THIS IS YOUR CRIME PROBLEM ON DRUGS

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

He's put the message out forcefully the numbers are driven by a
handful of hardcore repeat offenders. 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 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. That's why today authorities are looking toward
the community court or drug court model for solutions.

Last week the federal government launched its latest anti-drug
strategy, amid much squawking 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.