FEARFUL JUSTICE

A report from the federal Department of Justice expresses alarm that
those in the judicial system -- judges, police, lawyers, parole
officers, prison guards and even jurors and witnesses -- are being
threatened and intimidated. Prosecutors needing bullet-proof vests;
homes of police officers being equipped with panic-button systems;
judges getting death threats; witnesses refusing to testify after
threats: These are some examples of intimidation in the justice
department paper, Fear Affects the Decisions You Make, that came out
of a one-year consultation with key players in the criminal justice
system. The report asks whether efforts to "destabilize" the system,
particularly by organized crime, mean there is a need for "specific
new Criminal Code offences to address acts of intimidation."

We sympathize with these concerns.

The viability of our justice system depends on the more-or-less
willing participation of citizens, as employees or as members of the
public doing their duty as witnesses or jurors. Our legal system, the
bedrock of a free and orderly society, is jeopardized by those who
would corrupt it -- by and large, powerful criminals involved in
organized crime, not petty thugs and burglars.

But do the state and its agents need more legal power to maintain or
protect the system?

It's not just that the report is largely anecdotal, or that its
author, Michael Zigayer, a senior Justice official in the criminal
law policy section, acknowledges that he cannot quantify his
evidence. Rather, it's that much of the problem appears rooted in the
circumstances of Quebec's biker wars (although there are cases of
intimidation elsewhere), in which everyone from jurors to journalists
was subjected to threats.

This matters because the issue isn't the existence of appropriate
laws but their weak enforcement. Which raises the question why the
enforcement is weak.

There are already laws against threatening or intimidating people.
Section 264.1 of the Criminal Code says "Every one commits an offence
who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys or causes any person to
receive a threat." Section 423.1 says anyone who uses threats of
violence, stalks or attempts to intimidate a person or a relative of
that person in order to stop them from doing what they have a lawful
right to do is committing a crime.

So what's the problem?

Law enforcement hasn't been adequately supported by governments in
this country in recent years, so more money would help. As well,
there may be other ways to help protect those involved in the justice
system -- from redesigning courtrooms to stiffening the penalties in
existing laws. Currently, a conviction for threatening someone
carries a prison term of up to five years, or, on summary conviction,
up to 18 months.

A parliamentary subcommittee on organized crime recently recommended
amending the Criminal Code to make killing of anyone involved in the
criminal justice system during or shortly after investigative or
criminal proceedings first-degree murder.

It also recommended measures to protect jurors better in trials
related to organized crime.

But the justice system must also address the sorts of crimes that
attract organized, high-level criminals: drug trafficking,
prostitution, gambling.

These crimes have something in common: They are all "consensual."
This newspaper's quest for drug legalization may strike some as
quixotic.

But much of the corruption and intimidation in the justice system is
linked to vice crimes, acts in which the "victims" are in fact
willing participants. Laws against them are incredibly difficult to
enforce -- which is why police are always calling for greater powers
to do so. And because these activities are illegal, they are highly
lucrative to people willing to take risks with the law. These people,
in turn, will always be willing to intimidate and threaten.

The justice system must, certainly, deal with intimidation. But it
must also look at those portions of the criminal law that lend
themselves to such tactics, and ask whether these, too, corrode the
system.