Toews is the minister of public safety who makes us feel unsafe, mostly because of his shaky grasp of fundamental Canadian freedoms and values.
Toews is a big fan of locking up the bad guys and throwing away the key. He’s kicking ass and taking names. Spout a law-and-order cliche and he’ll cheerlead for it. As to research and statistics on crime, it is to laugh. Who needs reason when you’ve got fear? Oppose his Internet surveillance bill and you support child molesters.
But something happened to the mustachioed minister. He has lost his way. He’s not saying we’re under siege anymore; in fact, he says crime is on the wane. We might even be spending too much on police. Call it an epiphany.
Here’s what Toews said at a conference last week: “Spending on policing has increased steadily — reaching more than $12 billion annually in 2010. At the same time, over the last decade, the volume and severity of reported crime have both been on the decline.”
Crime: volume and severity, both on the decline. Police are expensive. Toews said all that, in public.
His ministerial website links to a Statistics Canada study of policing and its costs, on which Toews apparently bases his new opinion. It shows police forces and their budgets steadily growing, even as crime declines.
The study found that in 2010, Canada employed 69,299 full-time police officers and 27,000 civilians in support. The total for working cops had been growing for six straight years and gave Canada a national rate of 203 police per 100,000 population, the highest since 1981.
The study also found the fall-off in crime was part of a long-term change. The decreases were consistent with “a general trend (toward less crime) observed over the past decade.”
So, crime is down but costs are up. Even the minister got to wondering: With less crime, do we really need more police?
And the StatsCan figures only cover regular police forces. They don’t count the vast national-security apparatus, intelligence agencies, border security forces or prison guards. Billions more are spent on those para-police forces every year.
What about the minister’s famous scorn for crime statistics? Toews has said both that they don’t matter and that they support his law-and-order views. Is that a little bit crazy? Outside of politics, it would be. But in Vic’s former view, decreasing rates just mean that unreported crime is up. Statistically speaking, if it’s not reported, it’s not a crime.
And yet Toews can’t stop himself from backhanding the justice system. “The impaired driving trial that took two hours 20 years ago now takes two days, requiring more time for officers to prepare for and appear in court — officers that are not on the streets enforcing the laws ...”
Gosh-darn those people who insist on their right to a fair trial, eh Vic?
Yet something has changed in Toews’ internal circuit logic. Wires have crossed. How else can you explain a speech which admits there’s a long-term trend of falling crime rates, calls for limits on police spending growth and suggests Canadians find “more effective and innovative ways to address criminality and disorder?”
He even advises the policing community to explore “research and best practices,” to improve service at a reasonable cost.
But how would that work? Nine dollars out of every $10 spent on policing go to wages and salaries, so how is research going to keep costs-per-cop affordable? Unless you reform the law or lay off cops, you’re only tackling 10 per cent of the problem.
Still, the “New Vic” point of view might explain his oft-repeated claim that Canada can enforce mandatory minimum sentences, deny parole and lengthen jail terms, all without adding prison capacity.
If even Toews can see that crime is waning, there’s no good argument left to spend more on jails.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: DAN LEGER
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