SMALL-L FOR LONGER SENTENCES

VICTORIA - Last week's column touched on crime rates around the
province, which the B.C. government tracks by health region.

If you look at violent crime, serious property crime and non-cannabis
drug crime, the safest place to live in B.C. is Vancouver Island. Next
best is the Interior region, which encompasses the Kootenays, Okanagan
and Cariboo.

In the middle of the pack is the Fraser region, the largest in the
province by population, extending from Burnaby through the Fraser
Valley to Hope.

Second worst is the vast Northern region, which includes roughly the
top two thirds of the province. And the highest serious crime rates
are in Vancouver Coastal, which includes Vancouver, Richmond, the
North Shore and Sunshine Coast.

The good news is that the rate of serious crime has been going down in
most parts of the province, the exception being the North, where
serious crime went up by more than eight per cent from 2001 to 2004.

The bad news, as I'm reminded by a new discussion paper just released
by the B.C. Progress Board, is that despite improvements in recent
years, B.C. still ranks in the top third of Canadian provinces in all
categories of major crime. We also have more property crime per capita
than the neighbouring states of Washington and Oregon.

The discussion paper, prepared by Simon Fraser University criminology
professors Robert Gordon and Bryan Kinney, contains some provocative
suggestions. When it comes to illegal drugs, for example, the
professors conclude that B.C. has only three choices:

1. Lobby the federal government to legalize the drug trade,
controlling it as tobacco and alcohol are regulated today.

2. Eliminate the organized criminal drug trade by way of a major
expenditure in new police teams, legislation targeting money
laundering and proceeds of crime, increased penalties and construction
of new jails.

3. Combine options one and two, with a crackdown on organized crime
followed by a phased-in decriminalization and legalization.

Of course, the Conservative government in Ottawa will embrace
legalization about the same time Hell opens for public skating.

Stephen Harper is reputed to be a libertarian at heart, but his
justice and public safety posse, Vic Teows and Stock Day, are hang-'em
high "social conservatives" who were appointed to play to the party's
older support base, and would likely only support increased drug penalties.

(As a small-L libertarian myself, I disagree with that approach, but
it's preferable to the previous government, which repeatedly promised
to decriminalize pot but never followed through, while opening its own
low-grade grow-op in an abandoned mine.)

The criminologists argue that legalizing drugs isn't likely to
increase demand much more. If people want drugs in today's society
they will find a way to get them, or manufacture even worse
substitutes like crystal meth.

Nearly all the street crime, the car and house break-ins that ordinary
people are all too familiar with, is perpetrated in the pursuit of
drugs.

As for violent crime, if you take away the drug-related shootings and
stabbings, you're left mainly with those crimes of passion that are
themselves so often committed in a fog of intoxication.

The report warns that there is a fourth option, which is to maintain
the status quo.

For B.C., that means continuing to have Canada's most lenient courts,
which combines with a relatively benign climate to make B.C. the
destination of choice for Canada's sophisticated criminals.

As things stand, B.C. currently has twice the rate of drug crime as
any other province.

And since legalization is currently not a viable option politically,
the practical choice would be to increase sentences for major drug
crime.

Wine for peace

Vancouver's drug policy coordinator recently suggested a program to
offer free daily rations of cheap red wine to hardcore alcoholics.

The idea of this program would be to target those who will otherwise
resort to drinking Lysol or shoe polish or whatever they can get, with
predictable consequences for them and our idealistic socialized
medical system that has to fix everyone, no matter what they choose to
do to themselves.

Personally, I could hold my nose and support such a plan, just like
the prescription heroin program. If we're going to have a victim
culture where bad choices are treated as "diseases," with "society"
and the "government" taking the place of individual responsibility,
the nanny state might as well provide this welfare for the mind so
working people can live in peace.