TOUGHER PENALTIES WON'T AFFECT CRIME RATES

The present situation of using crime to further political agendas
under the guise of protecting citizens of Canada has reached new
levels of insanity with the present direction of our federal government.

The new crime omnibus bill, the federal anti-drug strategy and the
recommendations of the panel assessing Correctional Services Canada
fail Canadians miserably. They fail all of us because the government
has frozen out all of their own experts that recommend completely
different strategies to reduce crime and substance abuse and
positively rehabilitate offenders.

First, the crime omnibus bill is a repetition of already existing
legislation with more harsh and retributive sentences attached.
Unfortunately, we have been misled by our elected officials. All of
the research and studies that the elected officials themselves
commissioned - and taxpayers funded through federal government
approval - have shown that mandatory minimum sentences actually
increase prison populations and do nothing to prevent crime. Sentence
severity does not deter crime; the likelihood of being caught causes
people to pause before committing a crime. It is naive to think harsh
sentences will deter crime; we have more than 100 years of North
American practice to prove that.

Second, the anti-drug strategy that calls for a war on drugs is more
about filling prisons and punishing already marginalized people than
it is about reducing demand or abuse-related harm.

We must remember that a war on drugs is a war on families as many
Canadian families are affected by the perils of substance abuse.

There is, once again, complete disregard for the work and research of
thousands of researchers, including the World Health Organization and
the Canadian Medical Association. There has been no mention of
harm-reduction strategies, except to denigrate them, even though we
know that harm reduction strategies work.

Imagine how much more we can accomplish if we could divert the
hundreds of millions of dollars per year that are wasted on
interdiction, prosecution, criminalization and incarceration of
addicts into serious and sustainable treatment options for addicts and
substance abusers.

The reality is that most violent crime and murders associated with
drugs are not over the drugs themselves but over drug profits.
Mandatory sentences will not stop that.

Keeping people in prison for longer time periods through mandatory
minimum sentences and the recommendation to end statutory release will
achieve longer prison sentences, but not a reduction in crime.

The deception being promulgated to the Canadian people that crime will
be reduced is irresponsible. Manipulating Canadians through fear of
crime is regressive and unworthy and it does not make any of us safer.

We have been taught that if something doesn't work we should try and
try again. Albert Einstein said that if you've tried again and again
and it still doesn't work then try something else, because your
original premise is faulty. Indeed that is the problem with our
federal government's approach to crime and substance abuse, their
premise is faulty and they refuse to admit it.

It is time to clean our streets, stop drug addiction and reduce
violent crime. Putting people in prison for longer periods of time
will not achieve that, it will only make the problem worse.

John Rimore

Executive Director John Howard Society of Sudbury