'THREE-STRIKES' LAW WILL MAKE STREETS SAFER

You wonder if the women columnists who are shrieking against
Conservative plans to toughen Canada's criminal law are the same
ladies who a decade or so ago were marching the streets demanding to
"take back the night."

You also wonder just how they think they lost the night.

Who took it away from them? The answer is it was the same people whom
Steve Harper and his colleagues now want to lock up for long periods of time.

They think this will maybe make the night safer.

I mention women columnists because the only two newspaper columns I
could find that deplored the Tory plan were written by women, both
outspoken feminists.

I'd be willing to bet that a third piece, an editorial in an Edmonton
paper, likewise appalled, was also written by a woman.

What the Tories want to do is simple enough.

At present under the Criminal Code, a man can commit any number of
serious offences and soon wind up back on the streets, "taking away the night."

True, the crown can de-clare a convict a "dangerous offender" even
after one off-ence, but it must first satisfy a judge that there are
very solid grounds for such a declaration -- so solid there are only
360 such offenders in Canada's entire prison system.

The Tories are proposing that after a third conviction for any of the
11 serious charges named in their bill, the judge may -- not must,
but may -- declare him a dangerous offender and lock him up with no
chance of parole for seven years.

That's "draconian," say the critics.

Under this law it would be up to the accused, after his third
conviction, to prove he does not qualify as a "dangerous offender."

This, the critics say, violates the principle that the burden of
proof of guilt must always rest with the Crown.

But we're talking here of somebody whose guilt of major crime has
already been proven three times.

It's not a matter of guilt or innocence, but of the severity of the sentence.

The bill's critics compare this legislation to Califor-nia's
"three-times-and-you're-out" law, which sends a man down for life if
he's convicted three times of any crime, and can result in life
sentences for minor theft.

But the 11 crimes the Tories are proposing are such things as rape,
aggravated assault, drug peddling and armed robbery.

It's interesting that the indignant columnists all cite the same
statistic. They observe that between 1994 and 2004 in California,
with its three-strikes law, crime rates fell by only 39%, whereas in
New York, which has no three-strikes law, they fell by fully 50%.

They obviously don't know what actually happened in New York City
during this period.

After crime had risen to such levels there that people would no
longer stand for it, the city launched a crackdown such as Canada has
never seen.

It began in the city's subway system, which had become so dangerous
that people rode the trains in terror.

Suddenly the subway police began massive arrests, locking people up
for weeks for such minor offences as jumping the turnstiles to avoid
paying the fare, and for months if they were caught spray-painting
the premises.

New York City next targeted minor street crime, and overnight the
jails were packed with petty criminals who in the past had got off
with a lecture.

The message that reached the really violent criminals was: If they
lock you up for a month for turnstile-jumping or graffiti-painting,
what will they do for robbery?

It just wasn't worth it.

Other things changed too. The police began looking like police again,
instead of long-haired apes in dirty uniforms, and a week or a month
in the jam-packed jails became a notable horror.

The crescendo of the bleeding heart chorus rose on cue, but people
had become so fed up that nobody listened to it.

Crime rates plunged, with subway infractions almost eliminated and
the streets safer than they had been for years.

In other words, women in NYC actually could begin taking back the night.

But this was done by re-invoking a long-forgotten principle of law
enforcement -- that is, with a convincing demonstration that crime
would indeed not pay.

This is the thinking behind the Tory bill.

Has somebody got a better idea?