THIS IS YOUR CRIME PROBLEM ON DRUGS

VICTORIA - 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 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 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 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 80 per cent of car thieves
believe they will never be caught. For those desperate for drugs,
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 it can work in large and small centres.

Last week Ottawa 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.

Those bait cars

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.