THE GOOD AND THE BAD IN THE NEW CRIME BILLS

No one ever stood up in Parliament and said Canada's bold new
innovation in sentencing -- house arrest -- would apply to adults who
molest children, or young men who while drag-racing on quiet streets
kill innocent people, or repeat drunk drivers who kill cyclists or
pedestrians. But that is what happened, and that is why the
Conservative government is right to turn back the clock on this
10-year-old Liberal reform.

The misuses of house arrest were legion. One horrifying example
involved a 24-year-old white man who, with two friends, picked up a
12-year-old native girl in Saskatchewan, drove her out to a deserted
road, plied her with beer and sexually assaulted her. He received house arrest.

That was not an aberration. In British Columbia, two men of 20 and 23
were sentenced to house arrest after racing at speeds of more than
100 kilometres an hour in a 50-kilometre zone and killing a woman. In
Nova Scotia, a man who tried to hire a hit man to kill his wife
received house arrest. For each case an appeal court struck down,
another popped up.

None of these sentences were contemplated when justice minister Allan
Rock told Parliament in 1996 that only 10 per cent of crimes were
violent and that too many non-violent offenders were ending up behind
bars. But when judges strayed, the Supreme Court of Canada missed a
chance to keep them within common-sense bounds. As far back as 1999,
it split 4-4 on house arrest for a man who sexually assaulted two
children while implying that he had a gun and would use it.

Ever since, when judges have imposed terms of house arrest for
violent offenders, they have usually cited the Supreme Court's
earnest statement that being restricted to one's home is a form of
punishment. The very foundation, in other words, was a fiction. The
vast majority of Canadians see house arrest for violent offenders as
an escape from punishment; home is where the computer, big-screen TV,
backyard and loved ones are. And most sentences of house arrest do
not even require the convicted men or women to be home except
overnight; during the day they may work, pray, shop, play sports or
see the doctor. Millions of Canadians with family or work
responsibilities live in just such a constrained fashion.

Still, sentencing should reflect both the offence and the offender;
some limited flexibility is still appropriate. The Conservative
government would bar house arrest in violent crimes such as
aggravated sexual assault or impaired driving causing death where
maximum penalties are 10 years or greater, but there may be some
manoeuvring room. Where the Crown proceeds by way of summary
conviction, which provides for a maximum sentence of six months,
judges may still impose house arrest.

The government also tabled legislation yesterday for a less
defensible change -- to lengthen existing mandatory minimum sentences
for gun crimes and to impose some new minimums, removing all
discretion from the judges who hear the cases and who weigh the
specific facts of each offence. This move seems designed more to make
the government look tough than to solve a problem, and may compound
an existing unintended effect of mandatory minimums: that Crown
prosecutors withdraw charges in some cases rather than subject an
offender to an automatic sentence far greater than they believe he
deserves. The proposed restrictions on house arrest are reasonable,
but the other changes remain troubling.