Imprisoning more people for longer periods will not make Canada safer...

Doing the math on 2 for 1

In the old James Cagney movies, there were always two prisoners to a cell. One was in the top bunk, the other in the bottom.

That was called double-bunking, meaning two bunks to a cell, not two prisoners to a bed, which is not always fun for the little guy.

They usually got along fine until Cagney shouts, “You dirty rat” at his cellmate.
It was great stuff for the movies, not in real life.

Double-bunking was finally abolished in the Canadian penal system in 2001. The government, in its euphemistic style, declared that “single-occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method.”

But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who likes old movies, wants to take us back to the days of double-bunking.   
”Double-bunking is not a big deal,” said Toews. That was three weeks ago.

The next day, half of the 54 federal penitentiaries announced they are going back to double-bunking, just like in Victorian times.
Double-bunking can also be a great way to make new friends.

Critics disagree, arguing it’s more likely to promote violence among cellmates.
Still, it’s a lot less expensive than building new penitentiaries, according to Toews.

Toews has a big problem because, last October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government passed a new law that took away the rights of judges to hand out two-for-one credit for time already served in jail before sentencing.

Two-for-one credit supposedly makes up for harsher conditions in remand and pre-sentence jails.
Eliminating the extra credit is part of the Conservative government’s crime agenda.

It’s part of an ideology based on the premise that putting more people in jail and keeping them locked up longer will make Canada a safer place. Increasing jail time by wiping out the double credit is one way to do it.

They have great lines, including the one about “truth in sentencing.”
It’s as if the judges haven’t been telling the truth when they give out two-for-one credits. But now they will have to tell the truth.

The opposition parties caved in on the vote, lest the Conservatives call an election and win a majority.
Now as the prisons start to fill up, Toews has to find spaces.

More bunks, not more jails, are Toews’ answers.
It will cost only $2 billion over five years, he says.

But he hasn’t provided a published report detailing the numbers, so he can’t say how he came up with his $2-billion figure. Maybe he has the same accountants who at one time put the cost of the Harper summits at only $179 million.

Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says Toews is way off. It’s going to cost at least $5 billion, he said last week.
The provinces will be paying another $5 billion more themselves for the increase in prisoners in their jails.

In Canada, convicts receiving sentences of less than two years serve them in provincial facilities. Those handed harsher punishments go to federal penitentiaries.

Page and Toews don’t agree. For his part, Page put out a 500-page report on the issue last week, the work of one-third of his staff for eight months.

Page estimates the new law wiping out double credit will add, on average, about half of a year to every sentence. He has the average sentence in federal prisons increasing to 722 days, up from 563 days currently.

Page says that works out to $1 billion a year for five years.
Page couldn’t care less about the ideology behind increasing jail time. That’s a political thing. He’s a bean counter, the best we have. He’s concerned that the public gets the right numbers.

That’s his job. Fudging figures to make government policies look more attractive is not his way of doing things.
The provinces are going to be hit harder than the federal government because “their head count” is twice as big, says Page.

Provinces get all the remand inmates and those jailed for less than two years. That works out to 260,000 inmates a year, compared to 8,500 for the federal institutions.
Toews put the issue delicately: “There will be some cost to the provinces.”

”Some cost” is right, about $5 billion over five years in extra costs, says Page.
Toews replied: “Costs will all be done within the fiscal framework.”
That’s a euphemism for saying the costs will be downloaded onto the provinces.

Toews explained the federal costs will be “taken out of future budgets.” That’s true, but he doesn’t point out that Harper already has a deficit this year.

Budgets are not the Conservative government’s strong suit. It took over four years ago with a $12-billion surplus and ran it into the ground. Once the hard times came, it racked up a $47-billion deficit.

Toews says the important thing is not to build new penitentiaries but to slip more bunks into existing institutions, especially those minimum-security facilities where the cells are nice and big.

Toews says he doesn’t have the detailed figures right now but when he does, he’ll be glad to make them public. The last figure given before Toews’ most recent $2-billion estimate was $90 million last fall. It seems to have gone up substantially.

“Just think about all the money saved by society when those criminals are incarcerated instead of being out on the street committing crimes,” Toews said.

Of course, that’s presuming that anybody let out is going to reoffend.

Exploding cost of Conservative crime bills, not justified

Exploding cost of crime bills not justified

In what's become a sorry habit with the Conservative government when its poorly considered policies bump up against embarrassing truths, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is attacking the messenger who reveals that the federal Truth in Sentencing Act is far, far costlier than initially projected.

If only there was a Truth of Budgeting Act, Mr. Toews wouldn't be taking Canada blundering down the same kind of ideological path that led to the creation of the Liberal gun registry boondoggle.

If only there was some principled leadership at the provincial Corrections and Public Safety ministry, Saskatchewan wouldn't be meekly going along, with minister Yogi Hughebaert going so far as to join his federal counterpart's disingenuous attack on parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page.

Mr. Page reported that the act could double the cost of the federal prison system to $9.5 billion a year by 2015-16 from the current $4.4 billion, along with shifting the provincial share of prison costs to 56 per cent by then, from the current 49 per cent.

Mr. Toews has already backtracked from his original claim that provisions of the Truth in Sentencing Act would cost a mere $90 million over the next two years, with Correctional Services Canada officials telling him that the tab actually would be $2 billion over five years.

But as Mr. Page notes in his report, CSC officials provided his office with limited information at the onset and then refused to meet with his staff while the report was being prepared. Consequently, says the parliamentary officer, his staff had to use educated estimates to produce their report, with their figures being on the conservative low side, if anything.

As to Mr. Toews's claim that Mr. Page must be "making this up" because CSC officials had met with the budget officer, the starkly contrasting records of the governing politicians and of Mr. Page on openness and transparency in conducting their affairs suggests where the credibility rests.

Mr. Toews would have been in a better position to criticize or question the budget officer's figures had his own officials been more forthcoming about their plans and projections, and had the federal budget or departmental estimates contained any actual cost estimates for the reforms projected under the new legislation.

When the federal minister says Mr. Page is wrong about the need to build new prisons to accommodate the greater numbers of inmates who will be serving longer sentences, because cells will be added to existing facilities instead, there's little to suggest how this will be accomplished.

Meanwhile, until facilities are expanded or built, the immediate impact will be to double or triple bunk prisoners in current cells, adding to the stress and danger of an already overcrowded prison system.

In Saskatchewan, for instance, where the impact of longer sentences and elimination of double-time credit will disproportionately impact aboriginal people, the average per prison cell already is 1.3 inmates. At one of the 11 prisons, there are 1.96 inmates per cell, another has 2.02 and a third, 2.06, according to the PBO's report.

To cram in more bodies seems a recipe for trouble.

It could well be the case that the federal government and provincial governments are completely on-side with public sentiment in seeking to eliminate such things as two-for-one credits for the time spent in remand by accused persons.

Ultimately, however, assessing the value of public policy has to be done in the context of delivering results for the money spent, and with ascertaining the opportunity costs in terms of other priorities that go unfunded as a result.

It's one thing for those such as Mr. Hughebaert to say, "We'll be there" if the prison costs balloon -- the PBO report suggests between $340 million and $560 million for construction capital, plus ongoing operating costs -- but at a time when crime statistics are declining, and health, education and social programs are jostling for scarce public resources, is expanding prison capacity the best use of our money?

High price for law and order

How can the Tories justify the cost of the Truth in Sentencing Act in light of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report?

I'm outraged that this report forecasts a cost of about $1 billion a year for the next five years to implement this legislation. How can this be justified as a spending priority while the government is posting record deficits and the recovery of the Canadian economy is the expressed mandate?

The Conservative's ideological law-and-order agenda cannot rationally top a long laundry list of essential service provision, such as health care and education, all of which require the investment of precious taxpayer dollars.

The cost of this legislation and the outlandish cost of security and planning for the G8/G20 demonstrates a gross mismanagement of the public purse.

Crime bill will cost dearly

The minority Conservatives like to talk about "getting tough on crime." But they are reluctant to reveal the bill or initiatives that might or might not improve public safety.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page filled in one of the blanks this week.

The government's Truth in Sentencing Act will mean more people in prisons for longer periods.

Page looked at the impact and concluded the cost to run federal and provincial jails will more than double, to $9.5 billion from $4.4 billion a year by 2015.

Provinces are responsible for inmates serving less than two years. B.C.'s jails are already overcrowded. Page estimates the provincial government will need to spend between $700 million and $1.1 billion to build new prisons. Operating costs would also rise.

Why would the government introduce a new law without understanding how much it would cost? (Public Safety Minister Vic Toews originally said the law would mean additional costs of less than $90 million over two years.)

And how much more will the Conservatives' other crime measures -- longer sentences, mandatory minimums and the rest -- cost taxpayers?

Getting tough on crime looks a lot like getting tough on taxpayers.

Eliminate double time credit for violent criminals only

New estimates of the cost of the Truth in Sentencing law, passed by the Conservatives earlier this year, show the realities of the lock-'em-up approach. Is the law aimed at the right people and will it generate the right results?

Now that we have a better idea of the costs, it's much less clear.

The law, which eliminates the two-for-one credit for jail time served before trial, is a tenet of the Conservatives' tough-on-crime campaign. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said his party supports the "idea that individuals should ... serve the time they've been sentenced to."

Fair enough. Many victims have been infuriated by sentencing that has allowed criminals to serve only a few months, or even weeks, after a conviction, despite a sentence that supposedly fits the crime.

The two-for-one credit was established on the principle that pre-trial time is harder because there is no access to rehabilitation programs and guilt has not been established -- as lawyer Eddie Greenspan called it, "dead time." But supporters of the law say most of those people are eventually convicted, so that time is deserved.

There are other issues. For example, allowing two for one encourages trial delays by the defence, but eliminating it is more likely to yield fewer guilty pleas, meaning more trial time and higher costs.

When the legislation was introduced, the Conservatives said it would cost $89 million a year, which was increased to $2 billion over five years.

But Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page's analysis shows that the overall costs to federal and provincial corrections could well rise to $9.5 billion from $4.4 billion by 2015, largely because more jails and more corrections employees will be needed. He notes these are guesstimates, because he says the feds didn't co-operate fully with his analysis.

The argument is that making criminals spend more time in jail makes society safer. Yes, but safer from what? The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, five times that of Canada and much higher than most other developed countries. Yet its violent crime rates are higher than Canada's, but our property crime rates are higher.

The higher U.S. violent crime rates can be attributed to the prevalence of guns. Property crimes are typically fuelled by poverty and drugs.

Eliminating the two-for-one credit feels right for Canadians, hence its political capital. But whether it actually makes Canadians safer, and whether it's worth the enormous expense, is dubious. This would be more effective if it were aimed just at violent criminals.

On Truth and $entencing

Budget officer sounds fiscal alarm on Tory sentencing law

Conservatives' tougher rules will cost Canadians billions, Kevin Page says; Toews questions estimates

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has put a price tag on the Tory's touger sentencing law, and it's a big one.
According to a dense report released by Mr. Page this morning, the Harper government’s Truth in Sentencing Act will cost Canadians an additional $5.1-billion by 2016, or about $1-billion a year over five years.
In 2009-10, corrections cost $4.4-billion; by 2016, the report projects, they will cost about $9.5-billion.
Mr. Page says the act will cost the federal government alone about $1.8-billion in new-facility construction costs, or an average of $363-million a year over five years. Provincial construction costs are projected to be even higher.
“It's a lot of money in a period of time we're generating deficits,” Mr. Page told a news conference Tuesday.
The act limiting the credit a judge can allow for time served will add about 159 days to inmates' average sentences, Mr. Page said, bringing their average time in federal custody to 722 days from 563.
Mr. Page's report says the number of inmates in federal prisons at any one time will increase to 17,058 from 13,304. That increase will require construction of 4,189 additional federal prison cells, he says.
And Mr. Page cautions that's only the federal tab.
“If you look at average head counts, they are twice as big in the provincial system — 26,000 every year versus 13,000 at the federal level,” he said.
“The provinces and the territories carry the weight of the correctional services system in Canada so the impact is going to be enormous on the provinces and territories.”
Mr. Page said he knew incarceration was expensive but, when it came to calculating the figures and the total costs, he said “you get to big numbers in a hurry. Originally, I was shocked how big it was.”
The bill, a cornerstone of the Tories' tough-on-crime agenda, became law in February. But the government has been criticized for launching its initiatives without carefully considering the costs.
Mr. Page, whose relationship with the Harper administration has been strained at best, said the government has been less-than-forthcoming in its estimates.
“One of the major concerns we have ... [is whether] sufficient funds [have been] been set aside in the fiscal framework, have we provided the full kind of transparency we need to parliamentarians?
“On the transparency side, the answer is no. The government has not been transparent and debate has been impaired as a result of that.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Correctional Services Canada did co-operate and because of that he doesn't understand Mr. Page's estimates, especially figures suggesting around a dozen new prisons could be required.
“If he wasn't getting any information from Correctional Services Canada, he must be making this up,” Mr. Toews told reporters.
Mr. Toews said he is sticking by his government's estimates that the program will cost approximately $2-billion over five years, which will include adding some new prison cells.
“I've seen nothing that would change my mind in that respect,” said Mr. Toews.
“Our goal is to protect Canadians, to keep streets safe. We want to keep dangerous repeat offenders off the streets and we are prepared to pay the cost in order to do that.”
Mark Holland, the Liberal MP who asked for the costing, said he was shocked by Mr. Page's findings.
“This figure for one bill is enormous, and we have to remember this is one bill,” Mr. Holland said. “When you start thinking about all of the other [crime] bills — 13 — this can crush Canada's budget, it can destroy and cannibalize the other departments.
“How are we going to afford our health care? How are we afford education? How are we going to afford our military if we have these failed Republican policies eating away at all the other departments?” 

