TOO MANY CROOKS AREN'T BEHIND BARS

On the heels of the Conservative government's announced plan to apply
certain firmness to the justice realm, including a go-directly-to-jail
card for those who deal serious drugs near schools, the Canadian Press
published a piece about Canada's incarceration rates. A piece likely
to inflame critics from the hug-a-thug crowd and those who subscribe
to an anything-but-jail philosophy.

The CP story stated the number of people behind bars rose in 2005-06
(to 35,110) for the first time in a decade. It wisely noted though
that the rise was driven in part by increasing numbers who are held in
remand for longer times -- a sometimes-concocted defence ploy that
actually works to reduce the real time served by a guilty inmate.

The article's comparison of Canada to European countries such as
France and Sweden was nice-to-know, but added little to the
discussion. According to the numbers, Canada has an incarceration rate
about 30% higher than France does. An apples and oranges comparison.

France doesn't have a population that fosters the proliferation of
aimless and violent street gangs whose role models are the turf kings
of L.A.'s ghettos and Scarface's Tony Montana. There is no comparing
the streets of Paris with those in Winnipeg, Regina or Edmonton. Here,
a Parisian's joie de vie would be drowned by unrelenting reports of
child poverty, a murder capital that moves back and forth among the
usual suspects and whole communities that are failing in the face of
addiction.

The international and historical comparisons are irrelevant. So are
any concerns about the effect of the Conservative-initiated mandatory
jail terms on incarceration rates.

Because as long as jail remains one of the legitimate responses to
crime and as long as police and prosecutors are denied all the right
tools for the job, the prison population will remain a fraction of
what it might be.

Take Winnipeg for example. According to the police service's latest
annual report one murder remains unsolved from 2006, meaning that at
least one more person should be in jail.

Of the 664 sexual assaults, 398 cases remain open, suggesting a few
hundred perpetrators eligible for possible incarceration.

Of the 2,000 reported muggings of people and robberies of business
last year, 1,300 of them remain unsolved. Meaning no justice for those
victims and nobody in jail.

In 2006 there were 7,153 reports of break-in to businesses and homes
- -- where psychological damage is often heavy. Only 14% of those crimes
were cleared leaving about 6,200 unsolved. That means hundreds more
who could be punching out licence plates instead of kicking in doors.

When the dust settled, Winnipeg police cleared about one in five of
all crimes last year. Of the 76,000 reported crimes last year, almost
61,000 files remain open. And that's just Winnipeg.

The national clearance rate tells us that a full two-thirds of
reported crimes -- more than 1.8 million of them -- go unsolved. That
ignores the unreported, not quantifiable hard-core drug crime. But
together it clearly spells out that no matter how incarceration rates
are sliced, diced, criticized or otherwise stated, there are still
piles of criminals out there that should be locked up. Thousands of
them.

Independent of what transpires on the Champs-Elysees.