THE PARIS EFFECT

We Should Consider Jailing More Celebs If We Want To Develop Sound
Justice Policies

When Paris Hilton was languishing in jail reading her Bible, the Los
Angeles Times set out to determine if her sentence was consistent with
the punishments meted out to offenders in similar circumstances. To
that end, the paper reviewed 2 million cases, found 1,500 that
resembled Hilton's and concluded that in fact she was sentenced more
harshly than most.

The research undertaken by the Times is the type of methodical and
comprehensive approach needed for the development of sound public
policy, but it appears this empirical work will only be done when the
rich and famous stumble into the clutches of the criminal justice
industrial complex.

This data deficiency struck me last month when alleged Versace Crew
gang member Nicholas Ebanks was acquitted of attempted murder.

Justice W. Brian Trafford of the Ontario Superior Court excluded all
the incriminating evidence obtained through a wiretap investigation
because the police showed a "reckless disregard for the truth" when
they applied for the tap. Their application was riddled with
misleading inaccuracies and speculative opinions asserted as proven
facts.

I often wonder how many other prosecutions of serious offences fall
apart because public officials fail to respect the constitutional and
procedural requirements for investigation. The sad truth is that no
one really knows, because no one is keeping track.

For whatever reason, government officials and independent researchers
rarely conduct empirical research into the daily operation of the
criminal justice system.

So no one really knows how many gun-charge offenders commit crimes
when released on bail or how many traffic fatalities are caused by
street racing or whether minimum sentences actually deter crime.

Everyone has an opinion about these issues, but they're rarely
supported by sound empirical research and are a poor basis for the
development of social and public policy.

For the past two decades, for example, most criminal justice reforms
have been motivated by the widely held belief that our courts are too
lenient, prison sentences too short and prisons like country clubs.
Just because most people think this way does not make it true, and
it's a shame that we've allowed this unfounded belief to dominate our
vision of criminal justice reform.

To make matters worse, when empirical data is available, public
officials, journalists, academics and even social scientists often
manipulate the numbers to give the impression that their opinions are
really documented fact.

For example, Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente made the claim
last week that the increased potency of contemporary pot has made the
substance far more dangerous than the hippie pot of the 60s.

Her column is strewn with hyperbole and colourful language like
"scourge," "haunted" and "devastating."

But her provocative rhetoric hides the fact that there is no
pharmacological support for her assertion that higher-potency pot has
increased potential to harm.

In her zeal to demonize the "new" marijuana, she has also failed to
note that the testing protocols for assessing THC have dramatically
changed in the past 10 years, such that all testing in the 60s and 70s
grossly underestimated the potency of hippie pot.

The abject failure to conduct systematic research into the opinions
and assumptions that animate our criminal justice policy has also
allowed the police to become the consummate masters of manipulating
data of questionable statistical validity.

Last week, the Toronto Police Services went door to door to deliver a
glossy brochure summarizing its 2006 annual report.

Clearly, the report is intended to demonstrate the force's crime-fighting
successes. So in bold print we find this claim: "Down: Shooting deaths by 44
per cent, shooting occurrences by 15 per cent and shooting victims by 14 per
cent."

If our city is becoming safer due to the efforts of the police, then
I'll be the first in line to congratulate the force, but I thought the
police were telling us the streets are becoming more lawless and
dangerous, and this is why we need tougher laws and more police power.

Without comprehensive empirical research, you can take the limited
data out there and make it support whatever side of the debate you
wish to take.

I think there may be a solution. Taking inspiration from the Paris
Hilton case, I propose this: if we truly want an informed, empirical
assessment of the daily operation of Canadian criminal justice, we
should consider incarcerating more celebrities.