On Truth and $entencing

The debate over the net costs of the government’s Truth in Sentencing bill is of the kind that makes me want to throw up my hands and whine “Aw, I don’t knowwwww…”. On the one hand, the Parliamentary Budget Office has presented an estimate of the costs that makes the bill seem demented. Kevin Page’s numbers don’t factor in the benefits of any potential deterrence effect; they admittedly rely, at many points, on wild assumptions; and they were assembled with the help of a lot of the sort of “independent” expert who sees prisons as inherently barbarous and would happily blow them all up if someone presented them with a big red button that would do it instantly. But as Page himself has pointed out, this is a fight between questionable evidence and no evidence. The government hasn’t really shown any good-faith sign of a serious effort to cost out the elimination of two-for-one credit for time in remand.
Penology, by and large, isn’t treated as a fundamental political issue in this country at all. We have a series of arguments over specific proposals; we don’t have explicit contending ideologies. Yet it’s discernible, surely, that those ideologies exist.
What we have, I think, is a group of citizens who believe that penology contains no moral component whatsoever. They are, or the most logical ones are, pure utilitarians who believe that punishment has no inherent place in a justice system. If we had a pill for perfect deterrence, one that could eliminate criminal tendencies with 100% effectiveness and no ill effects or pain, they would argue that the ethical thing to do would be to give it to all convicts, even serial murderers and child rapists, and turn them loose to reintegrate with society, preferably with their identities protected. And on the other side, we have the moralists, people who do believe in punishment even where it has no necessary utilitarian or deterrent value at all. They believe that the function of a criminal justice system is to provide justice, in the schoolyard, eye-for-an-eye sense of the term. These people would want prisons, and perhaps other miserable and dire punishments, even if we had a deterrence pill.
The camps don’t challenge each other ideologically very often. It goes unstated that the overwhelming majority of those who actually administer criminal sentencing don’t really believe in punishment—this is fairly obvious, for example, from their shiny-happy trade literature. And it goes unstated that people like Vic Toews are, in a sense, beyond evidentiary arguments like Page’s. Toews is pursuing “truth in sentencing” and applying the statutes of the land, which are based on an idea of punishment favoured by much of the citizenry (and by the framers and re-framers of our Criminal Code) but by few among the bureaucracy or the polite social elite. Toews’ bill may be stupid or insane, but his basic claim to be pursing an abandoned or betrayed “truth” is serious, and it is even half-supported by some critics, who agree that two-for-one remand credit is a substantially unlawful kludge.
I suppose a law-and-order conservative, somebody who has a moralist ideology when it comes to crime and punishment, can’t very well complain about the inspired passion for austerity displayed by critics of Truth in Sentencing. But when the Globe picked up its unsigned-editorial stick and gave Toews a broadly justified hiding with it on Wednesday, I wondered about the lede:

It is unfathomable that the Canadian government would be preparing to more than double annual spending on the country’s jails at a time when almost all other government departments are being held in check, or cut. Never mind deficit reduction. Never mind health care or education. Never mind the environment. Only one thing matters: to be seen as tough on crime.

When Canadian justice went on a liberalization binge between about 1965 and 1985, nobody thought it was necessary to provide an accurate accounting of every penny of the cost of the new measures. And while we’re on the subject, Page’s report notes, in passing, that the cost per individual federal inmate in our corrections system grew by about 50% in nominal dollars between 2001 and 2009. Where were the complaints about this extravagance, the demands that we be shown where the money was going? I must say it is funny how every newspaper columnist suddenly masters the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as soon as a Conservative government wants to “be seen as tough on crime”.
(And, frankly, I’m not sure why the “seen as” is in that sentence, since Truth in Sentencing really would lengthen criminal sentences for virtually everybody that is held in pre-trial custody and eventually convicted. Can it be argued that this is not genuine toughness on crime?)
Anti-moralist utilitarians betray their own cause when they fail to count the social costs or benefits of a change to criminal justice. Surely, according to either ideology, formal line items in the federal budget should really be marginal considerations compared to whether the measures in question lead to a safer society and less fear. For the moralists, of course, the bar is even higher: the measures must also be just in themselves. The utilitarians, for their part, have a pretty strong case that we need not consider morality or Old Testament-y justice at all.* (This is basically how the emergent field of law-and-economics approaches criminal justice.)
*But then again, you can’t be a half-utilitarian: it’s not fair to fake it because you’re concealing a specious, one-sided romantic concern for the welfare of criminals. If you are going to scream for efficient deterrence as the ultimate penological standard and insist on evidence, you must be prepared to be held to the judgment of the evidence even where it supports apparently unjust or objectionable procedures.
(In the U.S., for example, I would say a consensus is forming around the proposition that capital punishment might save a large, even double-digit number of potential murder victims for each execution; but there have, on statistical grounds, just not been enough executions since Gregg v. Georgia to warrant much confidence in the relevant interstate comparisons. In other words, the jury is still out until the sample grows. So what if the large deterrent effect is upheld over time? Will reality-based liberals in Canada circa 2060 A.D. acknowledge their forebears’ mistake and bring back the noose?)

Truth in sentencing must come with truth in spending...

Sentencing law could double prison costs

OTTAWA — The Conservative government’s tough-on-crime agenda is also tough on taxpayers, with the cost of running prisons potentially set to more than double, says Parliament’s spending watchdog.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page says the Truth in Sentencing Act could raise total prison costs to $9.5 billion a year in 2015-2016 from $4.4 billion this year. It could also require the construction of as many as a dozen new prisons.

With that kind of price tag, Page isn’t sure taxpayers can afford it.

"It’s a lot of money in a period of time we’re generating deficits," he said Tuesday after releasing his report into the costs of the Act.

The law — just one of the government’s anti-crime initiatives — limits the credit a judge can allow for time served. Page said it will add about 159 days to average sentences, bringing the average time in federal custody to 722 days from 563.

But the numbers are much higher in the provincial system.

"If you look at average head counts, they are twice as big in the provincial system — 26,000 every year versus 13,000 at the federal level," he said.

"The provinces and the territories carry the weight of the correctional services system in Canada so the impact is going to be enormous on the provinces and territories."

Page estimates the provincial share of prison costs will jump to 56 per cent in 2015-16 from 49 per cent this fiscal year.

The 2009-10 federal budget contained no mention of the new act, Page said, and it’s not clear whether Corrections Service Canada has budgeted for it either.

Page said the holes in their accounting and refusal to co-operate made it difficult for him to carry out the study, so he cautioned his numbers are conservative estimates.

The $1.8 billion to build new prisons, for example, could be eliminated if no new facilities are built and inmates are required to double- or triple-bunk.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said CSC did co-operate and because of that he doesn’t understand Page’s estimates, especially figures suggesting around a dozen new prisons could be required.

Truth in sentencing must come with truth in spending

The federal government has not adequately explained the additional costs that will result from its criminal-law bills.

It is unfathomable that the Canadian government would be preparing to more than double annual spending on the country’s jails at a time when almost all other government departments are being held in check, or cut. Never mind deficit reduction. Never mind health care or education. Never mind the environment. Only one thing matters: to be seen as tough on crime.
If the Truth in Sentencing Act costs what Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, thinks it will, the act is reckless and ridiculous. Mr. Page’s estimate is that the costs to run the federal and provincial jails, now at $4.4-billion a year, will rise to $9.5-billion by 2015-16. Sixty per cent of the extra costs, or $3.1-billion a year, would be borne by the provinces. And that’s just one of many crime bills.
If the government didn’t know what the new law would cost, its managerial incompetence is inexcusable. If, as is more likely, it knew but didn’t say, its stealth is unjustifiable. Why would Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been promoting government-wide restraint in the name of deficit control, allow jail budgets to go wild? Why would the government not tell the truth about the Truth in Sentencing Act?
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Mr. Page “must be making this up.” But where are his detailed projections? Initially, he said the new law would cost at most $90-million over the next two years. Now he says it will be $2-billion over five years. The crime legislation may make the billion dollars spent creating a federal gun registry look like petty cash by comparison.
If Mr. Page is wildly wrong, the government should blame itself. It provided limited information to Parliament, and Correctional Services Canada failed to meet with officials from Mr. Page’s office during his review. Mr. Page said he is not aware of the government’s estimates of the costs of the bill, or its methods for calculating those costs.
Are Canadians walking the streets in fear? Of course not. Crime is falling. Even if it were rising, an expenditure of billions annually to take away the near-automatic two-for-one credit for time served before trial wouldn’t make sense. The principle is sound (the routine double credit was too rich a bonus), but any good idea needs to be weighed against other good ideas, and the best idea, at this time, is not to spend new money unless that expenditure is vital. Even in a booming economy, though, such a massive jail expansion would be the wrong way to go. Truth in Sentencing needs to be accompanied by Truth in Budgeting.

Federal prison bill to cost a billion dollars a year: report
OTTAWA—A central piece of the tough-on-crime agenda championed by the Conservative government is going to cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars a year to roll out, says a report from the parliamentary budget watchdog.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released a scathing report Tuesday morning that examined the economic impact of implementing the Truth in Sentencing Act, which limits the amount of time inmates can get for time served while in custody awaiting a trial and verdict.
The report found the increased number of inmates the new legislation will deliver to federal correctional institutions — and the need to build new and bigger prisons to house them all — will cost an additional $618 million annually in operational and maintenance costs, and another $1.8 billion over five years in construction costs.
The report says changing the law will lengthen the average prison stay for an inmate by about 159 days, which would bring the total amount of time in physical custody from 563 days to just under two years.
Longer stays mean there will be an average of 17,058 inmates at any given time compared to an average head count of 13,304 inmates in fiscal 2007/2008, which is the year Page used as a baseline for his study.
The report estimates that would require an additional 4,189 cells, which means an average of $363 million annually over the next five years to expand existing facilities and build new ones.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews disputed the figures, standing by his earlier claim that officials at Correctional Services Canada told him the initiative would cost $2 billion over five years — which is nonetheless higher than the $90 million price tag he originally disclosed.
Toews also said the federal government had no plans to build new facilities but would construct new cells inside existing buildings.
Page said he received no significant co-operation from Correctional Services Canada since he began looking into the impact of a suite of Conservative law-and-order bills at the request of Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) last October.
“There was just no disclosure and I think as a legislative budget officer we want to make sure that we don’t let these things slip by that can generate significant cost pressures going forward,” said Page, who used a probabilistic study and numbers from 2007/08 because the government did not share its methodology.
Page also noted that provinces and territories are expected to have to shell out another $5 billion to $8 billion over the next half decade to handle the increased inflow.
“If we’re changing the Criminal Code, it’s not just for the federal government,” Page said. “It actually has a huge operational and cost impact on the provinces and territories.”
Laura Blondeau, a spokeswoman for Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Rick Bartolucci, said he looks forward to reviewing the report but does not want his province to pick up the tab for a federally led initiative.
Holland called on the government to come forward with the numbers for the rest of its crime and punishment bills for Page to examine and feared the final result would be astronomical.
“If all of them are implemented, this will bankrupt Canada,” Holland said. “We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars at a time when we’re already running a $50 billion deficit.
“We’d have to cannibalize the health, education, military departments just to pay for all these new prisons and what is so offensive about it is that it was tried in the United States, it was tried in the United Kingdom and these policies were a complete failure.”

Is it worth spending billions to incarcerate more people? No, it is a complete waste of money!

CBC Politics Question of the Day

New government legislation is expected to increase the prison population. Is it worth spending more taxpayers' dollars on the increased costs?

