TOUGH ON CRIME BUT SOFT ON LOGIC

Promises beget price tags.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has revealed very little about the cost
of the crime crackdown his government has begun and plans to extend in
this session of Parliament.

The Department of Public Safety has estimates of the growth of the
prison population but the minister, Peter Van Loan, refuses to make
them public, citing cabinet confidentiality. The government has
projections of the cost of imposing mandatory minimum sentences for
drug offences, meting out longer jail terms and beefing up police
forces. But it hasn't made them public.

Even in secrecy-obsessed Ottawa, however, some information gets
out.

This month, Correctional Service Canada released its spending
estimates for the coming fiscal year. They showed a 43 per cent
increase in capital expenditures on penitentiaries.

In 2010-11, the government expects to spend $329.4 million on prison
infrastructure. Last year's jail-building budget was $230.8 million.
To put these numbers in perspective, Correctional Service Canada spent
$88.5 million on prison construction when Harper took office four years ago.

The costs can only climb. The most expensive measures in the Tory plan
to "ensure the safety and security of our neighbourhoods and
communities" have yet to secure parliamentary approval.

The provinces will be affected, too. They are responsible for inmates
serving less than two years and offenders awaiting trial.

Van Loan contends there is no need for new jails. Ottawa can
accommodate the anticipated influx of inmates in the existing 58
institutions by upgrading and expanding them.

But many in the justice system are dubious. They wonder if the
government's plan to convert its prisons into regional super-jails, as
recommended by a panel chaired by former Ontario cabinet minister Rob
Sampson in 2007, is a first step toward privatizing them. (As minister
of correctional services in Mike Harris's government, Sampson
spearheaded the province's short-lived experiment with private prisons
and boot camps.)

All this is happening at a time when Canada's crime rate is at a
26-year-low; when a dozen cash-strapped U.S. states are closing jails,
reducing sentences and diverting drug addicts from prison; and when
there's a growing body of evidence - including a government-financed
report released last month - that the anti-crime policies Harper has
embraced produce little public benefit.

It is no mystery why the governing Conservatives don't want to talk
about this issue. Harper is promoting himself as a prudent economic
manager. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is warning it will take four
years of "difficult" belt-tightening to phase out Ottawa's $54 billion
deficit. A sharp rise in prison costs, in the middle of an austerity
drive, would be awkward to explain.

What is less understandable is that neither the Liberals nor New
Democrats are rigorously challenging Harper's tough-on-crime agenda.

When the Liberals were in power, they shifted the correctional system
toward rehabilitation programs, community supervision, drug treatment
and restorative justice.

The New Democrats were even more inclined to divert offenders -
especially young ones - from jail.

Surely both parties know it costs roughly $95,000 a year to keep an
offender in jail. (Community supervision costs $23,500 a year.)

Surely they know aboriginal Canadians make up 18 per cent of federal
inmates (compared with 4 per cent of the adult population) and black
Canadians constitute 6 per cent of federal prisoners (compared with 2
per cent of the population.)

Surely they've seen the reams of studies questioning the effectiveness
of crackdowns, harsh sentences that mix young offenders with hardened
criminals.

But both Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton are so fearful of being
labelled "soft on crime" that they've said little, denying the public
a badly needed national debate.

The warning signs are clear, yet Canada's parliamentarians choose to
ignore them.