CRIME LEGISLATION 'FLAWED'

The allegation that Correctional Service Canada will build maximum
security cellblocks in medium security prisons in Ontario and
Manitoba, a move some observers say is a government scheme to create
super prisons while avoiding public scrutiny and controversy, should
raise serious concerns and many questions.

The Harper government, in face of criticism of this idea, has
consistently denied it has any plans to build mega prisons.

In an address to the Criminal Lawyers Association, noted criminal law
expert and influential Ontario Court of Appeal judge Marc Rosenberg
said that Canadians must take stock of the shambles that has been
created through the indiscriminate use of prison.

According to Judge Rosenberg, the justice system has fallen into a
state of disrepair as a result of punitive federal legislation and a
legion of accused criminals who languish behind bars awaiting trial.
These concerns come at a time when the Harper government is pushing
its so-called "tough on crime" legislation.

This proposed legislation, including mandatory sentences for some drug
offences, is ideologically and politically driven -- not
evidence-based-- embarrassingly flawed and smacks of everything that is
wrong with our criminal justice system.

A classic case of crime as politics!

This legislation -- when it sees the light of day -- will prey on the
socially, culturally and economically disadvantaged, especially
aboriginals and the mentally ill.

For the record, excluding the provincial system, there are
approximately 13,000 federal offenders in custody and about 8,000 in
the community on some form of conditional release.

CSC manages over 50 facilities, employs more than 20,000 people, up
from 14,000 in 200506, and has an annual budget of $3 billion, up from
$1.6 billion in 2005-06. This government wants to blindly and wilfully
add to this disinvestment in society and to these dismal statistics.

Jailing that many more Canadians, regardless of the social and
economic costs, is a huge priority for this government. Tougher
sentences, however defined, and more and bigger jails have never -- and
simply do not -- prevent crime.

Can we not learn something from our southern neighbour in that a
flawed and discriminatory criminal justice system does not and has
never prevented crime?

Two cases in point: California's prisons are so overcrowded that it
has had to turn thousands of criminals loose. Some other states have
also adopted this practice.

That state now spends about 2 1/2 times as much per prison inmate as
it does per student in its world-renowned University of California
system. Pennsylvania's prison population is growing so rapidly and
outstripping the system's capacity so extensively that officials
instituted a plan to house inmates in other states, which it did, and
at a cost.

America's incarceration budget, federal and state, now exceeds a
whopping $50 billion a year, and shows no signs of abatement
whatsoever. Prison construction and management is the fastest growing
industry in America.

Do we want to emulate this in Canada?

Or are we slow learners or simply do not care?

EMILE THERIEN

public health and safety advocate

Ottawa