Out of 732 votes

15.2% said yes 

83.5% said no 

1.4% said unsure

Imprisoning more people for longer periods, is a quick fix, not a long term solution. Why are we emulating the US's expensive, failed and ineffective tough on crime justice system? It has not increased their public safety so what makes us think it will magically work here? Longer sentences have been proven to have adverse effects on inmates, cause further overcrowding issues, increase the chances of re-offending due to the negative prison environment, influences and subculture and decrease the chances of successful reintegration when released, because offenders are provided little assistance and support and often become institutionalized, lack life skills and are not rehabilitated. This does NOT increase public safety. Spending money incarcerating more people is not a solution and is a waste of taxpayers' dollars. Longer prison sentences do not deter, prevent or reduce crime.. in fact in some cases, they increase crime rates. What we need to do, is spend money on crime prevention programs, and addressing the root causes and contributing factors of criminal behaviour, such as reducing poverty, unemployment, addictions, spending money on education, revitalizing impoverished neighbourhoods, addictions treatments, and mental health services. Judges need less reliance on imprisonment and more on community alternatives or shorter prison sentences in minimum security facilities. We also need to provide more assistance to prisoners when they are released and implement more prevention programs and initiatives. The Conservatives' tough on crime ideology is only based on emotional responses, not research, logic or reason. It is only centered on revenge, retribution, vengeance and punishment when we actually need to place more emphasis on rehabilitation, prevention and restoration. We need justice, forgiveness and compassion/sympathy for the marginalized individuals in our society. 

Harper is simply pandering to the uneducated voters regarding crime and justice issues and is only catering to those seeking revenge against criminals by imprisoning them longer. That is not justice. Stop taking ideas from the philosophical theories of the classical school of criminology and look to the modern research and evidence that it doesn't work. Harper is completely ignoring the knowledge and expertise of the criminologists. Revenge may seem sweet, but it is very expensive and unnecessary in modern day criminal justice systems. 

There are too many people in remand awaiting trial or sentencing, who are innocent. Double time credit needs to be reinstated to help lower prison sentences and reduce overcrowding. We also need to grant more people bail. Legalizing marijuana would also be a positive step, as it would take drugs out of the hands of violent gangs where they could be regulated, would reduce prison overcrowding, and help to free up court space. Marijuana users are non violent offenders and should not be imprisoned under any circumstances. They should have the freedom to use marijuana, just like we have the freedom to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes. We need to focus less on punishment and more on rehabilitation. We need to focus on successful reintegration and helping offenders to become productive and law abiding citizens and members of society one day. We are moving closer to the US model of justice which has been proven ineffective and expensive. There are better models in other countries such as Finland, which we should be emulating. Harper is setting up a law and order agenda similar to that of the United States, which is dangerous. Their ideological approach to justice in Canada has undermined human rights. There is a difference between a justice system and a revenge system. We are moving in the direction of a revenge system, not a justice system.  

Billions to be spent on keeping more criminals imprisoned for longer periods-- a huge mistake!

Billions more to keep criminals behind bars

I see our old buddy Craig Jones — the executive director of the John Howard Society — is one of the “experts” on the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s so-called independent peer review panel for its study on how ending 2-for-1 credit for criminals is going to cost taxpayers billions more per year.
Jones an independent source on a study about sentencing? That’s a belly-laugh.
This guy runs around telling anyone who will listen that jail “doesn’t work” and how handing out custodial sentences is generally a bad thing. And he’s going to provide independent expert advice on how eliminating 2-for-1 credit may impact the federal government’s finances?
Right.
In any event, this study is largely useless because it doesn’t even contain basic data from provincial and federal corrections departments to even begin to make future cost estimates on how changes to pre-trial credits will impact government budgets.
Here’s the full report:

TISA_C-25

Since when does imprisoning more people for longer periods of time, increase public safety? Can somebody find me a research report which states this, because I have yet to find one! The Conservative government is basing their policies on zero evidence, but on emotional reaction as opposed to using logic, reason and common sense. They are pandering to the uneducated voters. The Conservatives are not truly interested in reducing crime. If they were, they wouldn't be wasting it on longer prison sentences. Longer prison sentences have been proven to not prevent, reduce or deter crime. All they accomplish is warehousing offenders and transforming them into better criminals. If the government was invested in crime prevention, they should be spending more money on education, reducing poverty, unemployment, addictions and mental health treatment/services, etc. We need to address the root causes of crime and prison fails at that. 

The Conservative tough on crime approach is a mindless, senseless plan that defies logic, reason and research. Harper is completely ignoring the educated criminologists whose career is researching what policies are effective and their research has shown that getting tough on crime is ineffective. Longer sentences have been proven to increase chances of re-offending and decrease chances of successful reintegration. Tell me how that increases public safety! Plus, crime rates have been dropping for years. Why do we need to get tough? We need a government that knows how to do research and who develops its policies based on evidence not emotion. Getting tough on crime has been an expensive failure in the US, so what makes us believe it will magically work here in Canada? We are heading down a road back to draconian methods of justice which will result in less safe societies. Lengthy sentences only accomplish the illusion of safety, nothing more.

"
Brittany, what’s it like to live your life in a bubble (or classroom)?
You’re 19 years old and attend the U of W. How much do you think your opinion matters, considering you obviously have no life experience and believe everything a sociology professor teaches is gospel.
Your opinion is simply a regurgitation of people like Craig Jones and is nothing but anti-Conservative rhetoric perpetuated by those in Opposition parties."

I understand your short term logic, but try thinking long term for a minute. Research shows that imprisoning people for longer periods, actually increases their chances of re-offending as they are exposed to the negative prison environment and subculture for longer periods and decreases their chances of successfully reintegrating into society as productive and law abiding citizens. To me, that does not say increased public safety. The majority of inmates WILL be released from prison back into our communities. It has also been shown that longer sentences are no more effective and accomplish no more than shorter sentences. Plus, why the need to “get tough”, when crimes rates have been decreasing for many years? The Conservatives are only catering to the individuals who seek revenge and I am not one of those people. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Trust me, I likely know more about crime and justice issues than you do. It is my major in university.

Brittany,
Do you believe the sentencing principles of deterrence and denunciation are important aspects of sentencing that should be preserved in the Criminal Code of Canada? If so, why?"

Brittany:
If you really stood up for what you believed in you would be waiting outside of stony welcoming the ex-cons with open arms into your home to show them how to be productive members of society.
One day if your unlucky you will be a victim of a horrible crime and when the criminal is sentenced to a slap on the wrist you tune will change….
Wake up and accept reality…. If a person chooses to act like an animal then they should be locked up like one till they are either dead or willing to live within the rules of society…
Personally I think we should take the same approach as we would a rabbid dog….put em down…."

Zach, I am allowed to hold an opinion. It does not matter that I am young. And I have had “life experience.” 

Tom: I do not believe that deterrence and denunciation are important sentencing principles. The most important sentencing principle should always be the possibility of rehabilitation and reintegration. Deterrence has been shown in research to be ineffective, as most criminals are not rational, cost-benefit analysis actors/thinkers, but instead, impulsive in their actions. Most criminals do not consider the consequences of their actions before committing a crime or the possibility of imprisonment. Deterrence is a principle which is adopted from the classical school of criminology. It was a philosophical theory, but was never studied. It is problematic that a modern and civilized society such as ours, would readily adopt an untested and philosophical idea as a sentencing principle. The same goes for denunciation. Rehabilitation should be the most important sentencing principle in my opinion. The punishment should not fit the crime, it should fit the offender and their circumstances. I believe that prison needs to be relied upon less and that Judges need to always consider the least restrictive sentences, such as community alternatives. We should always consider the possibility of rehabilitation in the community before imprisonment. 

dairyduckers: What a mature suggestion! Such a lame and overused comeback by the right-wing supporters! Try coming up with something new please. I plan on volunteering with the John Howard Society and then I will have the opportunity to help offenders in their reintegration into society through assistance and support. My beliefs and values will not change. Wake up, not everybody consciously chooses to commit a crime. Often, societal circumstances play a large role in criminal behaviour, along with psychological factors. The majority of criminals are not rational in their decisions. So I assume you believe in the philosophy “an eye for an eye?” Well, that philosophy came from the dark ages! Today, we live in a modern day and civilized society, which has long abandoned that vengeful and primitive idea. Two wrongs don’t make a right. An eye for eye makes the world go blind.

I cannot fathom how vengeful and barbaric you are! If you want our justice system to return to the dark ages, please move to Iraq or somewhere else where human rights do not exist. See how you like it there! Capital punishment is cruel, barbaric, inhumane and completely immoral. I am wondering if you have any compassion or sympathy for the marginalized individuals in our society, because it does not appear that you do! Do you value the human life? How does the government killing a murderer, demonstrate to society that killing is wrong? When the government executes somebody, it is cold blooded and pre-meditated murder. If you are opposed to murder, then you should also be opposed to capital punishment. It is the same thing. Plus, civilized societies should not be willing to take the risk of executing innocent individuals. 

Here were some other comments from the Winnipeg Sun website:
“Since when does imprisoning more people for longer periods of time, increase public safety?”
You seem like a nice, well educated young lady. Riddle me this. If Johnny spends 12 months in jail, how many crimes will he commit? If Johnny spends 24 months in jail, will he commit MORE crime or LESS crime?
See? Magically longer jail sentences result in less opportunities for Johnny to rob me and rape you. This makes sense doesn’t it? Or did they not teach math and common sense in your schooling?
- toatbhi

Everyday I read about REPEAT offenders being released after lenient sentences and mandatory probation after serving only 2/3 of thier sentence. I’d much rather have my tax dollars go to ensure my safety at home and on the streets, than to a new stadium or human rights museum or a “spirited energy” rebranding. Build more jails, but have them self-sustaining. I mean, have the “clients” that are housed there, work for the priviledge of staying there. If they refuse, off to the DOGHOUSE. A place likened to a third-world prison block. An entire compound where prisoners fight for the right to survive. (I’m sure alot of thier victims would agree that this is justice). Age would be irrelevent as alot of these young punks like to invade the homes of seniors, take the lives of hardworking cab drivers, fire random bullets into the homes of people they don’t even know, gang raping, gang killing, and list goes on. I recall a time when people who went to jail were embarassed and didn’t want to go back. Nowadays, people wear it like a friggen merit badge. Time to go back to the old ways that worked, instead of being PLAYED by a bunch of tall-forheaded social engineers, judges, and politicians that feel so sorry for the inconvenience of the laws of society.
Rantfully Jeff.

Criminals should be placed in boot camps. live in tents year round. if schooling is needed , let get an education out in the bush where they can get there high school education, and learn what life’s about. where orange coveralls, be chained together, and work on road gangs. Repairing our northern roads. If our judges, and layers don’t like it, then they should be behind bars while criminals enjoy running amok through our society. I have a lot of praise for our policemen who risk their lives every day so our so called clowns. I mean judges just slap the wrist of a thug and tells he’ll see him again in three months.
Cliff


Costs are being made an issue? Here’s the solution – start up a program called “Keep-A-Thug”, similar to the many Feed the Children personal donation plans – and we’d quickly discover that the public is perfectly willing to fund their own protection – if necessary. It’s shameful that it’s come to this – most would reasonably assume that we’re paying dearly already for such “services” from our government leaders/protectors. The facades are starting to blow over and I’m beginning to wonder just what the H*!! I do get in return for more than half of my wages.


tom says that the PBO “study is largely useless because it doesn’t even contain basic data from provincial and federal corrections departments to even begin to make future cost estimates on how changes to pre-trial credits will impact government budgets.”
i see a simple solution: give us the basic data from the provincial and federal corrections departments.
is there a reason, tom, that you’re not demanding this?

Tom alleges that Craig Jones says “jail “doesn’t work” and how handing out custodial sentences is generally a bad thing.”
Were you going to refute these points or do you think they are laughable because they are self-evident?
Is it your opinion that we should not be concerned with how much C-25 will cost?
Does it not make sense to have skeptics on the review panel?
BTW, Are you going to unmoderate my comments on prohibition causing violence? If not, can you explain why?
Matt

Perhaps these folks with all the answers would ask us “common folk” about what we think might work, rather than forever taking the “top down” approach! Train these buggers while they are locked up, teach them something so that they may have a workable trade when they are released….welfare doesn’t work for single men either, yet there are so many who sit on their asses collecting it! Have education or training manadatory or stay in your cell all day and be useless….we tax payers feed their asses, we work our assess off to earn our own living…..it shouldn’t be a holiday-headingly stay! Have the recycling plant run through the prison system, pay em a dollar a day, just get them doing something other than sitting on their butts doing nothing but time. How many children grow up without their other parent, the child suffers too in the long term. We need a review of our incarceration system and how it’s NOT working for anyone! building more jails isn’t going to fix this mess either!

As Sheldon wrote – prison should be a place of punishment, not coddling, where the food and benefits outweigh those of many seniors who worked and paid taxes for many years. I, for one, am sick and tired of Joneses whining about how those ‘poor, misunderstood’ creeps shouldn’t be behind bars.

