It surprised no one recently when Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to Vancouver to demonstrate yet again that he is “tough on crime.”
The Pacific coast city, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, is in the grips of a murderous gang war over drugs and turf. It was the perfect backdrop for Harper and his ministers to announce a new batch of laws that impose mandatory minimum sentences on crimes from drug possession to drive-by shootings.
Under the proposed changes, judges would have no choice but to impose, for example, a minimum six-month prison sentence for someone caught growing just one marijuana plant, a minimum three-year sentence for producing methamphetamine in a residential area, and a minimum of four years for anyone convicted of a drive-by shooting. Maximum sentences are, of course, far higher.
There’s little doubt the proposals will be passed by Parliament, despite the conservative government’s minority status. Two opposition political parties — the socialist New Democrats and the centrist Liberals — supported an earlier batch of mandatory minimum sentencing laws for gun-related crimes proposed last year. Alone in bucking the trend is the Bloc Quebecois, a party dedicated to breaking up Canada by making the province of Quebec an independent country.
Mainstream Canadian politicians consider the “tough on crime” label a sure vote getter. But while Vancouver’s gang war — and the Harper government’s forceful response — is headline-grabbing stuff, both obscure the fact that Canada’s crime rate has tumbled more than 25 percent during the past 15 years.
A further problem is that mandatory minimum sentencing is a discredited movement that turned the United States into the prison capital of the world. And states in the U.S. are beginning to drop such laws as failed policy at precisely the time Canada is multiplying them.
The latest to do so is New York State. Legislators there announced two weeks ago that they would gut the infamous Rockefeller drug laws that launched the mandatory minimum sentencing craze in the early 1970s. Michigan, which spends more on incarceration than higher education, has also eased its mandatory sentencing laws.
Across the U.S., mandatory sentencing laws resulted in a quadrupling of the inmate population between 1973 and the early 1990s. In 2007, the U.S. had 2.2 million inmates and $40 billion a year in prison costs.
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I am a Canadian. Mandatory sentencing is foolish and costly, but politically expedient. Judges are judges for a reason, they have legal training and experience which the average lay citizen does not (of which I am one). Let parliament enact sensible laws punishing heinous crime and not misdemeanors such as minor possession and allow judges full latitude to enact appropriate sentences and then the justice system might work well
Perhaps if our judges here in Canada would enforce our existing laws, then Parliament wouldn't be forced to introduce minimum sentences. Too many criminals get off with hardly any time in prison for very serious crimes including gang-related gun crimes. The US may have swung too far in the direction of incarceration, but we have swung too far in the direction of rehabilitation. There are some criminals that you just can't rehabilitate and they end up back on the streets of Toronto or Vancouver, killing innocent passers-by knowing full well that even if they are caught and sentenced, they will be back on the streets in a few short years. I'm Canadian and I support tougher sentencing laws in my country, what you do in your country is your business. Good luck!
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