Conservative Justice - Reprise

So, now we get to see the nuts and bolts of the CPC government's ideas about crime and punishment.

First, the primary sources: Bill C-9, Bill C-10 - and peripherally, Bill C-7 {The last one being unpublicized in the media, but I spotted it digging up the other bits}

As the Globe and Mail points out, basically what the CPC has done is twofold:

1) Imposed harsher penalties for crimes involving the use of guns.

2) Removed the ability for the courts to impose a conditional sentence such as house arrest.

The circumstances appear relatively constrained to the most serious of offenses. However, it is often the preamble to these bills that is the interesting bit:

WHEREAS Canadians are entitled to live their lives in peace, freedom and security;


WHEREAS acts of violence involving the use of firearms, including ones by street gangs, are increasingly threatening the safety of Canadians in their communities;


WHEREAS the Parliament of Canada is committed to taking measures to protect Canadians from this threat while continuing to respect and promote the values reflected in, and the rights and freedoms guaranteed by, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;


AND WHEREAS these measures include legislation to impose higher minimum penalties on those who commit serious or repeat offences involving firearms;

Let us consider for a moment the stated objectives - namely to provide Canadians with an increased level of security in their private lives.

Here is where the first error of reasoning occurs. The conservative mind seems to routinely assume that a more severe penalty will act as a deterrant. Perhaps for the "average, law abiding citizen", this is true enough. But, we aren't talking about people who are "average, law abiding citizens", are we?

Without getting deep into the psychology of criminal behaviour (a topic that others are no doubt far more qualified than I am to speak on), I'd say it's a safe bet that the criminal types who are engaged in organized crime (for whom the gun is a "tool of the trade") aren't persuaded by the harshness of the sentences meted out in the courts.

Further, I think it's fairly well demonstrated in the American example that harsher sentencing has little impact - other than raising the costs incurred in our prison systems. Throwing people in jail is the "disposable society" model of handling criminality. Basically what we are doing is asserting that these people aren't worth our time, and we try to forget that they exist.

What are real policy alternatives?

1) Give police the resources needed to investigate and enforce the existing laws that deal with organized crime. Piddling around with harsher sentencing doesn't mean a thing when the police don't have adequate resources to hunt down and shut down criminal operations.

2) If we really need to, refine the definitions in law that allow organized crime to operate. (Of course, we might wind up making politicians illegal - but that's a different problem)

3) Address the issues that result in "youth gangs" as best as we can. Youth gangs are difficult to understand, but their roots are in societal challenges more than criminal justice issues. Poverty, old ethnic/tribal grudges and goodness knows what else play into this. It may be that we desperately need to invest heavily in our school systems in order to bring them out of the era of decay that started in the early 1980s.

In spite of the efforts that Corrections Canada makes to rehabilitate people, incarceration is a punishment that has a limited impact. Some have referred to prisons as "Colleges for Criminals", a reflection of the fact that many enter prison for the first time, and become repeat offenders or get involved in organized crime while behind bars. To me this suggests that more prisons, and longer incarcerative sentences is unlikely to have the protective effect desired. We may in fact be creating nothing more than state-sponsored incubators for the Mafia.