For as long as I can remember, it’s bothered me that prisoners in Canada end up becoming financial liabilities instead of assets who should be forced to contribute to the society they’ve damaged or exploited.
From their first day in incarceration, prisoners should be put to work in nickel mines, farm fields and construction projects. If we require more prison space, let the prisoners provide the labour to build these prisons.

Ok…..enough of the hug-a-thugs!!!! If you commit a crime, you voluntarily give up your rights as a law abiding citizen. My safety come first, not your twisted social-engineered mindset that crime is OK. WTF!!! Now that that’s out of the way, lets look at the “cost”. Three squares daily, cable TV, weights and recreation equipment, free university or trades school……shall I go on? Coupled with the joke we call our legal (not justice) system, is it any wonder that criminals are running the show? Why reform…crime pays and then you’ll get a pardon with no effort needed on your part….what a complete joke! But we must also be compasionate for the rapists, pedophiles and murderers right? NOT!
Aside from my rants, any true cost must also be leveled against any gains. Like safer communities, employment (people must build and maintain these facilities) and education – our youth see our lax ways and know crime does actually pay in the end. Actually enforcing our laws and making criminals responsible for their actions will foster a greater respect from our youth and in turn decrease prison populations. Also removing criminal charges for “sin” consumptions would be benificial as normally law abiding people will not be criminalized for using these recreational indulgences and keep those prison spots open for those that need the room. There is always a yin to the yang, don’t preach just one side to us. We aren’t as stupid as you think we are JHS!!!
Just my opinion. I pay taxes, lots of taxes!

Nothing – including cost – trumps public safety, despite what social-engineers tell us. I’ve even heard a dumber argument against reform than costs – from the leader of an African-Canadian Association out of Toronto who made the statement that public safety should take a back-seat to immigration laws and justice redress – advocating for addressing the imbalance of certain ethnics in prison versus just putting criminals in jail. Strange how the public didn’t hear much about that one – yet we hear from free speech opponents of a private TV news station that hasn’t even aired yet. Has this country gone mad


I value my life and the lives of my family…the problem is the people commiting the crimes do not….I know my life holds no more value than a single ciggarette…that is reality.
Just ask Audry Cooper who was killed because she didnt have a spare ciggarette for the punks who wanted one…
Or the guy who lost an eye to a screwdriver AFTER handing over his wallet a few years ago.
As for choices…everyone has choices….not everyone had a rosy childhood growing up yet they have CHOSEN to not rape, murder, steal and use that as an excuse for thier BARBARIC behaviour.
Honestly I think the only way you will understand is if something happens to you personally…until then you will keep spouting your liberal hug-a-thug crap that makes 99.9999% of the population sick.
PS HAVE YOU TAKEN IN AN EX-CON YET??? LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD….. I DOUBT IT….

Not all crime is a choice. In fact, most criminals are not rational, cost-benefit analysis actors/thinkers. The majority are impulsive in their actions. Also, provocation, intoxication and other situational circumstances also play a role in criminal behaviour. Mental illnesses, addictions, poor upbringing, unemployment, poverty, provocation, etc. are not excuses, they are legitimate reasons and contributing factors to criminal behaviour. My beliefs will not change. I am not a "hug a thug" or whatever you right wingers call us. I am somebody who wants to help marginalized individuals in society. I want to assist and support offenders in their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, as that is in society's best interests, and it increases public safety as the root causes of crime are being addressed. 

Crime rates are going down? That’s funny. All that’s changed is in the way they count crime. They started handing out “conditional” sentences like candy several years ago and then, miraculously, “crime” goes down. TheY just don’t include conditional sentences in their new accounting scheme. Any body with a brain would know that crime has NEVER BEEN WORSE. We don’t put people in jail for anything anymore, including when they kill people with stolen cars. Not even repeat, dangerous offenders. Even with that, the jails are still over-full. Interesting. Then we have a girl come along and tell us we don’t understand the situation? We understand perfectly well miss. Liberalized justice lacks any proper deterrance or results. Time has proven that. Now step aside because the rest of us, the majority, are here to save you from yourself. All prisoners should be made to work and learn in prison. My guess is that you’d rather John Howards type to study things for a few more decades with full funding from me the taxpayer. I hereby withdraw my financial support for any more of this type of nonsense. Pass that along to the JHS so they can make the appropriate cutbacks right now.

Jeff:
Do you not see the relevance between recidivism and crime rates? Most crimes are now going unrecorded due to the YCJA, lack of people wanting to even file a report due to the injustice they are recieving. People in high risk neighborhoods are afraid of being the next victim of a high risk offender. How much is the life of an innocent victim in your eyes when compared to the life of a killer?
Go up to Tim Mclean’s mother and tell her, her son’s life isn’t worth as much as Vince Li’s rehabilitation! I’d love to see it! In fact why don’t you save the taxpayers some money and have Sidney Teerhuis-Moar stay with you and get rehabilitated! I bet you’d be the one getting “rehabilitated” pretty damn quick!!!
You really have to face the fact that some people don’t want to be rehabilitated and will con you out of your life. They will smile to your face while stabbing you in the back. These sub-humans need to be separated for the good of society. They are sub-human as they don’t empathise with thier victims. If they did, they wouldn’t commit the crime. The only time they are sorry is when they are caught. (because they know it will reduce thier sentence, not from anything else)
It would be nice to one day be able to jail you and the likes of you that keep releasing KNOWN high risk offenders for CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE CAUSING DEATH, because you KNOW SO MUCH MORE than the rest of us. It’s the same as throwing a loaded gun in the middle of a park and expecting noone to get hurt. Just because you didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t make you innocent!!!

@ Brittany,
http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/viewpoint/story.html?id=75599e4a-1bfc-4bdf-9203-0e9d79021b13
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/11/21/stats-prisons.html
If crime has been on the decline as you suggest, why is the prison population increasing? It definitely isn’t due to less crime. I can pull stats refuting your stats. I believe what I see, not stats. (87% of stats are made up 30% of the time). Anybody can skew figures to suit thier own purposes. But, when you deal in personal facts that you can only see from life experience, then you can logically argue a point.
30 years ago, people on my street were able to leave thier doors unlocked and not worry about theives, home invasions, armed robberies and the like. Today, almost everyone has a security system, big dogs (with warnings), and have thier doors locked when they are home. We are now prisoners in our own homes because we let inmates run wild!!! This is the world you created because you believe the rights of the criminal should trump the rights of the victim. I fear what the future holds in the next 30 years if you have your way.

I am not completely sure about denunciation because I have read any research regarding denunciation, which is why I say it should not be completely removed.

Fair enough, Brittany. And I trust as you continue your studies in criminal justice you will come across this very important sentencing principle which is cited daily in Canadian court rooms. It is the most cited principle when courts express the need to hand down “fit” sentences.
Denunciation is often confused with “revenge.” It in fact has nothing to do with revenge. It is the court’s expression of disapproval of an offensive on behalf of society. As you continue your studies, you will learn that denunciation is a cornerstone in sentencing when courts seek to ensure offenders receive “fit” sentences for their crimes and in order to ensure the administration of justice is not brought into disrepute.
It is weighed against other important sentencing principles such as rehabilitation and reintegration.
But it is a very important sentencing principle.

The trouble with denunciation is that it is completely subjective and it can not be quantified. Yes, the intent of denunciation is, in part, to express societal disapproval of conduct. However, ask the average person what the average sentence is for the average crime and they won’t have a clue. There is no point in “sending a message” if no one is listening. There is no point in making examples of people if no one (specifically bad guys) are paying attention.
Now, you, being “the media,” could help the courts “send a message” by calling especially harsh sentences to the public’s attention, rather than focusing on exceptionally light sentences and complaining that they are the inadequate norm.
For example, if you tell college students that they binge drink more than they actually do, they will binge drink more.
It’s all about perception, and you very deliberately give your readers the false impression that convicted criminals are slapped on the wrist and hugged, thus undermining the (entirely theoretical) denunciation and deterrence you claim to be fond of.
@Brittany. I can save you some time. Tom and his fans see only benefits and no costs associated with incarceration. When challenged with facts and figures demonstrating that longer sentences are counter-productive, they accuse people of (mysteriously) caring more about the rights of criminals than their victims, and challenge you to present you peer-reviewed studies to the victim’s grieving relatives.
Of course, you and I know, as more mature adults, that what matters is the outcome of our criminal justice policies, not how they make us feel, or how much they satisfy our primitive lust of “justice.”
We understand that there are far more cost-effective and civilized ways to improve public safety and reduce crime, and that therefore lobbying to squander our finite resources on longer sentences, if not death camps, based on “common sense” rather than reality or some familiarity with the literature on the subject, is a crime in and of itself.

Yes, the sentencing principle of denunciation is subjective. Most aspects of the criminal justice system are subjective. The act of sentencing — where judges weigh the competing demands of various sentencing principles and try to mesh them with mitigating and aggravating factors of specific cases — is a highly subjective exercise carried out within very broad parameters.
Retired associate chief justice Jeffrey Oliphant probably said it best in an interview with me when he described sentencing as by far the most difficult job for judges, calling it “more of an art than a science.”
That’s the nature of law. It even begins with our Charter, which says that our rights and freedoms are subject “only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
That overarching qualifier in the Charter is extremely subjective and it can be — and is — interpreted in many different ways.
So I’m not sure what your point about denunciation is. Yes it’s subjective, we all know that. Most aspects of law — where courts and tribunals try to give meaning to terms such as “reasonable” and “fit” — are subjective.
Matt, do you think the sentencing principle of denunciation should be eliminated from the Criminal Code of Canada?
For that matter, there is another high-level sentencing principle in the code that demands that courts ensure sentences are proportionate to the gravity of the offence. Since that principle has nothing to do with outcomes, do you think it should be removed from the criminal code, too?
On the media’s role of highlighting harsh sentences to the public, I agree with you. I think it’s the media’s job to not only highlight the weak and ineffective sentences but to also report on the fit ones.
But again, you forgot to do your homework. I do highlight fit sentences in order to provide examples to readers of when courts get it right.

Allow me to introduce you to the Hard-Ball Award handed out in my column from time to time to highlight those very sentences that I believe are fit and to congratulate the judge in question for giving denunciation the proper weight.

“We understand that there are far more cost-effective and civilized ways to improve public safety and reduce crime, and that therefore lobbying to squander our finite resources on longer sentences”
So what are these ways?
This logic was perpetuated by the Liberals and the Chretien reign and we got the awesome YCJA out of it. Look how well that has worked out.
Bottom line, criminals can’t commit crimes when they’re locked up. You’re failing to realize that there are people out there who will continue to live a life of crime, they thrive on it. All the education in the world and creating more of a welfare state won’t change that.
And again, what about the protection of victims and society as a whole?

Tom does publish his hard-ball awards when deserved, but I suspect they are so far and few between that I can see how you might have missed them.
Please explain to me and the general “immature” public how much more cost effective “catch and release, then catch again” is when compared to keeping them locked up. Tell us how valuable the life of an innocent victim is when compared to that of a repeat offender. You show too much mercy to those who would show you none. We have already seen the outcome of YOUR criminal justice policies, and that is the exact reason we demand change.
Like I said before, I would gladly pay the extra taxes for more jails since the ones we already have are overflowing.


Yes, because if people are against harsher sentences, and have a tough on crime slant they are simply uneducated and backwards thinking.
Good thing we have liberal bleeding hearts who are smarter than us all do the thinking and decision making for us. Where would we be without them?
Brittany and Matt, I would urge you to take a walk downtown or in the heart of the North End at around midnight. When you’re there, try educating the poor downtrodden gang members and criminals and really get to the root causes of crime.

You are entitled to your opinion. If you want to believe that getting tough on crime is effective, that's fine. The only problem, is that the "tough on crime" approach is not evidence-based. There is no research to show that getting tough has been effective, anywhere. What we need to do, is get smart on crime, by addressing crime's root causes and contributing factors. Prison does keep somebody from re-offending but it often fails at addressing the root causes of one's criminal behaviour. Therefore, if those issues are not addressed, they will be released with an increased chance of re-offending. Harper is ignoring the research compiled by educated criminologists who study crime trends for a living, and whose research has proven that tough on crime policies are ineffective and expensive.

Tom, given that deterrence is imaginary and denunciation is subjective, the primary goal of sentencing is, as your minions keep insisting, incapacitation
… because public safety is your greatest concern, right?. Therefore, imposing harsher sentences to denounce crimes at the expense of public safety is a bad idea.
If denunciation were the most important sentencing principle, then it would make more sense to torture criminals in the public square, yes? Rather than sentence then in a court room that no one attends and lock them in a cage that no one visits.

No, I don’t think denunciation should be removed as a sentencing principle from the criminal code, but I do think it should be a lower priority than
public safety.
If, for example, we could send a stronger message of denunciation by defunding health care, education and drug treatment and building more prisons, ultimately causing more crime, I would be opposed on public health and safety grounds.
Denunciation should be balanced with the principles that an offender should not be deprived of liberty, if less restrictive sanctions may be appropriate in the circumstances; and, all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.

