CONSERVATIVES' IRRATIONAL CRIME LAWS MAKE NO SENSE, COST BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

In these days of public sector restraint, there is one realm of waste
that is often neglected -the planned and pointless expenditure of
billions of tax dollars on new provincial and federal prisons, the
consequence of a series of Conservative crime bills.

Never mind that Canada already is a global leader in rates of
incarceration, far ahead of almost all of the nation states of Western
Europe -and, perhaps paradoxically, Canada typically has higher rates
of crime.

The more interesting and relevant finding from recent research is that
rates of imprisonment and rates of crime are not related in any
systematic way, from one nation state to the next.

What is significant, however, is the relationship between confidence
in the political and justice systems of a country and rates of
imprisonment. Polls consistently demonstrate that nation states with
the lowest rates of imprisonment also have citizens who have the
highest levels of confidence in their political systems and their
justice systems.

As one contemplates the lack of science in virtually every crime bill
dutifully trotted out in Parliament by the Harper Conservatives, one
is tempted to either laugh or cry.

It's easy to dismiss them as ideologically driven fools (and there is
certainly a wealth of evidence in support of such a proposition), but
I think we have a deeper problem -a fundamental lack of belief in the
tenets of science.

Consider the recent legislative initiative regarding mandatory minimum
sentences for any person who grows more than six marijuana plants.

Does it make sense to spend billions of our tax dollars putting the
producers of a relatively benign mind-active drug in jail, at the same
time that the executives of tobacco and alcohol companies are regarded
as contributing corporate citizens?