Tories unveiled legislation to create minimum sentences, and double maximum prison terms  

Published in the Regina Leader-Post, SN
24 Nov 2007
Don Butler

HARPER’S GET-TOUGH POLICY MAY NOT WORK

OTTAWA — As Parliament prepares to pass Criminal Code changes that would lengthen penalties and expand mandatory minimum sentences, a new report says the American experience with similar measures has been a costly waste of money.

Due largely to tough-on-crime policies, the Unlocking America report says, there are now eight times as many people in U.S.  prisons and jails as there were in 1970.

Yet the crime rate today in the U.S.  is about the same as it was in 1973, and there’s little evidence the imprisonment binge has had much impact on crime, says the report by the JFA Institute, a Washington-based organization that does criminal-justice research.

In fact, the U.S.  states with the lowest incarceration rates generally have the lowest crime rates, it says.

Since 1990, the growth in American prison populations has been driven by longer sentences, including mandatory minimum sentences and laws that require offenders to serve most of their sentences in prison.

The report calls on American lawmakers to embark on a concerted program of “decarceration” by shortening sentences, eliminating the use of prison for technical violations of parole or probation, and decriminalizing “victimless” crimes such as drug offences.

The recommendations run directly counter to measures in the Harper government’s omnibus crime bill, which increases mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of violent offences and includes reverse onus provisions that could keep repeat violent offenders behind bars for life.

The bill, which the government has designated as a matter of confidence, passed through committee this week without amendment and is expected to receive third reading before the House rises Dec.  14.

The report’s proposals also fly in the face of legislation introduced this week that would provide mandatory minimum penalties for various drug crimes and double the maximum penalty for cannabis production to 14 years.

Critics accuse the government of relying on the same tough-on-crime strategies that have failed in the U.S.

“We hopefully don’t want to start importing crime policies that have been demonstrated to be ineffective and counter-productive in the United States,” says Don Stuart, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Rather than looking for effective ways to deal with crime, says University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob, the government has opted for simple changes in the criminal law “which obviously aren’t going to do anything.  But they sell the public on the idea that these things are going to be effective.”

Unlocking America’s nine authors are leading U.S.  criminologists and sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment.

“We are convinced that we need a different strategy,” they say.

With 2.2 million people behind bars on any given day, the U.S.  leads the world in imprisonment.  China, with 1.5 million imprisoned, is second.

American taxpayers now spend more than $60 billion a year on corrections, says the report.

“The net result is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of taxpayers’ money from more effective crime control strategies.”

Much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities.

Blacks and Latinos make up 60 per cent of America’s prison population.

According to the report, eight per cent of American black men of working age are now behind bars.

Tories unveiled legislation last week to create mandatory minimum prison terms

Published in the Montreal Gazette, QU
28 Nov 2007
Richard Foot

FEDS TOLD: MINIMUM JAIL TERMS DON’T WORK

Ottawa Adamant.  Two Studies Ignored

OTTAWA - Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is pressing ahead with plans to create mandatory minimum prison terms for drug crimes in spite of two studies prepared for his own department that say such laws don’t work, and are increasingly unpopular as crime-fighting measures in other countries.

“Minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool: that is, they constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime-prevention benefits.  Nevertheless, mandatory sentences remain popular with some Canadian politicians.”

That’s one conclusion of a 2005 report prepared for the Justice Department, titled Mandatory Sentences of Imprisonment in Common Law Jurisdictions.

An earlier 2002 report, titled Mandatory Minimum Penalties: Their Effects on Crime, also compiled for the department while the Liberals were in power, offers a similar view:

“Harsh mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way.”

Despite such conclusions, the Tories unveiled legislation last week to create mandatory minimum prison terms for drug possession, production and trafficking.  The automatic minimum terms range from six months for growing and selling a single marijuana plant to three years for producing cocaine or crystal meth in a home lab.  A clause in the bill would allow judges to exempt certain offenders from jail if they pass a court-monitored drug-treatment program.

The proposal has been widely criticized by criminal lawyers, criminologists and at least one former Canadian judge.

Nicholson did not respond to a request for an interview on the subject yesterday.

Tories come up with a way to overcrowd Canadian prisons

Published in the Toronto Star, ON
01 Dec 2007
Betsy Powell, and Jim Rankin

O CANNABIS! WAR ON DRUGS SEEN AS FLAWED ECHO OF U.S.