Why is it important to keep the sentencing principle of denunciation in the Criminal Code?

Some criminals, and potential criminals, albeit very few, actually care about what society approves and disapproves of. So, to the extent that criminal sanctions communicate what society disapproves of, and impart the strength of that disapproval, they have some denunciating value.

I am sure I could if I tried, but I was merely conceding what I thought you believed. I care about societal approval and disapproval, so it seems logical that other Canadians, like yourself, do as well.
That said, what really prevents me from committing crimes is the golden rule, not social values as reflected in sentencing practices.
Indeed, denunciation may be counter-productive insofar as criminals reject social values and deliberately act in ways counter to those values.
I confess that I am not aware of any evidence that denunciation deters crime, which is one reason I think denunciation should be a relatively minor consideration in sentencing. If you have evidence that denunciation deters, I’d like to see it.
Denunciation is also supposed to increase public confidence in the criminal justice system, and provide some solace to the victims of crime. I don’t dispute this either, which is why I would not entirely remove denunciation as a sentencing principle.

You said you would not eliminate denunciation from the criminal code because it has some limited benefit. You said a small minority of criminals and would-be criminals care about societal approval and disapproval, yet you have no evidence to substantiate that claim.
You have just committed the Matt Elrod cardinal sin: You have made a claim about criminal behaviour without any peer-reviewed research to back up that claim.
Instead you rely on the pedestrian gut instinct of “it seems logical” that you constantly accuse others of using.

“You said a small minority of criminals and would-be criminals care about societal approval and disapproval, yet you have no evidence to substantiate that claim.”
More specifically, I don’t have any evidence at hand, yes.
“You have made a claim about criminal behaviour without any peer-reviewed research to back up that claim.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The concession that denunciation may deter some crime by virtue of expressing societal disapproval is conventional wisdom. Deterrence is, after all, one of the stated intents of denunciation. Denunciation has other, less tangible redeeming values.
“Instead you rely on the pedestrian gut instinct of “it seems logical” that you constantly accuse others of using.”
In conceding what I thought to be your unsubstantiated point, not in advancing my opinion, which is that denunciation should be secondary to other considerations in sentencing, such as public safety, public expense and rehabilitation. In other words, I don’t think we should impose harsher sentences primarily to appease our thirst for justice, compensate victims,
win votes or avoid an eight ball award.

If I make an assertion in support of a proposition, and it runs contrary to conventional wisdom, say, cannabis does not cause cancer, or crime rates are going up, then it behooves me to provide some evidence to support my contention. That’s basic “netiquette.”
However, if I assert something that is widely accepted as being the scientific consensus, like drug prohibition causes crime, then I feel less obliged to do your homework for you. That doesn’t mean I won’t, just that I feel less obligated to.
If you make an assertion, like denunciation is a important sentencing principle, and I agree with you, I do not feel obligated to produce evidence to support our shared opinion, both because it sounds logical and it is conventional wisdom, but also because we seem to agree on it and neither of us needs to be convinced.
I have no reason to doubt that denunciation has redeeming value, including some deterrent effect, nor any reason to believe that you have any doubts about it.

Where I think we might differ is in how much value denunciation has. You seem to think it is really important, if not the most important objective of sentencing, worth billions per year, and I disagree. I put public safety before denunciation. 

Sentencing Act to cost billions -- stupid Conservatives!

Sentencing Act to cost billions

These are some comments from the CBC site which I enjoyed:

Have a look in the USA how tough on crime worked. Most states in the US are close to needing a bailout because of the tough on crime laws. The US government is planning on letting out thousands of inmates because tough on crime did nothing, it didn't reduce crime, but it bankrupt the country. The US has the toughest crime laws & the highest crime rate. That's all Harper's tough on crime will do is bankrupt our country & increase crime. We need a new government.

Is there no failed American example the Conservatives don't want to emulate?

What part of crime in Canada is going down - and has been for over a dozen years don't the Conservatives understand? Really - it's not that hard to grasp!

This would all be great but the entire approach is wrong. We are focused on "punishing" them, not rehabilitation. Even when they call them "rehabilitation", there is none.

They are probably allowed to watch UFC and indulge in bestial conversations and listen to degenerated music. Can't you see, even if you don't want to, that this inspires more animal like behavior?

As funny as it sounds, they should be learning, painting, sculpting, all rap music etc should be banned, they should not be allowed to talk about vile things, only nice things. This is how prison becomes worthwhile to society.

To just punish them, and let them get worse, well, we will become like America. Of course, this is how it will go, because our leaders are not chosen based on who they actually are. It has more to do with companies and votes that were almost bought and paid for...

no rationale person with any education/training on the issue is going to say that crimerates are increasing. They are going down year after year, and have been for a number of decades. And it is not just Canada experiencing this phenonmen - this trend is documented across the Western world, including the U.S, Sociologists will say that the murder rate is the best guage, as it is not susceptible to variances in reporting. And the murder rate in Canada is at its lowest rate in almost 40 years.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rcfeORFu

Here's what you do. Legalize pot and offer amnesty to any in convicted of possession in the past. That mean releasing some of the prison population and reducing the amount of criminal going into prison. On top of that they can tax pot and use that to fund the increased cost of the penal system. Then change this law and it will all balance out. Problem solved!

I'd much rather see pot smokers free and rapist in jail. That's just me though. I'm sure others who would prefer the opposite will give me the thumbs down.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rcftgdpj

If putting and keeping people in jail made things safer, the U.S. would be the safest country in the western world, as they have more people in jail than anyone. Anyone heard an American pudit crow about how safe their country is? Also, without the benefit of awarding reduced time for keeping people locked up in overcrowded remand centres, look for Charter challenges to let people OUT because their conditions are indecent.

Imagine how quickly this bill -- and the resultant privatization of our penal system -- would have proceeded if this Conservative government had an unassailable majority in the House.

A liberal position on this issue would dictate that there are more effective and cost saving ways to deal with incarceration in this country. In general it is more harmful than good to keep people in prison for a long time

This law is a conservative position. This position dictates that a criminal act be punished. it is of no consequence the monetary cost and effects on the convict. The person who has broken the law must suffer. Rehabilitation is not really neccessary.

Depending on your values you would be swayed by one version or the other. Right now in this country there are more people who are for the conservative position. Since we live in a democracy, majority wins.

Crime rate has been falling - why fix it if it ain't broke?? Opposition must kill this bill!!!

How much of this additional expense can be tied to the drug trade and related offenses? If Harper wasn't so closed-minded re: pot, most of our prisons would open up and leave sufficient room for those who actually commit crimes.

Once the price tag reaches sufficient levels, perhaps Canadians will wake up to the trouble with our prohibition laws.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

Well we sure as heck know what the outcome of this style of justice system was in the U.S. We will get the same here. Get ready for real criminals Canada. Something our system has kept us from having to deal with until now. Get ready to see a surge in crime in this country. Disagree all you want but it i coming, and I will say I told you so.

Typical narrow minded conservatives.

So Called Tories - Always Reactive Never Proactive. Lots of money to keep people in jail but no money for programs to keep people from getting into trouble. The So Called Tories - the party with no vision.

Human beings should be given a second chance if they made a mistake and are repentant and rehabilitated.

This new law is just playing politics. I guess they want to look MACHO and tough on criminals to get votes from non thinking Canadians.

Who REALLY are the worst criminals on this planet?

A human being who commits a crime today in this unforgiving "scared" society is a marked man FOREVER. These people can look forward to unemployment, poverty and harassment FOREVER. What an unnecessary expense and a waste of human productivity.

Every pardon should be looked at INDIVIDUALLY to see if it has merit. The only intelligent way to go. Can't expect that from these narrow minded "dumb vote" pursuing politicians.

“The "soft on crime" and "soft on terror" Liberals and NDP don't understand this.”

No, what they DO understand is that it doesn’t work. It will cost billions and there will be no difference in crime. In fact crime might actually increase. It's not about being soft on crime or mollycoddling criminals or letting them off easy or blaming society or any of that other drivel; its about spending money on things that work. You’d think that conservatives woud be in favour of that.

“Jail is a good place to keep criminals. We should build more of them. Come to Winnipeg and you'll soon see why”

And when they come out they are even more likely to commit a crime again. And anyway think about it. Winnipeg and Edmonton have a much higher crime rate than say Ottawa or Quebec City. Yet they have EXACTLY the same justice system. So its obviously not the justice system that is resulting in higher crime in Winnipeg and Edmonton – to the extent that you can lay it at the feet of any government it has to be the provincial one.

Are we trying to emulate the USA? The United States has less than 5% of the world's population and 23.4% of the world's prison population. It's not really helped them crime-wise (understatement).

More stupidity from the Harperites. A shocking waste of money. Another shocking waste of money. Another in a long list of shockingly stupid and expensive ideas. Harper is drunk on power and his following have IQs in the range of room temperature. In Celcius. I can't wait for an election.

Harpo's "get tough on crime/drugs" program is a carbon copy of the american approach, which sounds very good in a speech but is hugely expensive and notoriously ineffective. Harpo wants to get tough on crime while the actual crime rate has been going down over the last few years. So, why fix something if it's not broken?

Yet another beautiful example of those who refuse to let facts interfere with their ideologies. Construction and prison jobs are literally bankrupting the United States and doing absolutely NOTHING to reduce crime. On the other hand, Canada's so-called 'hug-a-thug' policies have seen crime rates dropping steadily for decades. And yet the Con crowd, who supposedly are so damn fiscally responsible and concerned about law and order, want us to emulate a nation with a violent crime rate ten times that of Canada and an ineffective justice system that is bleeding the country dry.

It is simply laughable that you folks claim the moral and fiscal high ground when you keep calling for us to spend money on things that DO NOT WORK. It must be great to base all your policies on moral outrage rather than simple proven fact. So much easier to call people names like 'lefty' and 'lib' than to spend five minutes researching a topic to see WHY the 'lefties' and 'libs' push for programs that actually WORK, even if they are not as much fun as good old useless vengeance laws.

Retribution is an easy thing to sell to a society that doesn't know any better. The Conservative way: slander the "leftists" as uncontrollable spenders, and then shift all the spending away from social programs that help prevent and alleviate the problems that the Conservatives create by spending *even more* than the "leftists" on state-sanctioned retribution and oppression ("tough on crime" policies, incarceration, exorbitant military spending, systematic maintenance of high poverty levels, etc.). In short, spend more than the "leftists" on band-aid policy initiatives to fix problems that are created by taking funding away from the social programs that prevent those problems in the first place. It's been this way in North America for generations: Conservatives/Republicans make a mess, the Liberals/Democrats clean it up. Canada and the U.S. just aren't in sync at the moment.

The crime rate has been falling in this country since the mid 1990s and yet we have a Prime Minister whose highest priorities include being "tough on crime". The priorities were also supposed to include being tough on spending but Harper is on track to being another big spender like Mulroney.

It is ironic that the Conservatives always preach fiscal reponsibility and always end up being the biggest spenders.

I'm not sure where the assumption comes from - that there's a segment of the population dissatisfied with the justice system and the only solution is to increase the length of sentences and number of inmates. That's seems like 19th century thinking, and doesn't fit with the available data.

Besides, if we're going to call them a 'Conservative' party one would think the overall spending would decrease, not be increased with policing, incarceration and foreign wars.

Canada may be nowhere near the US in terms of incarceration, but we're ahead of most European nations that have lower crime rates. The US has also shown that there's no correlation between increased incarceration and lower crime rates.

So the Con response is "We want to live in a safer society".

Why the $#@^ would you try to accomplish that by emulating one of the least safe societies on the planet?

And next, the fascist Harper regime will re-introduce capital punishment as a cost saving measure.

Buidling more prisons is not the answer, I have volunteered in a fedral prison for over 10 years and until the government puts resources in place in the community to help against such issues as poverty and drug/alcohol addictions, then you will continue to need to address crime. Believe or not the majority of people can be rehaibilitated, more emphasis needs to be on restorative justice programs in the community as well. A federal warden once said to me the one thing that kept her at her job was the number of people that went out the door far exceeded the numbers of people that returned. Why don't the government listen to its own experts and its own studies? The US are finally realizing their system or more prisons didn't work and they are working at rehabilitation, now our government is about to begin to start a program that has been proven over and over again to not work.

The Cons have Simple solutions for most things that end up costing us billions. But it is the simple minded electorite that votes for quick fix solutions.

All policy changes what ever they may be have to be throughly and impartially costed out before being put to the public.

Scam. What Canadians want is to keep dangerous inmates in prison and away from the public. This legislation makes no distinction between inmates who are a danger to society and those who could be released immediately and never re-offend. (The latter group is most of the prison population at any given time, according to the government's own research.)

