MORE TIME, MEANINGFUL SENTENCES

A judge, a cop and a criminologist outlined the economic impact of
crime on this city to a small crowd at Surrey's economic summit, held
Thursday at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel.

The three professionals, all impassioned, weren't entirely in agreement.

Criminologist Darryl Plecas told the audience statistics in Canada
look promising.

"Crime rate in this country is about as low as it's been in 30
years," Plecas said, pointing specifically at Surrey's marijuana
grow-op program, run by the fire department, as part of the solution.
People with pot operations have moved to the United Kingdom and the
United States, Plecas said.

"Police can trace that."

Wallace Craig, a former judge of the provincial court of B.C., didn't agree.

"I don't buy statistics at all. There are lies, damn lies and
statistics," he said, adding the great promise given Surrey by the
United Kingdom was deceptive.

"Surrey was only shown what the British wanted to show them," Craig
said, pointing out a portion of Britain's population "goes out and
beats the heck out of each other at night."

However, Peter German, RCMP Assistant Commissioner and District
Commander, Lower Mainland District, disagreed with that characterization.

He just came back from Britain and didn't see the kind of problems
Craig described.

The group was in agreement that criminals needed to receive longer
and more meaningful sentences.

"I sat through many cases where I couldn't believe what I was hearing
over Charter rights," Craig said.?Judges and senior politicians need
to show the courage to lock people up for the time they deserve, the
group said.

Surrey is pushing for a community court, where offenders will be
directed to treatment or face serious jail time, an idea borrowed
from Redhook, New York.

Vancouver currently has a model up and running, but several people at
Thursday's conference said it's not the model being used in New York.

"The drug court (in Vancouver) isn't working," Mayor Dianne Watts
told the group. "The problem with community court is it's become very
political."

She noted provincial politicians have said Surrey won't get the court
until an analysis of Vancouver's is done.

In fact, she said after the meeting, if Surrey gets its own court,
the city won't be able to call it a community court, because that one
is Vancouver's.

"The powers that be have determined that it not be called a community
court," Watts said. "I don't care what the want to call it, just get it here."

She said Surrey needs something very different from Vancouver, in
part, because Surrey doesn't have a Downtown Eastside.

She's looking for a model much closer to the one in Red Hook, New York.

At Red Hook, a single judge hears cases that would typically go to
three different courts-civil, family and criminal.

The goal is to offer a co-ordinated, rather than piecemeal, approach
to people's problems.

The judge has an array of sanctions and services at his disposal,
including community restitution projects, on-site educational
workshops and GED classes, drug treatment and mental health counseling.

German said during the meeting Surrey is on the right track.

"Surrey's done all those things (former New York Mayor Rudy) Giuliani
was talking about. Surrey has the vision."

Craig pointed out at the outset, hard drugs are the source of our problems.

"The genie got out of the bottle when morphine was first
synthesized," Craig said.

"I don't think there's any soft approach that's going to give us (a solution)."