FORFEITURE LAW CORRUPTS JUSTICE

Re: Presumed innocent (Dec. 2). I would like to add my support for the Free
Press's position on the proposed gang property forfeiture laws. There is no
faster way to a fascist state than pre-emptive arrest and property seizure.
That a proposal for the latter comes from a democratically elected minister
is dismaying.

There are several U.S. states that have similar laws, and the result has
been massive police and government corruption. Some of these states
actually use the proceeds of such forfeitures to fund their police
departments, giving those departments the most perverse of incentives to
target innocent, but perhaps troublesome, citizens. Justice Minister Gord
Mackintosh has not gone that far, but the slope is slippery. Once
government and law enforcement have a financial incentive to investigate
individuals and seize property, the system is corrupt by definition and
every arrest is suspect.

There are basically four kinds of punishment that a government can mete out
to lawbreakers: death, torture, incarceration, and property seizure. Each
is such a burden on the convict that enlightened cultures have tried to
make it reasonably certain that no one suffers these sanctions without a
thorough public weighing of comprehensive, properly obtained evidence based
on the presumption that the government must prove its case beyond a
reasonable doubt. We have seen in the James Driskell case and many others
that Canada's safeguards are insufficient. Mackintosh's proposal would be a
huge step in the wrong direction, as the editors have so clearly outlined.

This idea needs to die a fast, ignominious death, and perhaps the Doer
government needs to find a justice minister who knows the meaning of the
job title.

JEFF PRESSLAFF
Winnipeg