Why would the Harper Conservatives be so eager to throw away billions on a plan that doesn't accomplish what Canadians want? The so-called Truth in Sentencing Act is step one in the scheme to turn the Canadian correctional system into a privatized nightmare, similar to the United States. The U.S. incarcerates more of its own citizens than any nation on Earth. A good part of the reason is that prisons have been turned into a for-profit industry there; virtually a "Prison-Industrial Complex."

Billions are drained from the public coffers into private corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of America. Political commentator Bill Maher states: "Prisons used to be a non-profit business... The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world's largest prison population -- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line."

Let Mr. Toews and Mr. Harper know that what you want is public safety, not an ever-expanding privatized horror like the United States. If the U.S. prison system prevented or discouraged crime, it would be getting smaller every year, not growing like an aggressive tumor.

Umm, with declining crime rates, and raising poverty rates, will someone please explain why our government is even CONSIDERING spending billions of dollars on a non-problem?? Uhg, I can't wait for election time...

People continue to flout the same rehetoric over and over again, probably because they do not have ANY, not even a basic understanding, of our Criminal Justice System. Please, for example, explain how "criminals have more rights than victims"? I have been asking this question for years, and have never gotten any type of informed answer, but I would wager 10-15% of these posts make mention of that.

PLEASE, I beg you people, educate yourself on our Criminal Justice System, you may be surprised. Go to your local court house and sit in on a trial, or grab a copy of the YCJA or CCC and read up. Go to Stats Canada and look at crime rates. Seriously, it would be so much more productive debating with everyone if they actually presented facts and valid points instead of stereotypes, blanket statements and simply wrong information (ie offender DO work in facilities despite popular belief).

And finally, QUIT DEMANDING A REINSTATEMENT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. It will never happen because the vast majority of Canadians are not vengeful, pitchfork weilding animals. Please, go to counselling to get help for your desire to kill others (not to mention these "others" are often SEVERLY mentally ill), it's sick...

Harper and his get tough on Crime Policies do not include a get tough on Politicians Crime that get caught with either their hand in the cookie jar (Brian Mulroney) or criminal convictions (Rahim jaffer and the ex Atorney general of Ontario for drunk driving and manslaughter)

I wonder why? Are they going to build a Health Spa for these guys when they inevitably get caught doing something? I think it is professional courtesy because Harper is eveything but clear and transparent and his time will come.

Or perhaps Harper has created this solely for his own personal gain? These costs to Canadians are outragous when you consider that harper wants to incarcerate canadians that get caught growing Marijuana-this is just outright stupid- marijuana growers are not a deteriment to society-legalizie marijuana and get the existing people in jail for these crimes released and bingo-you free up 100's of cells for those criminals that actually should be locked up-rapists, murders, pedophiles etc.

Harper wants Corrections Canada Privatized and I am sure he will be in on the IPO's as an inside trader if he gets everything his way-pass new laws to make more people go to jail and own shares in the companies that own them!

This is Harpers clear and apparent agenda.

Instead of building prisons, let's invest the $1 billion directly into programs that the best data we have show to be the most effective at reducing the type of crime that puts people in prison. If we can help turn people away from substance abuse/ criminal behaviour/ gangs whatever that leads to crime through early intervention/ housing/ health/ education/ family support then if the social scientists are right in the longer term we will not need the additional prisons. In the short term we will have crowded jails.

The goal should be to reduce the number of people committing crimes by giving the high risk people support; with a justice system that is fair but tough on those who do.

The logic driving these decisions is reactionary and based on isolated incidents. Someone will bring up some case where some criminal only got X years, and demand that the justice system be fixed. Much like Karla's pardon. What is neglected is the overall effect of changing laws to deal with the few exceptions - the Cons would make it impossible for everyone to get pardons, so even the 'rehabilitated' will have a much harder time reintegrating into society.

Tough on crime Indeed! (Tougher on my taxes, more likely!)

I know the angry Right will jump ALL over this, but I'd rather see the extra billions being plowed into social services than more prison space. I have yet to see any compelling evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that supports the notion that harsher penalties reduces crime in any way.

But there's plenty of evidence (even if it's just anecdotal) that a high proportion of crimes are committed by people from a disadvantaged background.

Vengeance might be satisfying, but I don't believe it keeps your kids safe.

Feel free to add (right hand) thumbs down with reckless abandon!

Feel free to disregard the evidence that the crime rate was going down under those foppish lefty Liberals.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord's Right Hand Men.

Just like the US, build more prisons, don't attack the problem. Low wages, high unemployment, poor education. It's all about the show, no substance. With this gov't the problem is going to get worse. They model themselves on the US and it hasn't worked there, but they don't care.

1. This is not changing our legal system. Its not going to increase the amount of people found guilty of crimes or how they are represented or prosecuted. All this changes is the stupid fact that people were getting credited for time served BEFORE trial. As things currently stand these people are getting credit for time served before trial at the rate of 2:1 or 3:1 which means they delay their trials as long as possible because for every day they serve their sentences will be reduced by 2 or 3 days.

BTW people that serve time before trial are either a) charged with very serious offences or b) deemed to be untrustworthy enough to be released on their own recognizance. I have no sympathy for people in either category, personally.

2. This is not going to reduce crime rates and anybody that claims it will is wrong. It is simply going to close a loophole that should never have existed in the first place.

Instead of spending all this money on prisons why don't we spend it on education. Wouldn't it be nice if every child in Canada with learning disabilities and special needs could get help. Wouldn't it be nice if families with autistic children could get help. Wouldn't it be nice if the government picked up the tab for children needing specialized surgery for children unable to get it Canada.
Wouldn't it be nice if seniors and others needing extended care would find such facilities when needed and be treated well and fed a healthy diet.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could train more Canadian doctors. Wouldn't it be nice if Canadian nurses could get full time work in Canadian hospitals.
From the above it is obvious that my wish list and the CONs is very different. But I guess if you are scared enough there is no upper limit to what you'll spend. How about it CONs, how scared are you?

The Conservatives are actively ignoring the entirety of criminology academics, lawyers, and sociologists, who are universally decrying these backwards policies. They are a drain on society, and excessive jail time often creates many more problems than it is alleged to solve.
It is simple pandering to ignorant, angry, scared people (aka the conservative base) and creating a powerful political lobby.
In the US, where incarceration is a big $ business, more people are in jail than the REST OF THE WORLD, COMBINED. We're going backwards, people.
We can build schools, or prisons. It's our choice. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's the right answer there....

What a joke, is this working in the US? How are their crime problems?
Oh wait they have the highest rate of incarceration in the western world, it must be working. So typical, a bunch feel good solutions to much deeper problems. If we are serious about getting tough on crime, how about coraling the horses before they get out, instead of closing the barn door after they've got out, this is the absolute wrong direction to be taking.
I have a bright idea, why dont we look at the countries with the least amount of crime, and emulate the system they are using, at least it would be money well spent, all this is doing is creating a bigger human industry.

How hard is it to understand that 'lefties' don't support prevention over incarceration because they love criminals, they support it because it WORKS!?!?

So, so many posts about our 'failing justice system'. What a farce! Canada has one of the lowest violent crime rates the planet has ever seen and it continues to trend down. If that's your idea of failure, then fail away justice system, fail away. And what do these posters want us to do to fix this failed system? Emulate a country that has a violent crime rate ten times that of Canada, and has ten times the number of people per capita in jail at public expense rather than in the work force paying taxes.

Supporting prevention programs over incarceration doesn't mean I love thugs. It means I hate them so much I don't want them to become thugs in the first place. Supporting prevention over vengeance doesn't mean I don't care about victims, it means I love victims so much I'd rather they didn't become victims in the first place.

You can call me a hug-a-thug all you want, but my way puts the thugs to work as productive, tax-paying members of society before they become thugs and your way puts them in prison eating three meals a day on my dime after they've hurt someone. Who really is soft on criminals? My way spends one dollar to prevent a crime, your way spends ten dollars to punish a criminal. Who is the real fiscal conservative, lefty me or righty you?

Time for those who call themselves conservative to realize their policies result in the things they accuse liberals of, and that liberal policies result in the effects conservatives CLAIM to value. Just be honest, you don't care about economics or crime rates or victims, you just enjoy vengeance. That is the only explanation for supporting this law.

Funny how now we're imitating U.S. policy, almost down to the letter.

Even failed policies, like the "Tough on Crime" policy which has their prisons overflowing with people - in fact, the largest prison population in the world (over 2 million) and highest incarceration rate in the world.

And is the U.S. safer for it? Not really. Demographics have helped by reducing the numbers of 16 - 25 year olds as a percentage of the population. But I don;t think there is any public perception of safer streets in the average American's minds.

Meanwhile you have an excellent college for criminals in each and every one of those prisons, especially for the younger offenders who should not be there.

What does this say about our government? Surely not that they'd rather play to voter's fears and anxieties in exchange for votes than to have a sensible approach to law enforcement?

Harpo's "get tough on crime/drugs" program is a carbon copy of the american approach, which sounds very good in a speech but is hugely expensive and notoriously ineffective. Harpo wants to get tough on crime while the actual crime rate has been going down over the last few years. So, why fix something if it's not broken?

The arms registry was hailed as being too expensive to continue BUT this piece of legislation is ok??? I feel so sorry for all those farmers who would have to drive alllllllll the way to town to register their firearms. After all, we're only talking about saving human lives. They register their truck, their houses, their tractor, their animals, their dogs BUT never will they register their firearms.

We only need more jails because the penalty is going up.

"Fighting crime" is not done by increasing penalties - that's been known since Elizabethan times when pickpockets were hanged en masse in the public squares ... and the audience was relieved of their wallets by the pickpockets who weren't on the scaffold.

"Fighting crime" is done by increasing the certainty of getting caught ... and that's the first lesson in every Criminology 101 class in every university in every country.

There are so many studies to show that increasing the penalty has no effect at all on criminals.
But ... to a gov't, the appearance of "doing something" is more important than actually doing something. And, after all it isn't their money ... it's our money. So, if a political party stands a chance to get a point in the polls, they don't care how much the cost, nor if we get anything for the money.

And ... retribution is so much easier to sell than effective government.

We'll get more $Billion dollar bills from this government for nothing, is my guess.

They sure are on a roll insofar as billion dollar spendings are concerned.

Nice round figure.

And ... like Mulroney was, this gov't will be out of power by the time the bill has to be paid.

And ... Harper's bunch will be in opposition by then ... crowing about how the new gov't is levying such high taxes ... never mentioning, of course that the high taxes are to pay for the fiscal mismanagement of Harper and his crew.

We heard it all when Mulroney was finally ousted. We'll hear it again when Harper is gone.

It's amazing how the right-wingers just don't get it. Crime rates are falling, but the Neo-Cons continue to call for more prisons at huge public expense. These people would cut back on health care, education, anything that is in the public interest. Their little pea-brains just don't understand that social spending reduces crime.

"I am surprised at how many people would rather let criminals off easy ..."

The phrase "letting criminals 'off easy'" does not make sense, though I am sure very few will agree with me. I am not terribly familiar to life "inside" but, after half a year to a year incarcerated, the feeling of life wasted must be profound. The thought of even that short a sentence feels to me to be anything but 'easy.'

That is not to say I am in favour of shortening prison sentences willy nilly. I am in favour of creating prison culture and accountability among inmates that truly would lead to healing and positive change because of prison time. But I do not want to see sentences lengthened when nothing is accomplished by it but the illusion of safety.

The CPC and supporters of this bill either do not understand facts or choose to ignore them, plain and simple. It hasn't worked in the US and will not work here. They like to pull statements out of their a**es, but reality does not prove their theories correct.

The only thing it will allow is the privatization of prisons, which Harper has wanted all along. And of course, Ignatieff and the Libs. will go along with it, because they don't have a vision themselves.

Like everything else in the world today, common sense seems not to be a trait amongst our leaders today...
Knee jerk reactions like this are always popular with the neo-cons and right wingers of the world (not to mention fascists!) but in reality in most cases we are talking about crimes that are not that bad...most people in jail are in jail due to offenses that are no violent...there are also varying degrees of violence...murdering or attempting to murder someone should have very strict laws and things like this I can see increasing but to put someone in jail for longer than now for a drug offense or a break and enter makes no sense....

Pre-meditated murder is something we need to be willing to keep people in jail for life or very close to it....manslaughter or death due to a robbery or what have you is quite different although I can totally understand it's not to the victim or their family...it really is.

I'm completely against the Conservative 'Let's Make Crime' Bill. Canada's crime rate is in decline - it has been for decades according to StatsCan.

Excepting extraordinary circumstances, I believe jail should the exclusive domain of violent criminals - those who beat people, murder by design, break into houses, terrorize our communities, etc.

And I believe those serving jail sentences for such violent crimes should be involved in much more constructive activities in jail that somehow give back to our communities and society as a whole, and that provide wholesome decent activities for those we incarcerate. For profit activities such as farming, industry, manufacturing, etc..

