Or rather: check out the new plan, same as the old plan. The question is how many of us will get fooled again.
Last May, Nicholson announced his government was going to change the laws that apply to people found ‘not criminally responsible’. In November, Heritage Minister James Moore said the government was going to address the laws that apply to people found not criminally responsible. Canadians did not learn much from either exercise, except that James Moore is a good heritage minister.
This week, Nicholson laid out the government’s annual crime agenda and he hit all the familiar notes: get tough on sexual predators, stand up for victims and protect Canadians from the murderous maniacs skulking on every street corner.
Nicholson wants to get tough with sexual predators, which is apparently different from the reforms he made in the omnibus crime bill which were meant to protect children from sexual predators — by getting tough on sexual predators. He may not be known for creative thinking, but Nicholson is consistent.
The Conservatives also are going to introduce legislation — soon, they say — to better protect the public from people found not criminally responsible by making sure that public safety is the paramount consideration in decisions to release. The minister no doubt realizes that public safety is already the paramount consideration, as is made clear in a discussion paper on his own website. But such facts are harder to capture in a sound bite.
On the victim front, they say they will introduce legislation to implement a Victims Bill of Rights which will entrench rights into a single law at the federal level. The minister is not, it seems, committing to any new rights. The government will cut-and-paste existing rights (which are not rights at all) and put them all on the same piece of paper and call it a Bill of Rights. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it will make little difference in the lives of victims of crime.
The minister is also promising changes to restitution to help facilitate victims’ ability to obtain restitution where they incur losses. Great idea — wish I’d thought of that.
The interesting part about the government`s announcement is its selective use of statistics. For a government that claims not to govern by statistics, Nicholson sure did release a bunch of them to justify his agenda.
For example, in the background material, the government says that 43 per cent of federal offenders released from custody are re-incarcerated within 2 years. It sounds like almost half of federal offenders commit new offences and are back in jail within 2 years, which might be the case — or, that figure might include offenders who were re-incarcerated for violating a parole condition. Both scenarios are important but if you are using the statistic to justify longer sentences, you have to draw a distinction between the two.
Other documents on the Corrections website say that the recidivism rate is 44 per cent — but only 14 per cent for violent offences, the purported target of the government’s plans. We need to be clear what the statistics mean if they are being used to justify spending to ‘get tough on crime’ — because that money will not be available to spend on child crime victims or child poverty.
What about these sexual predators the minister talks about? The truth is that recidivism rates for sexual offences are lower than people think. According to the government’s statistics, after the first five years post-release just 14 per cent of federal sex offenders had a new charge or conviction for a sexual offence — and after twenty years, 73 per cent of sexual offenders had not been charged with, or convicted of, another sexual offence in the community.
Granted, many offences are not reported, but these numbers paint a picture quite different from the one the minister offers. There are specific types of sex offenders who may be higher-risk, so one would hope for evidence-based reform to focus on the actual, as opposed to the perceived risk.
The minister often refers to a 40 per cent increase in Internet child pornography charges, but his own background material notes that this figure reflects the increase in specific police-based units, training and proactive policing to target this particular crime. It does not necessarily mean that there are 40 per cent more offenders online than the year before.
In the media, the minister talked about funding for Child Advocacy Centres (another great idea I wish I’d thought of). He would be better off spending more money on these centres and community programs to help support victims than increasing penalties for the small number of offenders who actually go to court.
On the not-criminally-responsible reforms, the government quotes a report which says that most NCR individuals have committed violent offences — but fails to point out that the same report says only one in five cases ends in release by a review board after the first hearing and almost a quarter of all cases spend at least ten years or more inside before release.
Even more telling is the absence of numbers on recidivism. If the government claims changes are needed to better protect the public, isn’t that the most important statistic?
But of course, the minister doesn’t govern by statistics — although he can pick and choose ones that suit his predetermined agenda. But these have less to do with protecting the public or acting for crime victims and more to do with winning votes. And if it’s working, why change it?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Steve Sullivan
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