Pubdate: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 Source: Nanaimo News Bulletin (CN BC) Copyright: 2010 Holden Southward Contact: http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/948 Author: Holden Southward CANADA NEEDS STRONG JUSTICE SYSTEM To the Editor, Re: Building new prisons wrong decision, Letters, Aug. 7. I would like to begin with commending the letter writer William Perry to whom I'm responding to for his service in the police force. In William's letter he stated his objections to the Conservative's plan to build more prisons as a way of deterring violent crime. He says that the U.S. has failed in this approach and we should instead have shorter sentences and early parole so there is more room in prisons. He also states that to change the current Criminal Code would be a very expensive challenge because it will be in conflict with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I can also state that ever since Mexico has done away with the death penalty homicides have drastically gone up. What we have not said was that the U.S. is on an aggressive war on drugs within its own borders and with the Mexican drug lords who supply the U.S. The war is keeping drug prices very high and is making it a very lucrative industry that only the most daring and brutal can dominate. I'm sure the homicides related to the drug war clouds statistics. Why do we need to let violent rapists out on early parole just because someone is using irrelevant statistics to prove a point? If someone's daughter was beaten and raped or killed, why do we have some obligation to try to reform the perpetrator and return him to society? It seems the ones who stand to gain from the institution of reform are in league with lobbyists and influential people of the same philosophy and have been superseding the will of the Canadian people for a long time. If the Criminal Code or the charter obstructs justice then either should be amended. If the complexity of safeguards, technicalities, loopholes, legalistic format, philosophical disposition, double standards or special interests obstructs or diminishes justice, principle or truth then it should be amended. Canadians should have the dignity of a better democracy and a strong criminal justice system without being controlled by the human rights commission, the Geneva convention or misleading statistics. Holden Southward Nanaimo - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D