Our prisons, in a country such a Canada, should be model institutions upon which others around the civilized world would base their own systems.

So, why aren't we using our heads? Part of the reason is the massive system of vested interests that currently administer our criminal justice system are looking out for number one - they'd lose their jobs if someone actually instituted a modern, intelligent, progressive prison system. In fact, some of them would probably land back inside the prison system themselves if they weren't running it.

Yes, the system needs to change. But let's NOT build more of something that is seriously broken already.

The problem isn't sentencing, it's a deeper problem which requires more thought and less cheques signed. The problem with that, is that Harper is an economist, not a criminologist or psychologist. We need real solutions that will work long term. Not just sweep it under the rug for a few years. That's what economists do, push stuff off for somebody else to worry about. We need deeper thinkers in the house, or at least consultation and study about how to make the correctional system correct, instead of recruit. Not easy to do, which is why the conservatives will never do it.

Oh good. More prisons. Billions of taxpayer money spent on more band-aid solutions. Not like it could've been used for more constructive purposes, like creating jobs or paying off national debt, right? Yeah. Let's give the cops shiny new black battle-armor, jackboots and some fancy new riot weapons, too; we also need to increase internal security and monitoring, and widen the number of offenses prosecutable as 'treason'.

By the way, to pay for all this, we're going to have to cut back on a few frills like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, etc. Nothing you'll actually miss, don't worry. The government has it all under control, and our economy has never been better. Here's a few more channels of UFC. Go back to sleep, Canada. You are free...to do as we tell you...you are free...to do as we tell you...

When you include the additional costs to the system of longer trials and more appeals as defendants strive to lower their charges and sentences due to the recent changes in minimum sentencing and time served provisions, you can probably add billions more in direct and indirect costs.

By the time Harper & Co. are done "tinkering", Canada's criminal justice system will look very much like parts of the USA. By doing so, he is merely guaranteeing that criminals remain criminals.

Some of these changes are unconstitutional, and I hope the Supreme Court justices have the moxy to declare these provisions as such when the Charter challenges occur -- and I hope those challenges occur soon.

This is such a waste of money. This will have no effect on crime rates, which have been on a downward trend over the past decade. This is all about the current government's right wing agenda to play for votes from those who believe the only way to fight crime is to increase punishment.

The present government is too limp wristed to make the really tough decisions that would drastically reduce crime. They are ideologically averse to changing the drug laws, which would probably cut most crime by half. Neither do they admit to the connection between poverty and crime. Their approach is one of reaction not one of prevention.

We do not need, nor should we want, to turn into the kind of prison state like the one to our south. There they have more people incarcerated as a percentage of total population than anywhere else in the world - over 2 million by last count. Not something we should aspire to.

Of course, many of those behind bars in the USA are also there due to wrong-headed drug laws. They also have a much higher percentage of non-whites behind bars - something that is mirrored here with the native population. There are systemic reasons for this. Reasons that won't be solved by these changes proposed by Harper et al.

Someone who has not been convicted yet is still innnocent. So just because you can't afford bail, you, the innocent person has to spend time in jail. It is also supposed to encourage the courts to move faster. Everyone posting here assumes that delays are always the fault of the defendant. They're not. Some times it it the Crown that plays the delaying game to "punish" someone with pre-trial custody when they know they are unlikely to get a conviction. And sometimes it is the courts themselves that are slow. Judges don't have to give any credit for (and really, they don't) delays caused by defendants.


Maybe instead of giving credit for pre-trial custody the government should be forced to pay innocent people for keeping them in custody before they are acquitted.

Then the guilty (those ultimately convicted) get no credit for pre-trial custody but innocent people in custody pre-acquittal get compensated.

I suspect that this method would be a greater incentive for they system to work faster by focusing on those awaiting trial who are most likely to be convicted and discouraging prosecutors from laying charges against people who they know are innnocent but are being punished for crime(s) they didn't commit.

My wife had the "pleasure' of sitting on a jury where a guy was charged with assault. It was an obvious case of self defense. The prosecutor presented virtually no evidence and didn't even make any closing arguments. And yet the case was still prosecuted, the defendant still had to sit in jail for over a year awaiting trial.

Dear Stevie and VIc,

Your decision in this area is based on TAVERN LOGIC. It is WRONG. It is indicative of a shallow understanding of crime, punishment and rehabilitation. It isn't going to work in a corrections context, and it sure as hell doesn't work in a fiscal policy context. If you listen to your Fin Department advisors, WE CAN'T AFFORD IT!

You can't casually blow off a revenue stream worth tens of billions annually that was designed to generate balanced budgets that included paying down the debt and then turn around, and with the same shallow logic, dream up more ways to throw away more BORROWED billions of dollars on programs that add nothing to the benefit of the country. In physics this a perpetual motion machine, and they don't exist.

When good ol' Brian was PM, fully 1/3 of the budget went just to paying interest on the National Debt. Debt to GDP ratio was 71%! That is basket case level! That was down to less than 30% when you guys took office on a promise of a prudent fiscal policy. More simply, we were paying 36 cents on the tax dollar when Brian left office and 15 cents on the tax dollar when you FIRST took office. Now you're promising five years of deficit spending in addition to what you've borrowed already, and you're planning to increase spending, too.

The one lesson you should have learned by now is that bribing voters with this kind of logic isn't working. Get back on track or get out of the way.

The Conservatives' "tough on crime" thing is so American/ Republican/pandering to the uneducated voter that I wish they would all just move south.

Unfortunately, our government has no interest in reducing crime. They have canceled funding for programs that successfully diverted at-risk youth from gang life and have shut down prison farms, which are well known for their effectiveness in giving prisoners a sense of purpose in life.

Their main interest appears to be revenge and do not want to look at what is effective in reducing crime or what crime's root causes are.

Check out The Economist's analysis of our great leader's Tea Party values: http://www.economist.com/node/16377327.

the Cons (the elected type) and the right-wingers they try to appease are now trotting out failed 18th century policies in a 21st century world

a few more years and we'll be looking at tactics from the dark ages

Can any of the dozens and dozens and dozens of posters who are arguing in favour of this legislation point to one - just one - actual, reputable research study that says this will make any difference in crime rates? That it will do anything other than add to my taxes in order to feed your desire for some kind of revenge?

And by the way, "gut feeling" doesn't count as a "serious study."

I mentioned earlier that Harper's main motivating factor regarding justice and penal reform has probably more to do with his intent on gradually privatizing the penal system (as is currently the case in many States south of the border) on the grounds that Ottawa could no longer afford it. Let us keep in mind that Harper's mantra is "Big Corpo & free markets".

Let's push the rationale a little further. So if the prison system eventually becomes another "big private industry", it goes without saying that it would be in the best interest of the heads of these private companies to have more prisoners with longer prison terms.

Now there's one major conflict of interest if I've ever seen one.
It's what's called rough justice.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdDdTAiC

Insane. we must rehab, not regurgitate. It is the US style of prison. lock em up and throw away the key. It doesn't work. costs too much. 90% of felons are in prison due to addiction. Lets start there shall we. Build more prisons, please. lets legalize drugs and tax it, to pay for those that can't balance. this is a revolving door. The reason so many reoffend is that they are not skilled or educated. Why don't we get creative and MAKE them get educated while inside. Teach them.

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As school doors close cell doors open...Does this make ANY sense???
How does this government expect the citizens of Canada to stay out of the correctional system when they what to make everything illegal...
I think it's time that the Canadian people take Canada back from the crooked politicians!
It's time for Canada to be Canadian again & not this fairy dreamland that Harper & the REFORMED party are trying to make it.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdGbMThk

This government isn't fixing the problem, rather they are just treating a symptom, and treating it very badly.
We have proof that mandatory sentences and imprisoning large % of the population does not equal a safer society, just anyone look to the USA.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdM9yo4n

enough of these parochial conservatives. Their desire to increase prison terms for non-violent crimes, create new crimes to criminalize more Canadians and to reduce opportunities for those who have run afoul of the Law to reintegrate, all reflect bad initiatives that have already failed miserably in the USA.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdgN9BNJ

The US implements more and longer incarceration, and capital punishment
Canada implements shorter prison time, rehabilitation, no capital punishment.
Canada has a lower per capita crime rate than the US.
Which country got it right?

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdgQacCd

Harper is adding billions of structural deficit, while ignoring the expertise of criminologists who say this policy will not work.

This government is fiscally reckless and socially irresponsible. Their damage will take decades to repair.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdgmeEH0

“What we need is someone who is not biased who can look at the whole system to advise us what will make the system work to keep us safer. “

Well, we do; they are called criminologists. They spend there entire lives studying this stuff and most of them are telling us that harsher sentencing doesn’t work. Some suggest it may even lead to higher crime rates.

You are right about there being more to it though. Those same criminologists will tell you that if you really want to reduce crime even further you need to spend those billions at the root causes. Not very sexy, not popular, has the sense of giving money to the undeserved and the just unpopular, so basically not a banner that any political party is all that keen to be carrying into an election battle. So it won’t happen

Now of course you don’t have to believe the criminologists. There are those who seem to think that anyone with a university education is some kind socialist or anarchist or something (especially climate scientists and marine biologists it would seem who apparently are all part of some worldwide conspiracy to change the world order) but I think sensible people should be able to agree that a person bright enough to get his Ph.D and who thinks the topic is interesting enough to make a career out of and who spends his entire day researching it is probably going to be better placed to give us that unbiased (and most of all, informed and intelligent) advice than any politician can.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdgxPT1a

This government isn't fixing the problem, rather they are just treating a symptom, and treating it very badly.
We have proof that mandatory sentences and imprisoning large % of the population does not equal a safer society, just anyone look to the USA.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rdh4LeUn

How is locking people in jails helping our society reduce crime again, compared to education, quality health care, poverty, and addictions support?

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Our tax dollars are not well spent on paying for more people to languish for longer periods in more prisons. Extending sentences doesn't make our societies one bit safer: au contraire. Let's spend our tax dollars on community services that will keep people out of prison in the first place! Down in the States they're now having to take stock of the huge mess they're in because of their mass incarceration policies over the last 30 years. Harper's trying to take us down a dead-end road, and trying to cover his tracks and hide info about his actions while he does so! Page's staff couldn't get nearly the info they needed to do their research: how maddening.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rglvVbPV

Yay spend more money on the fascist police state! Everyone support the conservatives - because they know how to waste money and tell you that somehow they are being fiscally responsible. STOP WASTING MY MONEY ON THE DESTRUCTION OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY! What happened to small government CRAP party members? Did you forget about those promises while you were preparing your brown shirt uniforms? Us Canadians need a history lesson to understand how fascism creeps into democratic societies. Maybe then we can be a little more vigilant toward this kind of troglodyte thinking!

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgmFXW91

Toews won’t give figures, therefore a rationally constructed estimate is ‘making this up’. Vengeful Conservatives want more people in prison, so everyone has to pay vast sums to indulge their miserable ideology. If Firearms Registration was an ill-applied boondoggle, what is this, with its added horde of staff & costly structures & maintenance? I don’t want my country to pride itself on the expanding number of its prisons & inmates.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgmulVvS

Why is it that 'ideology' over rides wisdom? Norway, is closing prisons while their crime rate goes down, due to the policy they use in dealing with criminals. The made in U.S. criminal policy doesn't work at all. Maybe a few Politicians in the Conservative government should read about ''you who are without sin, cast the first stone"

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgmytiDr

Ending prohibition would save a lot of money.

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Why are we going to waste money on a american style system that the americans are backing away from because it doesn't work.

Our criminal code does need updating but we should have a Canadian solution, not a failed americans one.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgnPsRi5

Next in line privately run jails. These are the jails that take profit from locking people up. These jails have no incentive for rehabilitation, training or other skill training. To do so means that the person would not re-offend and thus less profit.


Way to go harper, lets move to the american style of prisons, where they have the largest percentage of people within the criminal justice system in the world and all for profit.

harper, just here to bring Canada closer to the usa

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgnWzaId

We need a government who knows how to do research and develops it's policies based on facts rather than principles and philosophies. Dog packs have more sophisticated planning abilities than this government.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgncaeo3

Most of you don't know the concequences of this.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgnhV9Br

The truth is that the government has no idea whatsoever how much this will cost, how much space there is in our prisons, or how many more people will be in prisons. They don't know where they're going to put them. They say they will build new cells in existing prisons, but they don't even know which ones or how much property there is available to build on.
They never considered any of the practical implications of this law because it was only a political maneuver. It was just a hot button issue for them to grandstand on.
So all you conservative supporters out their salivating at the prospect of bringing down your heavy hand. Get ready for disappointment when the end result is prison overcrowding which leads to ridiculous early releases done in haste.
That's what the end result of mandatory minimum sentencing in the US has been.
With prison overcrowding also comes Hep B and C epidemics as well as HIV epidemics. The costs of these will also be something your taxes will be paying for.
We need a government who knows how to do research and develops it's policies based on facts rather than principles and philosophies. Dog packs have more sophisticated planning abilities than this government.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgno03Bl

I hope that the first innocent person accused of crime and thrown into undeserved custody sues the pants off the feds for not recompensing the time lost in waiting for justice.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgo80h38

Crime rates have been dropping in Canada for many years. This is not only an unnessary vote pandering bondoggle, it will also ultimately make this country less of a safe place to live.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgoyiJHt

Harper is adding billions of structural deficit, while ignoring the expertise of criminologists who say this policy will not work.

