MINIMUM TERM DEMANDS FOOLISH

It's no surprise that, in the wake of the horrible events of March 3
that claimed the lives of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alta.,
there would be demands for get-tough sentencing.

And it also should come as no surprise that Conservatives MPs from
Alberta have picked up the call for minimum sentencing for anyone
convicted of running a grow-op, considering that James Roszko, the man
who took those lives, had some 283 marijuana plants growing in a
Quonset on his farm.

It is surprising, however, that Manitoba's NDP Attorney General Gord
Mackintosh also tapped into this reactionary solution by demanding
this week that Ottawa impose minimum sentences to deter people from
smuggling guns across the border.

One hopes that federal lawmakers will not be so easily swayed by the
emotional call from victims' families to enact legislation that
neither will make us safer nor deliver superior justice.

Canada already has in place a number of minimum sentence requirements
for crimes ranging from importing narcotics, to using a firearm to
commit an offence, to murder. In almost every case, the sentences have
been challenged because of special circumstances that could not have
been foreseen by parliamentarians who enacted them.

In fact, Roszko could be a poster boy for the silliness of demanding
minimum sentences. A violent man, who was constantly in conflict with
the law, disavowed by his family and completely unconcerned with the
value of any life including his own, he killed himself rather than be
arrested. Had there been a mandatory two-year minimum sentence for
running his grow-op, he would not have been punished more. And if the
production, distribution and consumption of marijuana were legal, his
murders would have instead been committed over stolen car parts.

But it is the exception on the other end of the spectrum that proves
the absurdity of mandatory sentences.

Robert Latimer, who has served only half of his mandatory sentence for
what jurors clearly felt was a crime of compassion, is to languish in
jail for at least another five years. Had the judge and jury who
listened to all the evidence been free to decide his fate, Latimer
would have been back as a productive member of society four years ago
rather than taking up space in one of Her Majesty's facilities.

Similarly, had the bullet travelled a few inches in another direction,
an Ontario police officer who shot and wounded a fleeing suspect last
year could have been facing a manslaughter charge that carries a
mandatory sentence of four years, because his offence was committed
with a firearm. Instead he was convicted of "discharging a firearm
with the intent to cause harm."

And, although parliamentarians insisted on a seven-year minimum
sentence to deter people from smuggling drugs into Canada, the Supreme
Court eventually considered it unconstitutional.

Then chief justice Antonio Lamer wrote that while society would have
no qualms throwing away the key on someone who commits a crime that is
"responsible for the gradual but inexorable degeneration of many of
their fellow human beings as a result of their becoming drug addicts,"
he wondered what sane person would "sentence to seven years in a
penitentiary a young person who, while driving back into Canada from a
winter break in the U.S.A., is caught with only one, indeed, let's
postulate, his or her first joint?"

American legislators enacting minimum sentence laws to curtail a
epidemic of crack cocaine use in the 1980s failed to slow crack use,
but resulted in locking up a disproportionate number of black
Americans. The U.S. is still trying to address the social implications
of this policy.

Canada's Supreme Court has also recognized that sentencing can
disproportionately target Natives and demanded that alternatives to
jail be sought. How that washes with this mindless call for minimum
sentences isn't clear.

Canada has among the highest rates of incarceration in the developed
world, indicating that our judges already are sensitive to the public
demand for tougher sentences. They also have recognized, however, that
exceptional situations require flexibility in sentencing.

Better they decide than opportunistic politicians.