Pubdate: Wed, 14 Aug 2013
Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
Copyright: 2013 The Edmonton Journal
Contact: 
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134

FACING FACTS IN THE BATTLE WITH CRIME

The Canadian government should take a lesson from a remarkably frank 
acknowledgment by senior U.S. justice authorities that decades of 
tough-on-crime laws in that country have been a miserable failure.

The Safe Streets and Communities omnibus bill the Harper 
Conservatives passed into law two years back has been widely 
criticized as an ideologically driven, right-wing initiative from the 
moment it was rammed through Parliament. It took an excessive 
approach to fighting crime at a time when crime rates were in decline 
and prisons were already overcrowded.

Despite abundant evidence that mandatory sentences are a blunt 
instrument with no discernible effect on crime rates, the federal 
bill imposed fixed terms for many new offences that were certain to 
jam the courts, frustrate judges and put more convicted people in 
jail for longer periods.

That get-tough agenda put Canada in lockstep with a harsh American 
justice stance that dates back to the "war on drugs" campaign 
launched in the early 1970s. The U.S. prison population has grown by 
an astonishing 800 per cent since 1980 as that tough-on-crime 
mentality progressively took over the justice system under Republican 
presidents. This week, though, reality trumped ideology. It is 
particularly telling that when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 
declared Monday that his country's justice system "is in too many 
respects broken," many Republican leaders publicly agreed with him.

"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for 
no good law-enforcement reason," Holder said in a speech to the 
American Bar Association that signalled sweeping changes to American 
justice. "We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to 
becoming a safer nation."

With less than five per cent of the world's population, the United 
States has almost one-quarter of the world's prisoners - some two 
million inmates. With a rate of incarceration that's about six times 
higher than China's, and a bloated correctional tab that exceeds $80 
billion a year, something clearly has to give. The U.S. is moving to 
abandon harsh mandatory sentences for drug offenders and forego 
prosecutions for non-violent, low-level criminals whose offences 
carry mandatory minimum terms. Holder's plan will also see the 
release of elderly prisoners who are not deemed a threat to society.

Our southern neighbours have concluded they can no longer bear the 
human and moral costs that come with holding the world's largest 
number of prisoners behind bars. Here in Canada, those costs are no 
less sobering. This country already spends about $4 billion a year on 
its prison system. Some estimates have put the total cost of 
implementing the Harper crime bill at more than $5 billion.

The lesson seems obvious. To be really tough on crime, governments 
need to make the social investments in diversionary programs and 
alternatives to incarceration that can actually make a difference, 
rather than emulate failed U.S. corrections policies that even the 
Americans are now abandoning.
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