Pubdate: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 Source: Times & Transcript (Moncton, CN NK) Copyright: 2011 New Brunswick Publishing Company Contact: http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/onsite.php?page=contact#B Website: http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2660 Author: Bill Belliveau, Times & transcript, Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. IF YOU DON'T LIKE 'EM, PUT 'EM IN PRISON If you were a Prime Minister who inherited a $13.6 billion surplus and then six years later you were trying to eliminate a $40 billion deficit, how would you do it? Well, you would probably start by putting a minister in charge of cost-cutting who was experienced in the misappropriation of funds and you would likely hire a $90,000-a-day consultant to tell you where you could save money. Most certainly, you would introduce regressive "tough on crime" legislation that would take you back to the 1980s and add billions of dollars a year to the costs of your criminal justice system. The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.3 million people currently in prisons or jails - a 500 per cent increase over the past 30 years. Every year, a million Americans are imprisoned on drug charges, about a quarter of them for marijuana offences. One in every 100 American adults lives behind bars. The number spiked dramatically after mandatory minimum sentences were introduced in the 1980s. The result has been prison overcrowding and governments overwhelmed by the burden of funding, despite increasing evidence that incarceration is not the most effective means of achieving public safety. Changes in U.S. sentencing law and U.S. justice policy, not increases in crime rates explain most of the near six-fold increase in the U.S. prison population. Public Safety Canada in its 2010 Annual Report says the overall crime rate in Canada has fallen by 19.0 per cent since 1998. Property crimes dropped 28.4 per cent in the same period. Canadian demographer David Foot, author of Boom, Bust & Echo, says crime rates are falling because there are fewer people in the age group that commit most crimes - late teens and early 20s. He says the crime rate was highest when baby boomers were wearing bellbottoms and listening to American guitarist/singer-songwriter "Jimi" Hendrix in the 1970's. The bad news is that drug related offences (possession, trafficking, etc.) in Canada have increased by 23 per cent since 1998, giving Mr. Harper his sole justification for obsessing over crime. Interestingly, the "Sentencing Project" a U.S. organization promoting reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration (The Nation Magazine Sept. 12, 2011) reports that state legislatures are now shuttering prisons. As many as 13 states have closed, or are considering closing prisons this year because they are too expensive. In Michigan, for example, the correction services make up almost a quarter of the state's budget. Michigan is closing 21 prison facilities and introducing novel sentencing reforms such as replacing "mandatory minimums" for drug offences and introducing sentencing guidelines that will permit judges to use their discretion in sentencing. Clearly Michigan has not been taking advice from Stephen Harper. In 2009, the cost of keeping an inmate in a Canadian prison was $109,000 a year for men and $180,000 a year for women. An estimated 35,000 people (about 0.13 per cent of our population as compared to 1.0 per cent of the American population) are incarcerated in Canada on any given day. Correctional Services Canada manages over 50 correctional facilities, employs more than 20,000 people, an increase of 38 per cent since 2005-06 (when Harper came to office) and has an annual budget exceeding $3-billion. With implementation of Harper's Omnibus Bill, our criminal justice system will need more courthouses, more staff, more police, more correctional officers, more parole officers, more defense lawyers, more legal aid, more prosecuting attorneys and more judges. Trials will be more frequent and appeals will be endless. Parliamentary Budget Watchdog Kevin Page notes that the cost of the Crime bill has yet to be recorded as a budget item, the first time in his career that he can recall a project of such magnitude being ignored in government budget plans. Clearly Conservative ideology trumps the reality of budgetary transparency. The Government is so confident in the merits of its 102 page omnibus crime bill (that wraps together nine separate bills the Conservatives couldn't pass during their minority government years) that it has decided to allow just two days of debate on the legislation. That might explain why, the Conservatives twice refused this week to participate in panel debates on the crime bill aired on CBC Television's "Power & Politics". Mr. Harper's 'Omnibus Crime Bill' flys in the face of research and the experience of others in regards to what makes a safer society. The Americans are moving away from their infatuation with incarceration to a more preventative approach to crime involving better enforcement, training and programs that deter crime more effectively than harsh sentencing. What have the Americans learned that Mr. Harper has failed to grasp? We could save ourselves forty years of unnecessary pain and multiple deficit expenditures by listening to the American experience on this one. In the process, we might find billions of dollars to help build a safer and more prosperous society. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.