CRIME POLICY IS ALL STICK, NO CARROT

Tough on Crime Is What We Get, but What We Need Is a System That
Protects Society and Rehabilitates Those Who Can Be Helped

A prison is a massive, bleak, depressing monument to failure. The
Harper government's tough-oncrime policy will reinforce and exacerbate
the failures that prisons symbolize.

In every prison population, there are failures of different kinds and
degrees of severity. Some inmates can be described only as evil,
beyond redemption; they are surely very few in number. Others, again a
small cohort, could be labelled psychopaths, sociopaths or dangerously
paranoid; the Norwegian killer, Anders Breivik, would appear to be
some combination of these traits.

The vast majority of prisoners represent individual failures of
various kinds but, also, failures of family, community and, more
generally, society in its broadest sense. How else to explain the
hugely disproportionate number of aboriginal inmates in our jails?

A civilized, effective system of justice should have two overriding
objectives: to protect society, perhaps forever, from the truly
dangerous and, while punishing the others, using every possible effort
to rehabilitate them, turning them into productive citizens.

The government's approach, in effect and almost certainly in
intention, reverses these objectives. It is all stick and no carrot.
It even abandons the highly successful, self-sustaining, centuryold
program of prison farms, which taught generations of inmates critical
life skills.

It is based on the 2007 Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety,
described by Conrad Black, no bleeding-heart liberal, and with
significant personal knowledge, as: "the self-serving work of
reactionary, authoritarian palookas, what we might have expected 40
years ago from a committee of Southern U.S. police chiefs."

Were he asked, the brilliant and courageous American political
comedian/satirist, Bill Maher, would call the tough-on-crime policy,
"dumb-ass stupid," a term of endearment he applies to the right-wing
zealots of the Republican Party. He would be right. In fact, Stephen
Harper and his cabinet puppets would be comfortable having tea and
crumpets with that group.

What are the basic elements of the tough-on-crime policy?

Most importantly, it greatly increases the number of mandatory minimum
sentences from the already more than 40 which now exist.

It eliminates the practice of allowing two days of a sentence for each
one day spent in pre-trial custody. It must be kept in mind that
people in remand have not yet been convicted of any crime; that many
will never be put on trial or will be acquitted; and that experts
consider remand custody conditions far more severe than those in prisons.

As regards the next element, it should be kept in mind that those
convicted in Canada of first-degree murder spend, on average, 28.4
years in prison, 10 years longer in jail than similarly convicted
Americans, and more than 15 years longer than in many other advanced
Western countries.

Under the "faint hope" clause, such a convicted person could, after 15
years, and by way of a long and difficult process, apply for parole.
The "faint hope" designation is reminiscent of "forlorn hope," the
name given to Wellington's troops who led the assault on French
fortresses during the Napoleonic Wars in Spain. The chances of release
in one case, survival in the other, were similar - slim to none. Even
the faint hope is to be extinguished, an example of naked vindictiveness.

The Harper government wants to send more Canadian young offenders to
jail and for longer periods of time, no doubt creating more
recidivists. One twice-jailed young offender had the following
comments on the legislation:

"For the most part, harsh sentences do not deter crime and actually
work against rehabilitating offenders. My brief time in incarceration
only ensconced me more deeply in the criminal culture."

Even more absurd are the changes with respect to drug laws, described
by one expert as "a wonderful gift to organized crime." Since, once
again, more Canadians will be jailed for longer periods, especially as
regards marijuana-related offences, one can only conclude that the
Harper government would like to imprison half the population of
British Columbia.

One comical feature of this legislation is that the length of the
mandatory prison sentence will depend on the number of marijuana
plants grown, and whether they are grown in a prison or near a school.
One can easily imagine the following comments by an arresting officer:
"Pothead, if you had grown 197 plants instead of 203, and more than
150 yards from the local school, you would be spending far less time
in jail." Dumb-ass stupid.

Why is the tough-on-crime policy so appallingly bad?

Perhaps most bizarrely, it runs counter to all the statistical
evidence of significantly falling crime rates over the past 25 years.
It rejects not only the expert evidence of those involved in the
criminal-justice system directly, including the Correctional Service
of Canada, but also that of psychiatrists, psychologists, social
workers and others.

It takes a direction that even the Americans, whose criminal-justice
system is notoriously dysfunctional, have been abandoning for some
years. It is based not on evidence and research, but on what the
French would call la science infuse or la verite absolue. Perhaps God
talks directly to Stephen Harper. Shades of Mackenzie King!

More specifically, mandatory minimum sentences, by imposing a
straitjacket on judges, limit their ability to differentiate as
regards the same offence with respect to what might be completely
different circumstances. Judges are human and might on occasion err;
however, they are highly educated and highly trained, far better
equipped to determine appropriate sentences than our members of Parliament.

Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentences have been conclusively
established to have no deterrent effect. The criminal's thought as a
crime is being committed is not "How long am I going to spend in
jail?" but "Will I be caught?" In the face of mandatory minimum
sentences, the accused might decide to fight ferociously, rather than
plead guilty to an offence, thereby further clogging the court system
and increasing costs. Finally, in the face of mandatory minimums,
history has proven that police, prosecutors and juries act in ways to
avoid a minimum sentence they consider to be inappropriate, sometimes
called "swallowing the gun."

With the faint hope extinguished, there will be far less incentive for
prisoners to set and follow rehabilitation goals, or even accept
prison rules. It is also inevitable that prison violence will
increase, since a reason for good behaviour will have vanished.
Similar or related flaws apply to every aspect of the tough-oncrime
policy. No aspect of the policy will act as a deterrent, and every
feature is likely to produce greater violence in prisons and lower
rates of successful rehabilitation.

In addition to the human cost of the tough-on-crime policy, the
financial costs will be enormous, involving many billions of
taxpayers' dollars annually. Either the Harper government has no idea
what the additional cost of more prisons, more inmates and longer jail
terms will be, in which case it is incompetent, or, equally
disrespectful of Canadians, it does know and refuses to admit them,
thereby being dishonest.

As it has in the past, for example in its repugnant attack ads against
Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, the Harper government has
brilliantly, but dishonestly, manipulated public opinion and raised
the level of fear. Tragically, neither the Liberals nor the New
Democratic Party has had the courage to act as a responsible
opposition; they, too, have succumbed to political fear.

Also sadly, or perhaps thankfully, before the true human and financial
costs of the tough-on-crime policy are felt by Canadians, the prime
minister and his government will have passed into the dustbin of history.