THIS IS YOUR COURT SYSTEM

And This Is Your Court System On Drugs

Williams Lake has done a good job highlighting the problem of
"prolific offenders" in recent weeks. Instead of playing down the
town's distinction as B.C.'s crime capital, Williams Lake Mayor Scott
Nelson has used statistics to tackle the problem head-on.

He's put the message out forcefully that the numbers are driven by a
handful of hardcore repeat offenders who, especially in a small town,
can generate a crime wave all by themselves.

But the same story could be told in communities around the province,
and it's usually a story about what people will do to get drugs.

In Williams Lake and elsewhere they're demanding repeat offenders be
kept in custody until they are sentenced, so at least they can't rack
up new crimes while awaiting trial. While that's an appealing idea,
B.C. Solicitor General John Les reminds me of its major flaw.

Career criminals (and their lawyers) prefer to maximize time in remand
awaiting trial, especially if the evidence against them is a slam
dunk. In a time-honoured (and naive) tradition, judges kindly give
them two-for-one credit for time served while they are still
technically innocent.

Holding suspects creates another problem for the B.C. correctional
system, which runs addiction programs for inmates.

"The reality is they spend more time there in remand than actually
sentenced, and when they're there on remand, there's not much we can
do with them, because there's the whole presumption of innocence
thing," Les told me. "You can't impose anything on them. And then when
they're sentenced, typically they don't spend a whole lot of time
there anyway."

Another popular notion is that the threat of harsh sentences will deter the
kind of impulsive property crime that plagues communities. But does it
really? One sobering study done in 1992 examined the most direct of
consequences, delivered by Irish Republican Army enforcers to juvenile car
thieves in Northern Ireland: "kneecapping," or shooting the thief in the leg
with a handgun. Did this reduce the number of car thefts? No.

For those desperate for drugs, fear of consequences seems an even more
remote notion.

Les has high hopes for B.C.'s community court pilot project, due to
open next spring in Vancouver. Its goal is to deal with offenders
quickly, giving them one shot at serving a sentence in a treatment
program before going into the regular system.

Les says the big city is the logical place to start, since it has the
most treatment programs available, but smaller towns can benefit too.
Williams Lake has already begun talks with police and community agencies.

Last week the federal government launched its latest anti-drug
strategy, amid much squawking in the big-city media about a U.S.-style
war on drugs.

About half of Stephen Harper's $64 million anti-drug strategy is
supposed to be directed to treatment programs. Given the
Conservatives' ideological rigidity, that probably means
abstinence-based programs, which by happy coincidence are the only
ones that actually work.

How will repeat offenders be made to stick to programs, and how will
the public be kept safe? Les says he'll have more to say on that in a
few weeks.