Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Tough on crime, short on facts

The biggest problem for opponents of Bill C-10, the federal government's omnibus tough-oncrime bill, is that criminals and prisoners have no political constituency. The sort of people who will get swept up in the mandatory minimum sentences contained in the bill are dismissed by most voters as street thugs, pedophiles and gang members.

Eugene Oscapella, a veteran legal-reform advocate, knows this. And so he is careful to make his pitch in terms that respectable, middle-class Canadians - the sort of people with kids in high school or college - will appreciate.

"I teach a criminology course at the University of Ottawa," he told a crowd at downtown Toronto's Church of the Redeemer on Tuesday night. "Eighty percent of my students [would be] criminals under [Bill C-10]. About 10-20% of them would be liable for a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for simply passing a tablet of ecstasy at a party."

Smoking pot and taking ecstasy aren't smart. But millions of Canadians use these drugs every day. And when they're caught, police, prosecutors and judges typically apply their discretion in order to avoid ruining their lives and careers with criminal records and jail sentences. The Tories want to change that.

As my colleague Chris Selley wrote in Wednesday's edition of the National Post, the mandatory-minimum provisions for non-violent drug crimes are the least defensible aspects of Bill C-10. In fact, the government hasn't even tried to make an intellectually serious attempt to defend them. The Canadian government's website points visitors to several Justice Department studies. None strongly support the idea that Bill C-10 will reduce drug use or improve public safety.

Governments have to make trade-offs, of course: Sometimes, you accept sub-optimal policy for budgetary reasons. But Bill C-10 will actually cost billions in the form of police resources and new prisons. That's why cash-strapped American states - which have long played the populist game of lock-'em-up - are moving in the other direction. Reformers in Texas, in particular, think we're nuts for copying the policies that they're now trying to dismantle.

One of the reasons the United States is going bankrupt is that it incarcerates 2.3 million people - a quarter of all the prisoners on earth. The burden for their care has become so enormous that some states are now turning prisons into Chinese-style sweatshops to try to make a buck. A private prison industry has flourished, bringing with it a well-funded lobby for yet more prisons. This perverse political dynamic doesn't yet exist in Canada - but Bill C-10 pushes us in that direction.

The C-10 panel discussion at the Church of the Redeemer was interesting because at least one of the speakers wasn't the sort of bleeding heart you'd expect: Steve Sullivan, Canada's first federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime.

Mr. Sullivan applauds a few provisions in C-10, such as the section that would let crime victims attend parole hearings, and enhanced penalties for child abusers. (There also was appreciation for provisions that would allow some drug offenders to be diverted to treatment programs.) But he believes that one of the main priorities of the government's criminal-justice policy should be to encourage victims of domestic and sex abuse (the majority of whom suffer in silence) to report their crimes. In this area, the bill may be counterproductive: By forcing the hand of already-overworked crown prosecutors, it will encourage them to stay, delay or pleabargain many of their cases.

Even as things stand, prosecutors can only prosecute about 10% of their caseload, by Mr. Sullivan's estimate. C-10 may push that number into single digits.

Another panelist was Greg Simmons, a 46-year-old university student and former cocaine dealer who spent 14 years of his life in the federal prison system. As one might predict, he was skeptical of the idea that mandatory minimums would do much to discourage crime. In some cases, he said, it might have the opposite effect: "When I was doing my thing [on the streets], there were times when I thought, 'if I'm going in [to commit a crime], I might as well go in with gusto. I'm not going back to prison. I'm never going to let them take me back' " - his point being that more draconian prison sentences will only make criminals more reckless.

Is that true? I'm not a criminologist, and I couldn't say one way or the other. But I did find it odd to reflect on the fact that - despite all the punditry and propaganda surrounding C-10 - this was the first time I'd ever heard a former prisoner give his opinion on the subject. All the other commentary has been supplied by middleclass blowhards like myself, people who wouldn't know cocaine from Sweet'N Low.

Putting aside my objections to the mandatory minimums contained in C-10, and the prison-happy agenda it epitomizes, the bill represents something larger: A complete divorce between policy-making, and the reallife empirical research and lessons supplied by men such as Messrs. Simmons, Oscapella and Sullivan.

Stephen Harper and his cabinet ministers bristle when they are accused of inflicting an "ideological" agenda on Canada. So I put the question to them: In the absence of evidence or expertise to back up your policy, what other word would you offer me?

Origin
Source: National Post 

No comments:

Post a Comment