Crime and Punishment in Canada
A couple of days ago, Michael Tripper, now a 41 year old professional, wrote a perceptive comment in the Globe and Mail about his early life as a gang member.
He said that they would skip school and attack random strangers in the subway, or beat up kids from other schools. "We engaged in horrible deeds and we loved every minute of it."
Eventually he changed. Why? "It was fear for myself that made me stop and think: the pain of others was simply not enough to warrant my attention back then."
He writes of becoming a thief to get what other kids had. "Of course I feared getting caught, but I could set that against a return-on-investment calculation: What would the punishment be? Was it worth the gain? Given the lax laws of the time, my friends and I even spoke of murder as being something we could get away with. Back then, we expected we'd be locked up until the age of 18 and then let go."
He writes that poverty might lead some into crime, but "if the laws are too easy on adolescents, then they will make their calculations of brutality. If the consequences are short and not too severe, the risks become irrelevant."
Tripper suggest two solutions to reduce gang crime. First, the courts must deal severly with any use of guns. Second, "the federal government must look at the causes of poverty, such as our high immigration levels. Pouring desparate people into large cities isn't helping poverty, it's adding to it."
He's right. In my 35 years as a defence counsel and prosecutor in the criminal courts of Canada I am convinced that the concept of rehabilitiation as practised in this country is a demonstrable failure. The violent crime rate in Canada is five times higher than it was in 1962. (See police statistics gathered by MP Garry Breitkreuz at http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/ ) Clearly the government and the courts are doing something wrong, and failing seriously in their duty to protect the Canadian public.
My own sentencing philosophy can be expressed in two words - punishment rehabilitates. I do not advocate brutality in the prison system. I do advocate discipline and deprivation of amenities. It is appalling to me that serious criminals in this country not only vote in jail, they get better entertainment, education, medical service than the average citizen, all at taxpayer's expense. In my view the past and present Commissioners of Corrections under the Chretien and Martin governments, Ingstrup and McLung, have done a lot of harm to Canada by their powder puff policies toward inmates. They have blood on their hands, put there by criminals that they failed to confine adequately, and certainly failed to rehabilitate.
If punishment is meaningful to the criminal, and the jail experience is unpleasant, he will more likely to be deterred from further crime, so as not to go back to jail. I didn't invent this approach. It is an approach that worked for centuries, until the likes of Ingstrup, McLung and a liberal judiciary bought into the idea that rehabilitation meant counselling and life skills training.
A friend of mine once commented that to him the way our present system works is this. A guy who is doing three break and enters a week, and clearing $1500 tax free dollars for less than eight hours work, gets caught for his last couple of B&E's, although he has done hundreds. He is sentenced to a few months in jail.
While in jail, the counsellor says to him, in effect, "you know it's wrong for you to work eight hours a week for $1500 and not pay taxes. You should work for 40 hours a week, for $400, and pay taxes on it. That's the right thing to do." The criminal thinks this is just nuts, but of course knows the right thing to say in order to get out early.
Criminals are not like you and I. Could you decide to go bash an old lady on the head and take her purse to get some beer money? Of course not, but this sort of thing happens every day. The only way to stop it is not to appeal to the conscience or sense of social responsibility of a thug who has none. It is to punish such action in a way that it meaningful to the thug, so that on the cost/benefit calculation it just isn't worth it to mug that old lady.
So remember - punishment rehabilitates.
He said that they would skip school and attack random strangers in the subway, or beat up kids from other schools. "We engaged in horrible deeds and we loved every minute of it."
Eventually he changed. Why? "It was fear for myself that made me stop and think: the pain of others was simply not enough to warrant my attention back then."
He writes of becoming a thief to get what other kids had. "Of course I feared getting caught, but I could set that against a return-on-investment calculation: What would the punishment be? Was it worth the gain? Given the lax laws of the time, my friends and I even spoke of murder as being something we could get away with. Back then, we expected we'd be locked up until the age of 18 and then let go."
He writes that poverty might lead some into crime, but "if the laws are too easy on adolescents, then they will make their calculations of brutality. If the consequences are short and not too severe, the risks become irrelevant."
Tripper suggest two solutions to reduce gang crime. First, the courts must deal severly with any use of guns. Second, "the federal government must look at the causes of poverty, such as our high immigration levels. Pouring desparate people into large cities isn't helping poverty, it's adding to it."
He's right. In my 35 years as a defence counsel and prosecutor in the criminal courts of Canada I am convinced that the concept of rehabilitiation as practised in this country is a demonstrable failure. The violent crime rate in Canada is five times higher than it was in 1962. (See police statistics gathered by MP Garry Breitkreuz at http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/ ) Clearly the government and the courts are doing something wrong, and failing seriously in their duty to protect the Canadian public.
My own sentencing philosophy can be expressed in two words - punishment rehabilitates. I do not advocate brutality in the prison system. I do advocate discipline and deprivation of amenities. It is appalling to me that serious criminals in this country not only vote in jail, they get better entertainment, education, medical service than the average citizen, all at taxpayer's expense. In my view the past and present Commissioners of Corrections under the Chretien and Martin governments, Ingstrup and McLung, have done a lot of harm to Canada by their powder puff policies toward inmates. They have blood on their hands, put there by criminals that they failed to confine adequately, and certainly failed to rehabilitate.
If punishment is meaningful to the criminal, and the jail experience is unpleasant, he will more likely to be deterred from further crime, so as not to go back to jail. I didn't invent this approach. It is an approach that worked for centuries, until the likes of Ingstrup, McLung and a liberal judiciary bought into the idea that rehabilitation meant counselling and life skills training.
A friend of mine once commented that to him the way our present system works is this. A guy who is doing three break and enters a week, and clearing $1500 tax free dollars for less than eight hours work, gets caught for his last couple of B&E's, although he has done hundreds. He is sentenced to a few months in jail.
While in jail, the counsellor says to him, in effect, "you know it's wrong for you to work eight hours a week for $1500 and not pay taxes. You should work for 40 hours a week, for $400, and pay taxes on it. That's the right thing to do." The criminal thinks this is just nuts, but of course knows the right thing to say in order to get out early.
Criminals are not like you and I. Could you decide to go bash an old lady on the head and take her purse to get some beer money? Of course not, but this sort of thing happens every day. The only way to stop it is not to appeal to the conscience or sense of social responsibility of a thug who has none. It is to punish such action in a way that it meaningful to the thug, so that on the cost/benefit calculation it just isn't worth it to mug that old lady.
So remember - punishment rehabilitates.
posted by Brian Purdy, Calgary at 9:24 a.m.
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