Pubdate: Tue, 21 Nov 2006
Source: Peace Arch News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Peace Arch News
Contact:  http://www.peacearchnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1333
Author: Tom Fletcher
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

HOW TO CUT THE CRIME RATE: LEGALIZE DRUGS

VICTORIA -- Last week's column touched on crime rates around the 
province, which the B.C. government tracks by health region.

If you look at violent crime, serious property crime and non-cannabis 
drug crime, the safest place to live in B.C. is Vancouver Island. 
Next best is the Interior region, which encompasses the Kootenays, 
Okanagan and Cariboo.

In the middle of the pack is the Fraser region, the largest in the 
province by population, extending from Burnaby through the Fraser 
Valley to Hope.

Second worst is the vast Northern region, which includes roughly the 
top two-thirds of the province. And the highest serious crime rates 
are in Vancouver Coastal, which includes Vancouver, Richmond, the 
North Shore and Sunshine Coast.

The good news is that the rate of serious crime has been going down 
in most parts of the province, with the exception being the north, 
where serious crime went up by more than eight per cent from 2001 to 2004.

The bad news, as I'm reminded by a new discussion paper just released 
by the B.C. Progress Board, is that despite improvements in recent 
years, B.C. still ranks in the top third of Canadian provinces in all 
categories of major crime. We also have more property crime per 
capita than the neighbouring states of Washington and Oregon.

The discussion paper, prepared by Simon Fraser University criminology 
professors Robert Gordon and Bryan Kinney, contains provocative 
suggestions. When it comes to illegal drugs, for example, the 
professors conclude. B.C. has only three choices:

1. Lobby the federal government to legalize the drug trade, 
controlling it like tobacco and alcohol.

2. Eliminate the organized criminal drug trade with a major 
expenditure in new police teams, legislation targeting money 
laundering and proceeds of crime, increased penalties and more new jails.

3. Combine options one and two, with a crackdown on organized crime 
followed by a phased-in decriminalization and legalization.

Of course the Conservative government will embrace legalization about 
the same time Hell opens for public skating. Stephen Harper is 
reputed to be a libertarian at heart, but his justice and public 
safety posse, Vic Teows and Stock Day, are hang-'em high "social 
conservatives" who were appointed to play to the party's older 
support base, and would likely only support increased drug penalties.

(As a small-L libertarian, I disagree with that approach, but it's 
preferable to the previous government, which repeatedly promised to 
decriminalize pot but never followed through, while opening its own 
low-grade grow-op in an abandoned mine.)

The criminologists argue legalizing drugs isn't likely to increase 
demand. If people want drugs, they will find a way to get them, or 
manufacture even worse substitutes like crystal meth.

Nearly all the street crime, the car and house break-ins that 
ordinary people are all too familiar with, is perpetrated in the 
pursuit of drugs. As for violent crime, if you take away the 
drug-related shootings and stabbings, you're left mainly with crimes 
of passion that are often committed in a fog of intoxication.

The report warns there is a fourth option, which is to maintain the 
status quo. For B.C. that means continuing to have Canada's most 
lenient courts, which combines with a relatively benign climate to 
make B.C. the destination of choice for Canada's sophisticated criminals.

B.C. has twice the rate of drug crime as any other province. And 
since legalization is currently not a viable option politically, the 
practical choice would be to increase sentences for major drug crime.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman