'We are absolutely philosophically committed to it,' says PM Despite another legal setback, the Conservatives remain committed to mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug traffickers and other serious criminals, Stephen Harper says. The Ontario Superior Court struck down a mandatory six-month minimum sentence for growing marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, a decision Harper said his government would study. "We think it is important that those who traffic drugs, who destroy lives, face sufficient penalty under the law," Harper said Tuesday. "A mandatory minimum is a mandatory prison sentence for certain types of crime - drug trafficking, murder, other acts of violence. We think there are situations where it is inconceivable that a court would deliver a verdict that does not involve a penalty of time in prison." [continues 231 words]
Pretty much everybody from Barack Obama to Carly Fiorina seems to agree that far too many Americans are stuck behind bars. And pretty much everybody seems to have the same explanation for how this destructive era of mass incarceration came about. First, the war on drugs got out of control, meaning that many nonviolent people wound up in prison. Second, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-the-key culture, with long, cruel and pointlessly destructive prison terms. It's true that mass incarceration is a horrific problem. Back in the 1970s the increase in incarceration did help reduce the crime rate, maybe accounting for a third of the drop. But today's incarceration levels do little to deter crime while they do much to rip up families, increase racial disparities and destroy lives. [continues 699 words]
Michael Swan was watching Canada play the United States for Olympic hockey gold while the three young men who would kill him were driving to Ottawa down a dark highway. The "Toronto three", as they would come to be known, had a plan to make some easy money: They were going to steal Swan's marijuana. Swan was murdered later that night on Feb. 21 2010 -- killed by a single bullet that pierced his lung and tore apart his heart. Swan's life was taken for a small amount of marijuana; as were the lives of Travis Votour and Amanda Trottier -- killed in January 2014, allegedly in a marijuana drug rip, as was the life of Yazdan Ghiasvand Ghiasi, who apparently died over a bag of weed in 2010. [continues 531 words]
Two of Toronto's former police chiefs squared off over the imposition of mandatory prison sentences on criminals. Conservative cabinet minister Julian Fantino and Liberal candidate Bill Blair - both former Toronto police chiefs - exchanged fire Sunday about Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's declaration that he would repeal some mandatory minimum prison sentences if he wins the Oct. 19 election. Fantino, who is seeking re-election in the riding of Vaughan-Woodbridge, argued that repealing the laws would put the rights of criminals above those of victims. [continues 463 words]
A jury did not believe a Miami-Dade man who insisted he grew 15 marijuana plants inside his home only to help ease the suffering of his cancer-stricken wife. The six-member jury on Friday night convicted Ricardo Varona of trafficking more than 25 pounds of marijuana and operating a marijuana growhouse. Taken into custody to await sentencing, Varona faces a mandatory minimum of three years in prison. Varona, 43, was the second South Florida man in the past six months to claim "medical neccesity" in operating a marijuana growhouse. Unlike in the Varona case, a Broward jury in March acquitted 50-year-old Jesse Teplicki, who admitted he grew 46 plants to battle years of nausea and fatigue. [continues 381 words]
Crime and security issues are proving to be some of the most divisive in this election. Should police be granted expanded powers to stop terrorists, or should privacy be paramount? Should we legalize pot? What about Canada's record on missing and murdered aboriginal women? Here are four things you should know about crime and security to help you decide how to cast your ballot. Bill C-51 The Conservatives' controversial bill has become a lightning rod, dividing the Canadian public. It proposes to expand police and spy powers in an effort to protect Canada from potential terrorist threats. Critics like Tom Mulcair's NDP say the bill tramples on Charter protections, gives spies and police too much power, and constitutes an invasion of privacy. [continues 427 words]
Organization Calls for Voters to Back Politicians Whose Parties Support Relaxed Marijuana Laws Next month's federal election could be historic for proponents of marijuana legalization. With the country's three main political parties all taking distinct positions, which party forms the next government could determine what happens to the nation's marijuana laws. "This is our election, this is the most important election on this topic in recent memory," said Craig Jones, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Canada. [continues 489 words]
Re: "High time to talk about pot, " Letters, The Leader, Sept. 2. The Huffington Post reports that in Canada, mandatory minimum sentences range from six months to three years, depending on the severity of the offence. Under the law passed in 2012, someone who grows six plants "for the purpose of trafficking" is automatically sentenced to six months in jail. In the same year the mandatory minimums were introduced here, a U.S. panel of former and current police officials warned the Conservative government about the consequences of launching a war on drugs. [continues 119 words]
In Canada, mandatory minimum sentences range from six months to three years depending on the severity of the offence. Under the law passed in 2012, someone who grows six pot plants - for the purpose of trafficking, the law dictates at that point - is automatically sentenced to six months in jail. In the same year the mandatory minimums were introduced here, a U.S. panel of former and current police officials warned the Conservative government about the consequences of ratcheting up a war on drugs. [continues 107 words]
When asked about doobies during his VanCity whistle stop, the NDP leader didn't bring up legalization, but Toronto candidates assure that it's party policy Thomas Mulcair has promised to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana "the minute we form government." He made the announcement during a campaign stop in Vancouver on August 20. But the NDP brain trust is not going to dirty its hands with the weedy subject of outright marijuana legalization, which the Liberals have pledged. [continues 680 words]
