as two 12-month concurrent sentences -- but
no jail time. Instead, Hall was given a conditional sentence served in
the community.

Outrageous cases like this abound in the criminal justice system, and a
comprehensive account can be found in the Alberta government paper The
Conditional Sentence of Imprisonment: The Need for Amendment. Violent people
guilty of assault, sexual assault, even manslaughter, routinely get off with
a slap on the wrist. Now, thankfully, that should end.

For five years, the Alberta government has been pushing to change the
legislation to toughen up penalties, and on Thursday the federal
government finally acted.

Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler introduced a bill to alter
sentencing rules to discourage the courts from giving sentences of
less than two years to those guilty of terrorism, organized crime,
serious injury and sexual assault.

The onus will now be on judges who hand out conditional sentences in
such cases to explain in writing the "exceptional circumstances" that
led to their decisions.

Though the province would like to see stricter sentences applied to
traffickers of hard drugs, meth labs and grow-ops, too, Alberta
Justice Minister Ron Stevens believes the reverse onus on the courts
"will deal with the majority of the issues of conditional sentencing"
related to violent crime. If it's not working out as planned two years
hence, he'll be among the first to revisit it.

Society has been demanding a crackdown on society's worst criminals
for years. Finally, we have a Justice minister who listened.