THIS IS YOUR CRIME PROBLEM ON DRUGS

Those Bait Cars 'Glorified Probation'

The Interior town of Williams Lake has done a good job of highlighting
the problem of "prolific offenders" in recent weeks. Instead of
playing down its distinction as B.C.'s crime capital as previous
honourees Surrey, New Westminster and North Vancouver have done
before, Williams Lake Mayor Scott Nelson has used police 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 that 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. Other studies
suggest that 80 per cent of car thieves believe they will never be caught,
and that in the U.S., only about 14 per cent are caught.

For those desperate for drugs, fear of consequences seems an even more
remote notion. That's why today authorities are looking toward the
community court or "drug court" model for solutions.

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,
and 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, and the allegedly urgent need for more defeatist
pest-holes along the lines of Vancouver's unsafe injection site.

About half of the Stephen Harper government'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.

The studies mentioned above are cited in an excellent website run by a
group of U.S. professors, called the Center for Problem-Oriented
Policing (www.popcenter.org).

Among the illustrations on the site is a frame from B.C.'s notorious
'bait car boy' video. You may have seen it: the meth-addicted serial
car thief screaming "Oncoming!" as he runs red lights at top speed in
his latest ride, while trying unsuccessfully to fire a big handgun out
the window.

Yet here's what the academics say about bait cars or "gotcha cars" as
they are sometimes known: "Their use greatly appeals to the police and
the public.. They must be kept under constant surveillance, and it is
unclear whether they yield more arrests than surveillance alone."

The B.C. Court of Appeal has scolded a Vancouver Island judge for
comments he made in sentencing a man to jail for dangerous driving.
The judge said conditional sentences, also known as house arrest, have
become little more than an inconvenience for offenders, because judges
make so many exceptions that they become "little more than glorified
probation orders."

The appeal court noted that "Parliament has clearly mandated that
certain offenders who used to go to prison should now serve their
sentences in the community."

While Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is promising new minimum
jail sentences for drug dealers, it looks as if we can expect these
kinds of house arrest sentences to increase as the community court
programs roll out in B.C. towns and cities. When it comes to drug
addiction, there's another inconvenient truth that putting people in
jail doesn't mean keeping them away from street drugs. Inmates always
seem to find a way to get their hands on them.