TOUGH ON CRIME, WEAK ON LOGIC

In explaining the Harper government's rationale for building more
prisons, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day finally managed to
shift press attention away from fellow minister Tony Clement, who has
been under fire for weeks over plans to change census-gathering procedures.

It was a pyrrhic victory, though, because Mr. Day's argument was even
more dubious than the one Mr. Clement has been peddling for his census
reforms.

Mr. Day was trying to explain why the government wants to continue
with an expensive prison-building program despite statistics
indicating that crime in Canada continues to decline, as it has done
for a decade.

The figures, released by Statistics Canada in July, show a 17% drop
from a decade ago, continuing a trend that has shown an ongoing
decline in crime figures since the turn of the century. The data also
show that the overwhelming number of criminal charges involved
non-violent offences such as minor thefts, shoplifting, or mischief,
and that nearly 50,000 people were charged with possession of
marijuana (which shouldn't even be a criminalized substance).

Major crimes, such as homicides, attempted murder, serious sexual
assaults and crimes against children, made up less than one quarter of
1% of all reported offences.

Confronted with the figures, Mr. Day responded that while reported
crimes may be down, he is deeply concerned about a sharp rise in
unreported offences. According to Statistics Canada's National
Victimization Survey, only about a third of criminal incidents are
actually reported to police.

That is reason for concern, certainly, but hardly a justification for
a prison-building program that Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page
estimates could cost $9-billion. If the crimes aren't reported, it's
obvious that arrests and convictions are unlikely. So without any
criminals, all those new jails will sit empty, unless, as has been
suggested, the Harper government plans even more charges against
small-time lawbreakers and pot-smokers to fill the cells.

That hardly makes sense. As Conrad Black eloquently argued in the
National Post on Saturday, Canada should be wary of following the U.S.
down the road of prisons stuffed with over-sentenced minor offenders
wasting away at immense cost. This is particularly true of the
U.S.-led "war on drugs" - one of the most spectacular criminal-justice
policy failures in Western history.

As this newspaper has recognized in the past, Canada has been too soft
for too long on serious criminals. But this fact does not provide
blanket justification for any policy sold to the public under the
tough-on-crime slogan. If the government wants to spend billions of
dollars on new jails, it needs to be able to offer a valid
justification for the expenditure. And so far, neither Mr. Day nor any
other member of cabinet, including the Prime Minister, has done so.