UNDERMINING JUSTICE

Prison wardens and police officers shouldn't be short-circuiting the
parole system to get bikers-turned-informants out on the street, but
the temptation to do so is inevitable in the pursuit of criminal
entrepreneurs.

As the Citizen reported Monday, four extremely violent offenders from
Quebec have given sworn statements that they and dozens of others like
them were given early releases from prison in exchange for informing
on their former underworld associates. While prosecutors often make
deals like these, accepting plea-bargains and sentence-reductions for
offenders who turn on their former friends in biker gangs and drug
rings, the convicts say their deals were struck without the approval
of Crown attorneys. According to them, police detectives in pursuit of
bigger fish arranged for them to be transferred from federal prisons
to provincial jails, and then be given a series of 15-day passes for
release without supervision. No judge's or parole board's approval
required. Scarcely anything even written down.

There are well-established procedures for handling members of criminal
groups who want to inform or testify against their cronies, and it's
not law-enforcement officials' place to evade them for their own
convenience.

But what convenience. One of the biggest problems in tracking the
criminal activity of bikers and other gang members is in finding
someone willing and able to identify specific people who have
committed criminal acts. In many cases, the only way to do so is to
"turn" one of their friends, and that usually requires positive
incentives; freedom is a powerful one.

The difficulty is that most of the crimes committed by modern-day
gangsters don't have direct victims, at least not ones who are willing
to testify against them. Criminal gangs are usually in the primary
business of supplying prohibited goods -- drugs, especially -- to
people who want to buy them, whatever damage they might do. Violence
over a drug deal gone bad might be an offence, but neither drug-dealer
nor -buyer has any incentive to report it, let alone the deal itself.

Most gangsters' convictions stem from their efforts to enforce
agreements that stem from the trade in illicit substances. Cheated
buyers take revenge on cheating sellers, rivals enforce rough deals
over turf, and so on. Even the victim of a failed murder attempt might
not want to deal with police, lest his own crimes come to light.

So the police cut deals with bad guys to build cases against worse
guys. It's a dirty part of the job; so dirty, in fact, that some deals
might not be approved by judges, or would lead to public outrage. And
the offenders-turned-informants don't want them publicized and don't
want them written down anywhere, even in sealed court files, because
they don't want to risk being found out by the people on whom they've
turned. It's only natural, under those circumstances, that the police
would choose to avoid all the bother.

The result, however, appears to be violent career criminals on the
street and police officers and prison officials who've decided that
adhering to the checks and balances of our justice system is a
needless hindrance in doing their jobs. It's a very high price for
society to pay to protect drug-users from themselves.