CANADA NEEDS STRONG JUSTICE SYSTEM

To the Editor,

Re: Building new prisons wrong decision, Letters, Aug. 7.

I would like to begin with commending the letter writer William Perry
to whom I'm responding to for his service in the police force.

In William's letter he stated his objections to the Conservative's
plan to build more prisons as a way of deterring violent crime. He
says that the U.S. has failed in this approach and we should instead
have shorter sentences and early parole so there is more room in
prisons. He also states that to change the current Criminal Code would
be a very expensive challenge because it will be in conflict with the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I can also state that ever since Mexico has done away with the death
penalty homicides have drastically gone up. What we have not said was
that the U.S. is on an aggressive war on drugs within its own borders
and with the Mexican drug lords who supply the U.S.

The war is keeping drug prices very high and is making it a very
lucrative industry that only the most daring and brutal can dominate.
I'm sure the homicides related to the drug war clouds statistics. Why
do we need to let violent rapists out on early parole just because
someone is using irrelevant statistics to prove a point? If someone's
daughter was beaten and raped or killed, why do we have some
obligation to try to reform the perpetrator and return him to society?
It seems the ones who stand to gain from the institution of reform are
in league with lobbyists and influential people of the same philosophy
and have been superseding the will of the Canadian people for a long
time.

If the Criminal Code or the charter obstructs justice then either
should be amended. If the complexity of safeguards, technicalities,
loopholes, legalistic format, philosophical disposition, double
standards or special interests obstructs or diminishes justice,
principle or truth then it should be amended.

Canadians should have the dignity of a better democracy and a strong
criminal justice system without being controlled by the human rights
commission, the Geneva convention or misleading statistics.

Holden Southward

Nanaimo