The CBC recently sent Terry Milewski to Texas, the blood and guts state, where he asked conservative politicians and various experts what they thought of building more prisons, and filling them up, as a means of driving down crime. “Don’t,” was the basic answer. “It doesn’t work. That’s why we’re doing the opposite.”
It was a nice piece on a serious policy issue. It reminded us that the federal government seems to consider crime legislation inside a hermetically sealed chamber. But for that very reason, nothing any journalist says is likely to make any difference. If contrary evidence carried any weight in Cabinet, the omnibus tough-on-crime bill, C-10, wouldn’t be before Parliament. The fact that elites recoil at its provisions and spew champagne out of their noses is a feature, not a bug.
And, if I may briefly adopt the voice of a partisan blogger, the mainstream media would denounce the law of gravity if it somehow helped the Liberals (or the NDP, depending what day it is). The CBC, in the memorable words of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, “lies all the time.” And Mr. Milewski, as we all know, chairs the left-wing media conspiracy.
This is not an ideal policy-making environment. But I’m going to try to change minds on a single, narrow, easily fixable issue: Mandatory minimum sentences for non-serious crimes. I can’t see any level on which they are supportable.
One of the problems for the Conservatives’ opponents is that when they say, “putting people in prison won’t work,” they’re making a general prediction about broad social aims. The Conservatives do insist their policies will reduce crime; Bill C-10 is called the “Safe Streets and Communities Act.” But its self-evident short-term goal is much more straightforward: To put more people in prison. And that will, indeed, work. You put people in prison, and then they’re in prison.
If Texas wants to go the other direction, Canadian conservatives might say, that’s Texas’s problem. Increased incarceration is obviously a popular notion, or else the Conservatives wouldn’t brag about spending billions on new prisons for child-molesters, carjackers and other beasties.
But look further down the ladder. As Dan Gardner noted in the Ottawa Citizen this week, Bill C-10 prescribes a nine-month mandatory minimum sentence for growing a single marijuana plant on rented premises, harvesting it, rolling a joint and passing it to a friend. (It’d have to be six plants on owned premises, which is bloody strange.)
This is bad policy for at least three reasons. One: It encourages the purchase of marijuana from, and thereby the enrichment of, criminals. Two: It’s draconian. If a Cabinet minister’s child was handed such a sentence, that Cabinet minister would tremble with grief and righteous rage. And three: A Cabinet minister’s child will never be handed such a sentence, and nor, most likely, will anyone else.
As it stands, police officers look the other way on marijuana offences all the time, largely because they realize it’s unfair to saddle non-violent people with criminal records for using a relatively harmless drug. (Political considerations notwithstanding, this is why many governments explore the idea of decriminalization: It frees up police officers to write as many citations as they wish. It’s a cash cow.)
Remove a judge’s discretion in sentencing pot-users, and police deference is much more likely to increase than decrease. It would likely fail not just at making the streets safer, but also at Bill C-10’s most basic goal — to put more people in prison.
This is good news, on a certain level. It’s better than if the law had teeth. But why not just excise these provisions from the bill? No one, liberal or conservative, would miss them.
If they stick to their guns? Well, it would be unseemly to wish to see a Cabinet minister’s son or daughter banged up for nine months for smoking a joint. But in the very unlikely event it happened, I certainly wouldn’t shed a tear for his or her parents. MPs shouldn’t vote for unjust laws. And they shouldn’t vote for laws that do nothing other than enlarge the Criminal Code.
Origin
Source: National Post
It was a nice piece on a serious policy issue. It reminded us that the federal government seems to consider crime legislation inside a hermetically sealed chamber. But for that very reason, nothing any journalist says is likely to make any difference. If contrary evidence carried any weight in Cabinet, the omnibus tough-on-crime bill, C-10, wouldn’t be before Parliament. The fact that elites recoil at its provisions and spew champagne out of their noses is a feature, not a bug.
And, if I may briefly adopt the voice of a partisan blogger, the mainstream media would denounce the law of gravity if it somehow helped the Liberals (or the NDP, depending what day it is). The CBC, in the memorable words of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, “lies all the time.” And Mr. Milewski, as we all know, chairs the left-wing media conspiracy.
This is not an ideal policy-making environment. But I’m going to try to change minds on a single, narrow, easily fixable issue: Mandatory minimum sentences for non-serious crimes. I can’t see any level on which they are supportable.
One of the problems for the Conservatives’ opponents is that when they say, “putting people in prison won’t work,” they’re making a general prediction about broad social aims. The Conservatives do insist their policies will reduce crime; Bill C-10 is called the “Safe Streets and Communities Act.” But its self-evident short-term goal is much more straightforward: To put more people in prison. And that will, indeed, work. You put people in prison, and then they’re in prison.
If Texas wants to go the other direction, Canadian conservatives might say, that’s Texas’s problem. Increased incarceration is obviously a popular notion, or else the Conservatives wouldn’t brag about spending billions on new prisons for child-molesters, carjackers and other beasties.
But look further down the ladder. As Dan Gardner noted in the Ottawa Citizen this week, Bill C-10 prescribes a nine-month mandatory minimum sentence for growing a single marijuana plant on rented premises, harvesting it, rolling a joint and passing it to a friend. (It’d have to be six plants on owned premises, which is bloody strange.)
This is bad policy for at least three reasons. One: It encourages the purchase of marijuana from, and thereby the enrichment of, criminals. Two: It’s draconian. If a Cabinet minister’s child was handed such a sentence, that Cabinet minister would tremble with grief and righteous rage. And three: A Cabinet minister’s child will never be handed such a sentence, and nor, most likely, will anyone else.
As it stands, police officers look the other way on marijuana offences all the time, largely because they realize it’s unfair to saddle non-violent people with criminal records for using a relatively harmless drug. (Political considerations notwithstanding, this is why many governments explore the idea of decriminalization: It frees up police officers to write as many citations as they wish. It’s a cash cow.)
Remove a judge’s discretion in sentencing pot-users, and police deference is much more likely to increase than decrease. It would likely fail not just at making the streets safer, but also at Bill C-10’s most basic goal — to put more people in prison.
This is good news, on a certain level. It’s better than if the law had teeth. But why not just excise these provisions from the bill? No one, liberal or conservative, would miss them.
If they stick to their guns? Well, it would be unseemly to wish to see a Cabinet minister’s son or daughter banged up for nine months for smoking a joint. But in the very unlikely event it happened, I certainly wouldn’t shed a tear for his or her parents. MPs shouldn’t vote for unjust laws. And they shouldn’t vote for laws that do nothing other than enlarge the Criminal Code.
Origin
Source: National Post
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