A TOUGH-ON-CRIME APPROACH TO JUSTICE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS

Instead of Jailing Repeat Petty Criminals, We Should Send Them to
Mandatory Addiction Treatment

In a season of tough talk on crime, I propose a challenge to our
political leaders. In Canada, one group of criminals commits a
disproportionate number of crimes that we could easily reduce with
more coercive sentencing. However, our usual form of coercion --
imprisonment -- doesn't work for them. They need a different kind of
sentence. But to make that happen -- and to significantly reduce the
number of crimes they commit -- would require will and wisdom that
our legislators can't seem to muster.

The legal system refers to these men -- they are almost all men -- as
chronic offenders. What everyone knows, but the justice system
doesn't acknowledge, is that they are also drug addicts, hooked on
heroin or crack cocaine. They steal not for gain but to support their
addiction, to pay for their next fix.

This has nothing to do with getting high. For an addict, the point is
to avoid the effects of withdrawal, which in the case of heroin can
include cramps and muscle spasms, fever, cold sweats and goose bumps
(hence the phase "cold turkey"), insomnia, vomiting, diarrhea and a
condition called "itchy blood," which can cause compulsive scratching
so severe that it leads to open sores. For addicts, drug use is not a
lifestyle choice that's easy to change.

Many have been addicted for their entire adult lives, and as a result
have spent half their lives behind bars, serving dozens of sentences
for minor crimes. These are the "revolving door" criminals --
arrested, tried, sentenced to a few weeks or months, then dumped back
out on the street, only to be arrested, tried and convicted again a
few weeks later.

Canada has hundreds of criminals like that, mainly in the larger
cities. Vancouver alone recently identified 379. According to a
report by the Vancouver Police Department, the vast majority were
addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many also suffer from a mental
disorder, generally untreated. Between 2001 and 2006, Vancouver's few
hundred chronic offenders, as a group, were responsible for 26,755
police contacts -- more than 5,000 contacts per year, 14 a day. The
costs are staggering. Arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations end up
costing some $20,000 per criminal per month -- per month! There has
to be a better way.

Punishment alone is not it, though, for a couple of reasons. For one,
the idea of punishing criminals is based at least partly on the
concept of specific deterrence. You steal, we lock you up. Applied
most strongly to property crimes -- which is what these offenders
mainly commit -- specific deterrence assumes that the criminal is a
rational actor who will consider: Is it worth it? And in fact,
specific deterrence often works; many offenders really do stop
committing crimes after fairly short jail sentences.

But not addicts.

The problem is the presumption of a rational actor. That is exactly
what we do not have with drug addicts, who do not -- usually cannot
- -- stop to consider the likely punishment for a crime they are about
to commit. They see only the escape from the more immediate and dire
punishments of drug deprivation. By comparison, the threat of being
caught and thrown in jail is nothing.

As well, because chronic offenders tend to commit minor crimes and
draw short sentences -- say, 30 to 90 days for theft -- their lives
shift constantly between jail and the streets.

We could use longer sentences to "warehouse" chronic offenders -- the
American "three strikes and you're out" approach. But long-term
imprisonment would be a very high-cost way to deal with what is
really a public health issue.

And there's the crux of the problem.

The criminal justice system is not designed to treat addicts. While
prisons do provide some drug treatment, it is almost always
short-term and underfunded.

Clearly, Canadians need more protection from chronic offenders than
we are now getting.

With chronic offenders, we have an issue of both criminal law and
public health. Addicted offenders must be required to undergo
serious, long-term drug treatment.

Since 1996, Alberta law has required minors with an apparent alcohol
or drug addiction to participate, with or without their consent, in
an assessment and treatment program. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have
similar legislation and even allow parents of drug-addicted children
to ask a court to require treatment, whether or not the child is in
trouble with the law.

Although the research is scant, mandatory treatment does appear to
have about the same success rate as voluntary treatment. A 1970s
American study looked at the effectiveness of methadone maintenance
treatment for those who entered the program under high, moderate or
no coercion and found no significant difference in outcomes for the
three groups.

Given the costs of incarceration -- not counting the costs to future
victims -- paying for mandatory drug treatment for them hardly seems
an issue, even if it only works some of the time. As for whether
mandatory treatment is somehow inhumane, how humane is it to sentence
these addicts to punishments we know don't work and then dump them
back on the street no better than before?

Politics aside, Canadians deserve evidence-based criminal justice
policies that actually reduce crime. Our challenge is to make the
tough choices that move beyond "tough on crime" rhetoric and produce
real change.