As far as ideas go, the verdict on new Tory anti-crime measures unrolled over the past couple of weeks - from people who make a living studying such things - has been unanimous.

Bad idea.

So, why is it then that the proposal to implement measures that have demonstrably failed to reduce crime and flooded an already overcrowded prison system have such traction? Politics, pure and simple.

Politicians of all stripes want to be seen as being “tough on crime,” says Greg Rogers, executive director of the John Howard Society of Toronto.  One of the most popular ways to demonstrate that a political party is serious about cracking down on crime is to propose mandatory minimum sentences, a make-the-criminals pay approach that the Conservatives promised and have introduced.

U.S.  politicians started along that path in the mid-’70s knowing full well “there was little they could do about the ‘root causes’ of crime, especially in the short run,” American university professors Alfred Blumstein and Alex R.  Piquero wrote in a just-released paper.

Chris Jones, executive director of Ottawa-based John Howard Society of Canada, understands why voters like the idea.

“Cracking down on crime makes people feel good.  It appeals to the punitive impulse.  The fact that it doesn’t do good doesn’t come out until years later when the auditor general says, ‘Well, here’s what you got for your money - basically, nothing.’”

Yet the approach is now widely discredited south of the border where 2.2 million people are behind bars, making the U.S.  the world leader in imprisonment - at a cost of $60 billion a year.  And while the crime rate has come down, there’s little evidence to suggest it relates to greater rates of incarceration.

” ( A ) look at data about crime and imprisonment will show that prison populations continued to swell long after crime rates declined and stayed low,” says a new report called Unlocking America.  In Canada, where crime rates have also fallen steadily, the prison population has remained steady over the last few decades, research shows.

Unlocking America, written by criminologists for the Washington-based JFA Institute, calls on U.S.  lawmakers to dramatically shift gears, shorten sentences and redirect money pouring into the for-profit corrections industry into crime-control strategies that work.

The reasons are persuasive and plentiful.

The “imprisonment binge,” has created an “American apartheid” that has put 8 per cent of U.S.  black men of working age behind bars.  Despite the fact American courts mete out sentences that are double that of British and three times that of Canadian courts, the U.S.  violent crime rate is higher.

And now the Conservatives are moving to push Canada to adopt a system that costs more and works less effectively.  “This is a prison-building strategy,” says the John Howard Society’s Jones.

A report prepared by the agency that oversees federal prisons and obtained by the Star earlier this year concluded the Conservatives’ law-and-order agenda will lead to dramatic increases in the prison population.

The analysis also found that minimum sentences don’t have a deterrent effect and drain away funds available for social programs that prevent crime.  It even noted that the U.S.  is moving away from mandatory minimum sentences and embarking on reforms to improve parole to ease crowding and reduce incarceration rates.

“It’s the American model and, ironically, it’s at the same time the Americans who are trying to extricate themselves from mandatory minimum sentences,” Jones said in a recent interview.  “There’s no other jurisdiction that I know of anywhere in the world that is rushing to embrace mandatory minimum sentences.”

Part of Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s message when he tabled the legislation to stiffen sentences for drug dealing was to emphasize that the government is targeting “serious” drug crimes and criminals out of concern about young people using drugs.

But Rogers says the proposed law will do nothing to slow the drug trade in Canada’s largest city.  “Once you put someone in jail, someone else takes their place.  It’s as simple as that.”

Ottawa lawyer and drug policy expert Eugene Oscapella says he has no doubt the changes will cause the rate of imprisonment to soar and require the building of new prisons.

And his reading of the law suggests huge numbers of drug-addicted and non-violent people could be sent to prison.  About 20,000 people are arrested annually on marijuana-related charges, according to Statistics Canada.

“If a person is found guilty of producing between one to 200 marijuana plants, they would face a mandatory minimum of six months in prison if the offence is committed for the purpose of trafficking, which can be: ‘Hi, want to share a joint with me?’”

Stiffer sentences will make the drug trade more violent, he adds, because it will drive up prices and profits and dissuade some of the non-violent “ma-and-pa type producers to get out of the business.”

What most want, says Barry MacKnight, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, is a balanced approach.

“Although tackling the root causes of crime must always be a priority, it cannot be achieved by diverting all funding from enforcement activities,” MacKnight, who is chief of police in Fredericton, responded in email when asked for the CACP’s position on mandatory minimum sentences.

“And although there are cases where jail is clearly not the answer, there are those for whom jail is a necessary and effective deterrent.”

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