This government is fiscally reckless and socially irresponsible. Their damage will take decades to repair.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgpxxlKp

Look at what long sentances has done in the US. Nothing. They throw in jail the highest proportion of thier population in the western world. What it does is harden young criminals into desperate older criminals. It's so easy to seek vengence and say lock them up, but that's the wrong way to think. Help them change if they can, lock the few who can't up for a long time.

I want the government to spend my money wisely and not follow the knee jerk reaction of the uneducated mob.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgrttWCY

By the time the CONs as in politicians are finished with all their tough on crime bills Canada will be faced with a meaner, tougher criminal element. Youth will be sent to adult prison where they will be schooled on how to be more sophisticated and violent criminals. There are those on this board even advocating that prisoners be raped. How sick can you get. Yeah, we'll make prison so tough that criminals won't want to go to jail. They will kill their victims so no one can identify them or testify against them. I beleive that these measures will cause violent crime to skyrocket in Canada.
I'm just wondering how many people the CONs want to lock up-maybe anyone who will vote for the opposition. Aren't they still going to have all that riot equipment left after the G8/20. I wonder who they plan to use it all on. I guess the people of Canada better not protest about Harper.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgs9aR9C

It is unimaginable that the conservatives are willing to spend billions on keeping people incarcerated. as if that is going to solve any of the social problems behind the crime. how about spending that on fighting poverty, public health, anything that might actually make a difference in people's lives.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgt3omRz

The conservatives have just committed a crime against humanity to decide to whorehouse human beings like sardines, many of whom will be absolutely innocent of any crime. The prisons at present cannot hold those projected numbers and no one is going to pay for all those extra prisons to be built.

The decision contradicts reality, if the government spent 10% of that projected increase on crime prevention etc, it would decrease crime by the same projected increase while lowering prison numbers.

The logic is flawed, increased sentences do not result in lower crime or less crime or less criminals, on the contrary.

If our justice system simply gave men equal rights under law, our criminal justice system would be dramatically unloaded overnight.

The first step will be a Legal Presumption of Equal Parenting and reform to the Extreme Feminist child support guidlines that is at present filling our jails not with deadbeat dads but dads who become unemployed or simply can't work.

One other solution is to introduce police for our judiciary to ensure that flagrant abuses of power are dealt with. That alone will reduce our prison population significantly.

The conservative approach is a mindless senseless plan that defies logic. It may be politically popular but that does not mean its in the best interests or economic interest for Canada.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgtAvRWJ

The tory policy is laughable - both from the perspectives of public safety and meaningful corrections. I suspect even they don't believe the propoganda they spew, but know that appearing tough on crime will make them politically popular. At some level we all respond emotionally to crime, and we entertain ourselves with countless numbers of murders per week. In this age of information, reports of sensational crimes committed all around the world reach us quickly. We think that we live in a world in which crime compromises public safety much more than it does. In point of fact, a strong case can be made for the fact that we are in a society which is more safe now than it was 40 years ago. Nevertheless politicians of all stripes pander to public fears in an attempt to increase their electability. This in spite of the data and knowledge which postulates that the current neo con approach will be both counter productive and expensive. What price majority? We are begining to understand. It becomes ironicwhen those same pols lecture us on hypocracy without shame or the slightest inkling of self doubt. The only cosolation is - that this too shall pass. Barcus

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgtkQJKK

We cannot afford Harper Tory paranoia on security and crime--especially when crime rates are plummeting.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgtpz5dh

I certainly hope the opposition jumps all over this. It will cost the taxpayers billions while not serving the public. Thirteen new prisons? What does that say for us as a country? We're not designating our time to the impoverished, we're are holding the impovished in high-rises that attract gangs, we're just into this to throw maximum sentences upon people. And we can't afford that. We can afford intervention, but not the construction of thirteen prisons. And we can't afford maximum sentences, just as the USA can't. They are turning people assigned to their prisons away at the door after serving a few minutes time. This is what Canada is in for. What an amazingly dumb Bill. But I expect no less from our current governemnt. As for time served. In a country where your trial might be set for two years after your arrest, then that should count. Our lack of legal services should not affect the taxpayer.

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Agree that there are too many mindless postings of blind partisanship. Obviously, though, they coming from both “sides” (the most bizarre from the “right” being that Liberals and socialists don’t care about victims and, for some reason, LIKE criminals or something like that)

But to get to the real debate, I guess what I want to know is who the Conservatives consulted with in coming to the conclusion that Canadians would be safer and crime rates would (long term) decrease if we had longer sentencing. Have they, for example, retained a team of eminent criminologists to survey the research and come to conclusions on the issue?

You see my problem is that I strongly suspect not. I fear that this is not informed, advised policy but merely an enactment of dogma and, at best, an adoption of someone else's ill informed policy south of the border. In fact I suspect (based on discussions and readings I have had) that the consensus amongst criminologists is that, likely, it won't work. I mean I know that you can always find some criminologist somewhere to support just about any view, and you will also find those who say he or she is some kind of hero for standing up against a hostile majority view that is trying to crush dissent (usually, so the theory goes, to protect research dollars) but I think that a responsible government should take very seriously the majority view.

So seems to me that before we go spending billions of dollars on a proposed new justice policy that we better be pretty sure it will work (especially if there is risk it will backfire and INCREASE crime) and seems to me that if a majority of the people who are most likely to know the answer to that question are telling us that it won’t work that it’s probably a very bad bet.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rguWYrGq

Those for incarceration at any cost conveniently forget inmates do get out. Don't suggest life sentences mean a lifelong incarceration. You want to send someone crazy by giving them no hope? That is so 1800's.

If they are not helped, they will be worse than when they went in. More crime, more street people, more mental illness, etc. Then we will really need gated communities - except the privileged inside the gates are not immune to doing crime themselves.

Maybe you want to execute everyone who gets a jail sentence 'cause it's cheaper and 0% recidivism. How about execution for a speeding offence which kills, eh? Or drunk driving. Where will you stop?

But you've forgotten your 10 commandments - do not judge, lest you be judged' nor kill lest you be killed, etc.

Admit it, you want revenge and punishment without forgiveness. You want whipping and caning (like Malaysia and Singapore). Go live in those countries and see what you think. I have.

I've also spent 25 years working for Correctional Service Canada planning and working on redevelopment of federal prisons. I've talked to staff and inmates. I know a lot about daily life in prisons. I know why those people are in there. It is often not because of sanctity of our justice system.

Most inmates need help coping with daily life (don't snark at me). They had no family to learn from; they got no treatment for illness and disabilities (from abusive or drunken parents) and no training in how to deal with the world. And they couldn't afford a top lawyer. Money counts more than human life, I'm afraid. And it is now becoming worse. Maybe we'll bring back public flogging or town square stocks.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgvymIbR

When you have a US style justice system ( for profit) you need to expand the client base which is exactly what this conservative government is doing-expanding the client base.. Now they are going after pardons over the Hololka case or whatever her name is. Because the Prosecutor's screwed up and should have charged this person with first degree murder-they want to tag people for life now with a record and make it even more difficult to get a pardon for a criminal record. Soon everyone will either be in jail getting out of jail or reporting to someone in the criminal justice system. Funny they never get the big guys at the top who do the most harn do they? Banks that launder drug money for example, politicians who take positions on boards in exchange for favorable legislation, politicians who pour money into their own riding ingnoring the needs of their neighbouring ones. Letting oil companies regulate themselves as they drill for oil under the arctic ice-with no way to clean up a spill. Selling off crown lands that belong to the people for a song to some business interest to make them rich at the people's expense. We don't even have the resources to go after mortgage fraud in this country and cant' prosecute known cases. How do you like them apples. What do they do-go after the little guy that never had much of a chance in the first place they want to make sure they have no chance-after all people are fed up with all of this injustice they see all around them.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgw2gKtE

For Harper, Rob Nicholson, and Vic Toews, hard science has little to do with their mandate for crime in Canada.

Their manual is the bible - especially the nasty parts. Eye for an eye, and all that rubbish.

Next, custody will be awarded by cleaving the child in two.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgw9hIQc

The US implements more and longer incarceration, and capital punishment
Canada implements shorter prison time, rehabilitation, no capital punishment.
Canada has a lower per capita crime rate than the US.
Which country got it right?

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rgwghOVr

“What we need is someone who is not biased who can look at the whole system to advise us what will make the system work to keep us safer. “

Well, we do; they are called criminologists. They spend there entire lives studying this stuff and most of them are telling us that harsher sentencing doesn’t work. Some suggest it may even lead to higher crime rates.
You are right about there being more to it though. Those same criminologists will tell you that if you really want to reduce crime even further you need to spend those billions at the root causes. Not very sexy, not popular, has the sense of giving money to the undeserved and the just unpopular, so basically not a banner that any political party is all that keen to be carrying into an election battle. So it won’t happen

Now of course you don’t have to believe the criminologists. There are those who seem to think that anyone with a university education is some kind socialist or anarchist or something (especially climate scientists and marine biologists it would seem who apparently are all part of some worldwide conspiracy to change the world order) but I think sensible people should be able to agree that a person bright enough to get his Ph.D and who thinks the topic is interesting enough to make a career out of and who spends his entire day researching it is probably going to be better placed to give us that unbiased (and most of all, informed and intelligent) advice than any politician can. 

Folks, we can talk about education but it seems as though the increase in education isn't doing much these days as our culture seems to be increasingly violent, perverted and crooked.

Let's get the foundation of healthy families back into our culture and expose the false ways of thinking that have come into our communities that seem to look like we're progressive as a culture, but have actually been destructive to a steady, solid way of life.

As kids grow up in broken families and don't get the proper nurturing and healthy, loving authoritive framework from their parents, they miss out on a healthy upbringing and we're seeing the result in our culture everyday. The real education needed should be learnt from our elders and the revival of understanding the institution of the family needs to revered and appreciated in our time for us to return to a solid helathy culture in this Nation.

Love your kids, honor your parents, serve your neighbores :)

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Our tax dollars are not well spent on paying for more people to languish for longer periods in more prisons. Extending sentences doesn't make our societies one bit safer

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rhvPFw8N

If you understand the nature of Canada's political system then you know that this isn't so much about credit for time served as it is about garnering votes and improving the position of the party in power. The use of people who are devalued by the label 'criminal' is incidental and primarily used to appease the general populace and appeal to the base human instincts. The need to inflict punishment is a substantial source of pleasure for an inherently violent species.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rhvdJvOI

I find it interesting how so many right wingers would rather spend $10 locking people up rather than spend $1 to help prevent the crimes in the first place. This is not a question of caudling criminals. It's a question of cost to society. If harsh criminal justice worked than Europe would be overun, and the US would be the safest country on the planet. This is basic economics. I don't have any particular love of the criminal element, but I would like to see my tax dollars used in an effective manner, rather than spending it on an ideological multi-billion dollar boondoggle.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0rhvfuaVe

This from a poster that advocates a failed US style "war on drugs" regularly. Is this a paid shill for the Harper Conservatives? You decide.

The Harper Conservative government has been caught paying people to promote their agenda on forums like these. Google "Harper government paid shills" to see for yourself.

The crime rate has been decreasing steadily in Canada for years (see Justice Canada) and this "tough on crime" crap is just that, crap. It is designed to generate fear among people who don't know any better to garner a few votes. This has been done before many times. Remember people, Stephen Harper has proven through many lies and policy flip flops that he will do and say anything for more power. Do your own research on effective crime reduction strategies then form your opinion. You will find that putting people in jail for longer periods, while serving vengeance, actually INCREASES crime in a society while also being extremely costly.

The US department of justice has the toughest sentencing regime on earth and crime is continually on the rise. The data is there for anyone who wants to look. Many states are going bankrupt because of costs. Some states are spending more on prisons than on education. It is insane and this is not the direction Canada should be following.

The above assertions are supported by government data that is readily available online for anyone who is willing to look.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0ri47v4tV

Ya! Lets totally replicate the US justice and penial system just like Harper wants.
After all it's working SO well there eh?
Bet this ends up being the 'No-Longer-Progressive' Conservatives gun registry!

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#socialcomments#ixzz0ri4Axqcb