The Drug Trade Is Entrenched in the Tenderloin, the Only Place in S.F. Where Drug Users Have Some Political Power They're outside on the corner when John Lorenz leaves his girlfriend's Tenderloin apartment in the morning; they're there when he returns. Sometimes he catches them on a shift change - like union workers clocking out after their eight hours, they're punctual. "Regular as clockwork," he told me recently. "They" are a couple of teenage males - Honduran, says Lorenz, comfortable enough to engage them in small talk - who come into San Francisco from the East Bay for work. They're parked on the street corner, selling drugs. [continues 1391 words]
Prosecutors Get Too Much Power As They Stack Charges and Threaten Long Terms The new consensus that something is wrong with American criminal justice is welcome. The amazing number of people in prison - a measure on which, adjusting for population, no other nation comes close - is indeed a sign that the U.S. system is broken. It's good that the will to fix it seems to be growing. Yet dwelling too much on that one statistic is unwise. There's a danger of missing the point. [continues 481 words]
The City Different is in a unique position, at just the right time in history, to have a small but powerful impact on how low-level drug offenders are treated, and, ultimately, on whether or not they are offered a chance at recovery. With increasing awareness of the social, economic and political effects of mass incarceration, it is more important than ever to begin thinking outside the box about the war on drugs. Some $60 billion is being spent annually to keep people incarcerated, and destructive mandatory-minimum sentences continue to flood our jails and prisons with individuals who are nonviolent drug offenders. [continues 501 words]
The new consensus that something is wrong with American criminal justice is welcome. The amazing number of people in prison a measure on which, adjusting for population, no other nation comes close is indeed a sign that the U.S. system is broken. Yet dwelling too much on that one statistic is unwise. There's a danger of missing the point. Consider, for instance, the idea that the leading cause of mass incarceration is long prison sentences handed down to nonviolent drug offenders. Not so. [continues 369 words]
A Bipartisan Push for Sentencing Reform Unites President Obama and the Koch Brothers, but Many Are Still Waiting Behind Bars The gleaming black granite tower where conservative billionaire Charles Koch oversees an empire of multinational corporations is 1,500 miles and worlds away from the California prison cell of Weldon Angelos. But Angelos sits at the intersection of an unusual alliance between the industrialist and President Obama - longtime political nemeses. Their cooperation illustrates the depth of a bipartisan effort to reduce the nation's [continues 2998 words]
Either Americans are the most evil people on Earth or there's something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system. We hope it's the latter. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. locks people up at a rate nearly five times the world's average. Since 1980, its inmate population has more that quadrupled. How to explain? First, there's the sad reality that U.S. crime rates, despite their general decline in recent years, are still far higher than those of other advanced democracies - stoked, perhaps, by the nation's sharp social disparities and the easy access to firearms. Then there's the sad reality that jails and prisons, rather than hospitals, are being used to warehouse the mentally ill. An estimated 16 percent of the nation's inmate population suffers a mental disorder. [continues 471 words]
Both Parties Are Right to Call for Sentencing Reform The U.S. prison gulag is the bitter fruit of the grotesquely expensive war on drugs and decades of reflexive but counterproductive tough-on-crime policies. The truth is this: Our federal and state prisons incarcerate people at a higher rate than all other major nations - well beyond rates in Russia and China and those under regimes widely regarded as backward and oppressive. With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States holds about a quarter of the global prison population. [continues 434 words]
There is a destination where you're about five times more likely to be incarcerated than the rest of the world. It's got only 4 percent of the planet's population but claims more than 20 percent of the world's population behind bars. It's not Syria, and it's not Cuba. That place is the United States of America. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the number of prisoners in the United States has increased more than seven times during this author's almost 50 years. Two million people in America live behind the walls. America imprisons at an astounding rate of 716 of every 100,000 people. The Prison Policy Initiative ranks Florida 10th in the U.S., imprisoning people at a rate of 891 people per 100,000. Florida's "lock 'em up" rate ranks well above authoritarian regimes such as Cuba, Rwanda and the Russian Federation. In 1970, the Florida Department of Corrections imprisoned just 8,793. Thirty years later, the number has multiplied more than 11 times to greater than 100,000 men and women in state prisons. [continues 236 words]
Re: "Drug legalization: Learn from Portugal" [Opinion, July 26]: As a former drug warrior, I offer my support to the Register for their editorial on Portugal's drug laws. The American War on Drugs is slowly coming to a close, and we must take notes from those who have trekked this path before. Portugal decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs more than 10 years ago, prioritizing harm reduction and addiction treatment, and the positive results are nothing short of astounding. [continues 158 words]
Three charged after dispensary raided by city police ALERT squad More than 1,000 patients suffering from chronic pain, cancer or epilepsy are without their medicine of choice after police shut down an Edmonton medical marijuana dispensary. The Mobile Access Compassionate Resources Organization Society (MACROS) was shut down Wednesday and its president and two founders were arrested and charged. Ryan Wolff, who suffers from epididymitis - chronic pain in his testicles - and a nerve condition that affects previous injuries, is "devastated." Wol obtained a medical marijuana licence from a doctor last December and said the concentrated form of marijuana he gets from MACROS is the only thing that has helped him with his pain. [continues 406 words]
