WE MIGHT AS WELL PAY THE MAFIA

The proroguing of Parliament has been all over the news lately and
whether or not you believe that Mr. Harper has the right to use the
option to prorogue parliament the way he has, one thing is certain: He
has not been on vacation.

With the appointment of five new senators, Mr. Harper has tipped the
balance of the senate further towards the political right. Now, it's
time to dust off some old plans.

You see, conservatives (and I mean conservatives in general, not just
the political party) are a lot like communists. They're both obsessed
with undertaking courses of action that have been proven to be
ineffective (often highly ineffective) in the past.

Take the Conservative "tough on crime" legislation, supported off and
on by the now timid Liberal Party. It is an exercise in historical
ignorance.

The first issue that needs to be addressed is the perception among
many Canadians that crime is on some kind of every-year-is-worse-than-the-last
increasing trend. This perception, nursed by the media, elected
officials, and law enforcement officials is completely erroneous.

Anyone can easily see from data collected by Stats Canada, and even
the police themselves, that serious crime has shown a steady
decreasing tendency since the early 1990s.

Before that, aside from a small spike in the beginning of the above
mentioned decade, serious crime rates had even been exhibiting a
downward trend since the late 1970s.

Crime, even brutal crime, isn't really a serious problem in Canada,
not even in the most "violent" Canadian cities. So, why have the
Conservatives been trying to push the C-15 Bill through the senate in
different forms over the last three years?

It's because it panders to scared, confused people who, it seems, are
likely to vote for anyone who soothes their fears with strong words.
Also, it advances the unspoken but extremely obvious intention of the
Conservative Party to bring Canadian laws, regulations, and
international policy closer in line with that of the United States.

One huge point of contention in the Bill is the issue of mandatory
sentences for drug offences. No two cases are the same and the
discretion of a judge is ultimately what ensures justice is done.

As a society, we invest our greatest trust in these people, and every
one of them is experienced and educated enough to know it. If you take
away their ability to exercise judicial discretion, you take away
their ability to judge.

Maybe Mr. Harper and the Conservative Party think that left-leaning
judges are simply letting drug dealers off with light sentences
because, by merit of their political leanings, they are some class of
demented perverts.

You see, mandatory minimum sentences have been shown in the past, most
notably in the United States, to be no deterrent to drug crime. In
fact, they make the situation worse. When you drastically increase
penalties for drug crimes you do nothing less than tie up the drug
market with a big bow and hand it over to organized crime.

There is still a demand, and where there is demand there will be
supply. If the penalties for being caught become even more stringent,
then the people involved will be of a harder stock.

Think prohibition in the 1920s in the United States. It made the
mafia. Without prohibition, they would have never reached the level of
wealth and power they reached, and then enjoyed, in subsequent decades.

If Mr. Harper and his supporters think that organized crime is a
problem in Canada now, wait until you give them the country's drug
market.

Since most "drug dealers" are usually users who sell to support their
own habits, it made sense to focus on treatment (as has been the case
in years past) over punishment through suspended sentences and the
like.

Conservatives are interested in this type of legislation because there
is a very particular segment of the population they believe deserve to
be punished. For example, there are minimum sentences for the dealing
of heroin, cocaine, and other "hard" drugs only if weapons are
involved, as they often are in such high stakes activity where there
is no law enforcement.

However, if you are caught growing a handful of marijuana plants,
under Bill C-15 you are automatically subjected to a mandatory minimum
sentence longer than that of a person caught with heroin and a gun,
nine months minimum as opposed to their six.

Something here seem strange to you? I guess there are no pothead
Conservatives after all. Who knew?

Yet another issue, is the plan to hire thousands of new police
officers. There are already too many police officers as it is.

For one, crime is going down, and has been for decades. Why do we need
more police, beyond hiring to replace those who retire or are dismissed?

It's true, up to a point more police on the streets are a deterrent to
immediate street crime, but they're a deterrent only up to a point.
The possible presence of police will deter some rash crimes from
taking place out in the open, but they have diminishing returns.

Hiring tonnes of police officers doesn't really make society safer. It
just makes some people, fearful and impressed by grand gestures, feel
as though they are safer.

This legislation serves only two purposes: First, it singles out a
certain segment of society for severe punishment - the segment that
doesn't fit the notions of the Conservative Party and how citizens
should behave.

Whether or not they deserve to be brutalized by the justice system is
not considered; they don't fit into the Conservative view of Canada,
and therefore they deserve nothing but the worst.

Second, it serves the almost pathological need of Mr. Harper and the
Conservative Party to match policy with the United States, if for no
other reason than for the sake of doing it.

I've actually come to believe there is some sort of common delusion
amongst Conservatives in Canada that the United States is some kind of
idealistic promised land that requires immediate emulation, and damn
the cost.

Prisons in the United States are bloated, swollen with ranks of
non-dangerous criminals that could easily be dealt with without having
to be made imprisoned wards of the state, costing taxpayers billions.

The cost is so high that many prisons are run by private corporations
like Wackenhut who have an interest in keeping people imprisoned as
long as possible and minimizing the services available to them, in the
interest of profit.

In spite of tougher penalties, cities in the United States on average
have much higher rates of violent crime than their Canadian
counterparts.

Despite untold billions spent on the "war on drugs" since the 1950s,
drug abuse is still rampant and organized crime, while different and
maybe not as prevalent as it once was, is still going strong.

Young people and the socially disadvantaged are disproportionately
targeted and brutalized by a justice system built on punishment, not
rehabilitation, and are sent to lengthy terms in federal prisons side
by side with hardcore criminals.

Obviously everything they're doing is working, so let's do that.