THE REAL CRIME'S THE TORIES' TAKE ON SENTENCING

The international and Canadian evidence is overwhelming against
expanding mandatory minimum sentences. Numerous studies confirm it.
Judges, prosecutors and academics know it. And yet, against this
conclusive evidence, Canada's Conservative government proposes to
ramp up their use.

Canada already has 29 offences that carry mandatory minimum sentences
(MMS). Nineteen were added to the Criminal Code in 1995, as part of a
package of changes. Many were for firearms offences.

Now the Conservatives want to add new ones and lengthen existing
ones. The reason has everything to do with politics, a political
response to a media-inspired whipping up of concern about crime that
defies the reality, easily demonstrated, that violent-crime rates
across Canada have been going down for most of the past two decades.

The Conservatives, pandering to perception, want to get "tough on
crime." So two stalwarts of this approach -- Justice Minister Vic
Toews and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day -- unveiled the
government's policies yesterday, including the new mandatory minimum
sentences for drug and firearms offences.

Where is the evidence to support what they propose? It exists in
rhetoric, tabloid columnizing and the police associations. It does
not exist in fact. If you doubt it, click on the websites of Mr.
Toews's own department in Ottawa, the Rand Corp. or various
university departments of criminology to understand what those who
have studied MMS, as opposed to playing politics with it, have found.

Prof. Julian Roberts of Oxford University surveyed MMS in a range of
countries. He concluded: "The studies that have examined the impact
of these laws reported variable effects on prison populations, and no
discernible effect on crime rates." Please note: "no discernible
effect on crime rates."

Prof. Thomas Gabor of the University of Ottawa and Nicole Crutcher of
Carleton University conducted an exhaustive survey of world studies
for the Justice Department in 2002. What counts, they found, in crime
prevention is not the length of anticipated sentence but the
likelihood of being caught. They wrote: "The research on both
sentence certainty and severity are relevant to MMS and, on balance,
the evidence suggests that severity may be less critical to
deterrence than initiatives boosting the certainty of punishment."

A 2000 U.S. study revealed that states with above-average rates of
incarceration experienced the most modest decreases in crime. Another
U.S. study -- this one into firearms offences -- showed that enhanced
sentences had no significant effect on gun homicide. The best that
other U.S. studies showed was a possible improvement in homicide
rates linked to MMS for firearms, but the evidence was inconclusive.

An Australian study, however, found gun robbers would continue to use
firearms, even knowing that MMS existed for gun offences. As for drug
offences, here's what the worldwide study by Gabor/Crutcher
concluded: "Severe MMS seems to be least effective in relation to
drug offences. . . . Drug consumption and drug-related crime seem to
be unaffected, in any measurable way, by severe MMS."

A 1999 research report for the Department of the Solicitor-General,
as it then was, concluded after surveying 50 studies involving
300,000 offenders, "longer sentences were not associated with reduced
recidivism. In fact, the opposite was found. Longer sentences were
associated with a 3-per-cent increase in recidivism."

Professors Anthony Doob and Carla Cersaroni of the Centre of
Criminology of the University of Toronto asked plaintively in a 2001
essay: "Why are we still discussing whether Canada should have any
minimum sentences?" They pointed out that the Canadian Sentencing
Commission and the 1952 Royal Commission on the Revision of the
Criminal Code had recommended against them.

We do know, therefore, that mandatory minimum sentences do not deter
crime, thereby making societies safer. We also know, however, that
they drive up the prison population, and make it much more likely
there will be an increase in plea negotiations, lower conviction
rates, and more charges either stayed, withdrawn or discharged.
That's what all the studies have shown.

They have also shown that MMS falls most heavily on visible
minorities whose members are overrepresented already in prisons --
such as blacks in the U.S. and aboriginals in Canada.

There isn't any evidence, therefore, in Canada or abroad that
mandatory minimums deter crime. That the Harper government should be
expanding them is yet another example of the triumph of
focus-group-driven politics over evidence-based policy.