ROOMS WITH A VIEW: PART TWO

The Liberals' inconsistency on crime and punishment is, in an odd sense,
quite democratic: The feelings of the Canadian public are far from consistent.

That may not be immediately apparent in quick-hit public opinion surveys.
These consistently show, as they do in the United States, that most
Canadians think the criminal justice system is soft and should adopt a
harder line on sentences, parole and prison conditions. But more detailed
questioning yields very different responses.

Julian Roberts cites research he conducted that asked Canadians whether
they favoured a flat-time system -- a three-year sentence is three years,
six is six -- or the status quo, in which an offender will probably serve
the last half or two-thirds of a sentence under parole supervision in the
community. "And (Canadians) went three-for-one in favour of the parole
system. So they don't trust parole boards very much, but there is a very
strong bedrock of support even for something many people would say the
public don't like."

Mr. Roberts has also shown that while the public tends not to support
conditional sentences on first consideration, most will support them if it
is made clear that offenders must also abide by punitive restrictions such
as curfews.

A similar result came in a 1999 Statistics Canada study that asked
Canadians whether a prison sentence was appropriate in a variety of
scenarios, including break-and-enters and assaults committed by first-time
or repeat offenders. While only minorities of respondents supported
incarceration for first-time offenders, clear majorities supported prison
for repeat offenders. StatsCan then asked only those who supported
imprisonment whether a sentence of probation and 200 hours of community
service would be acceptable. Even in the most serious scenario -- an adult
convicted of repeat assault -- one-third of those who had wanted jail
approved of the alternative sentence. In the case of an adult convicted of
a first-time break-and-enter, 42 per cent of those who had wanted jail
agreed to the alternative.

Even when confronting something as emotional as the "faint-hope clause,"
which allows murderers to apply for parole eligibility after 15 years,
Canadian opinions are ambiguous. On one hand, polls indicate most Canadians
don't want murderers paroled at all, let alone after 15 years. And yet, Mr.
Roberts points out, 80 per cent of faint-hope applications are approved by
juries drawn from the public. After hearing all the evidence, Mr. Roberts
says, "those ordinary Canadians are not unsympathetic to lowering the time
the guy has to spend in prison."

These examples point to a key source of the contradictions in popular
opinion: faulty assumptions about criminal justice. Crime rates, for
example, have been gradually falling for almost a decade, yet in a recent
Ekos poll almost half of Canadians thought crime was increasing. Most
Canadians also underestimate the length of typical prison sentences. "So if
you then say, 'Are sentences tough enough?' they'll say, 'No,'" Mr. Roberts
says. When respondents are given accurate information, their support for
more punitive policies drops. "We've done research," Mr. Roberts says, "in
which we've told them what the sentences are and they're both surprised and
far more content."

Still, for all the nuances, there's no question many Canadians feel the
criminal justice system is too weak and muddle-headed to protect their
communities. Can that doubt be turned into a tough-on-crime movement like
that which has swept the United States?

Jason Ziedenberg is well-placed to answer that. As a Canadian working as a
policy analyst in Washington, D.C., for the Justice Policy Institute, a
liberal think-tank, Mr. Ziedenberg has a unique perspective on the two
countries. And he does not think Canada is entirely immune from the U.S.
mania for punishment.

One key factor, Mr. Ziedenberg feels, is Canada's lack of racial friction
and explosive urban underclass, the fear of which fuels get-tough politics
in the United States. "But I do think that this country is still ripe for a
tough-on-crime campaign that will have people who ought to know better
supporting it."

He cites the experience of California. In the early 1970s, California's
criminal justice system was in some ways more liberal than Canada's is
today. There was some change in the 1980s, but the real turning-point was
the murder of a little girl, Polly Klaas, by a parolee in the fall of 1993.

If the murder had happened at another time, it might have remained a
personal tragedy. But the media turned it into a state-wide sensation less
than a year before state and gubernatorial elections. The result was a
frenzy of tough-on-crime legislation that turned California's justice
system into one of the harshest in the western world.

"It only takes one case," says Mr. Ziedenberg, "to really, fundamentally
change the justice system in a bad way."

A critical new factor is Sept. 11. International terrorism may have nothing
to do with domestic crime, but the attacks on New York and Washington,
D.C., have heightened concern for security and the belief that safety can
only be ensured by force. On the domestic front, that mood may give
tough-on-crime policies added emotional power.

Mr. Ziedenberg compares Canada to the Washington neighbourhood in which he
lives -- a trendy, inner-city enclave that suddenly abandoned its usual
ultra-liberal politics when a proposal was made to build a halfway house
for 20 parolees. "People were talking about these ex-offenders like they
were from Mars," Mr. Ziedenberg says. "They talked about them with a venom
that really shocked me. I expected it in the suburbs, I expected it in
Texas, but I didn't expect it in my own community.

"And I think that's true for Canada too. If push comes to shove and you've
got an image of a criminal (moving into your neighbourhood) and falling
public safety, then common sense just goes out the window."