Quotulatiousness

March 25, 2012

There are more than ten reasons to oppose bill C-10

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

But I guess we have to start somewhere. Trinda L. Ernst has an article in the Toronto Star which compiles the top ten reasons to oppose the Conservatives’ most recent “tough on crime” bill:

Bill C-10 is titled The Safe Streets and Communities Act — an ironic name, considering that Canada already has some of the safest streets and communities in the world and a declining crime rate. This bill will do nothing to improve that state of affairs but, through its overreach and overreaction to imaginary problems, Bill C-10 could easily make it worse. It could eventually create the very problems it’s supposed to solve.

Bill C-10 will require new prisons; mandate incarceration for minor, non-violent offences; justify poor treatment of inmates and make their reintegration into society more difficult. Texas and California, among other jurisdictions, have already started down this road before changing course, realizing it cost too much and made their justice system worse. Canada is poised to repeat their mistake.

[. . .]

Canadians deserve accurate information about Bill C-10, its costs and its effects. This bill will change our country’s entire approach to crime at every stage of the justice system. It represents a huge step backwards; rather than prioritizing public safety, it emphasizes retribution above all else. It’s an approach that will make us less safe, less secure, and ultimately, less Canadian.

H/T to Bren McKenna for sending me the link.

Related posts:

  1. The Tory “omnibus crime legislation” overview
  2. Omnibus bills: Canada’s equivalent to “riders” on US legislation
  3. An unwelcome kind of “Top Ten Reasons” list
  4. The Omnibus Crime bill is really about only one thing: harsher punishments
  5. Tories drop “lawful access” provisions from omnibus crime bill

2 Comments

  1. Sorry, virtually everything that the Toronto Star publishes is crap, so I would have to disagree.

    I hope that we change our entire approach to crime at every stage of the justice system. You see, since Trudeau changed the system back in the 70s we have used “hug a thug” and it hasn’t worked. We need an adjustment to something better. Saying it is a “huge step backwards” is just another lefty comment that means that the author disagrees with the approach. Also calling it “less Canadian” is utter bullcrap too. I’m amazed that “American Justice” isn’t in your snip as well, as I imagine that it is used liberally (pun intended) throughout the article in the Star.

    When I say we need something better, I would rather see the CPC swing the pendulum all the way over from the old Liberal way. That is the typical way of these things. We start way out left (hug a thug) to way out right (lock them all away and throw away the key). We will settle back out into a mid stream that will be fair to first offenders and yet penalize the repeat offenders stronger. We have too many people who take advantage of the current system. They break the law, serve some of the sentence, get released early and then break the law again. Rinse and repeat until they do something stupider than what sent them to jail the first time.

    I don’t think there is anything wrong with minimum/mandatory sentencing. One of the Winnipeg Sun opinion writers used to bring to attention some of the dumber things that judges did, it was called the 8 ball award, if I remember right it was named after a case in Winnipeg where an 8 ball was used to kill someone and the judge basically let the guy off.

    Here is a story about a judge that has earned 3 8 Balls – http://www.winnipegsun.com/2011/06/02/judge-gets-third-eightball-award read that and tell me that judges don’t need some other guidance instead of their opinion of what to do.

    There are many stories by Brodbeck on the 8 Ball awards in Manitoba. There are far too many examples where judges, usually appointed by Liberal/NDP/”progressives”, deal in “feelings” of the criminal, with little or no regard for public safety or victim’s feelings.

    Ah, you get the idea.

    Comment by Dwayne — March 25, 2012 @ 01:08

  2. Oh, I’m well aware that there are problems in the justice system. Here are a few points I left on Brendan’s Facebook post:

    I’ve linked to this article in a blog post scheduled for tomorrow morning (and Hat-tipped Bren for the link). I used to be pretty conservative, but my views have changed over the years, at least on the issue of criminal justice. The Tories, for all their sins, are trying to address a perceived problem with the way our courts deal with criminals.

    I’ve seen, from personal experience, just how feeble the actual punishments handed down can be (ask me about providing emergency first aid on my front lawn to a crime victim who later died, but whose attacker ended up with a farcically lenient sentence). They see a problem — the problem is real — but their solution will not actually address the problem. It’ll only _seem_ to address it, and that will seem to be enough for Conservative voters.

    The death penalty is a bit of a red herring: more death penalties are handed out at street level by the police without judge or jury than ever would be pronounced by the courts. That doesn’t make it right … it’s just recognizing the facts. As Mencken once said, the death penalty doesn’t deter other murderers, but it does a good job of deterring _that_ murderer. I’m not as sanguine as old H.L., I’ve seen enough murder convictions overturned through DNA evidence that I’m unwilling to allow the justice system to have the death penalty available to them: even one innocent person’s death-by-law is enough to make me want to deny them that easy way of “solving” crimes.

    And then:

    Like most criminal justice bills, they won’t directly affect most of us, but trying to fix the problem of perceived inadequate sentences by mandating minimum sentences is addressing the symptom and not the cause. Adding more prisons and convicting more non-violent offenders to prison time does not make us safer and adds to the social cost of non-violent crime. Non-violent criminals will almost certainly not benefit from “hard time” but society will be poorer because of it. Both because we have to pay additional taxes to support the prisons and their staff, and also because it’s much tougher for anyone with a criminal record to lead a normal life after serving their custodial sentence. Fewer jobs for ex-cons means more chance that ex-cons will _have_ to re-offend to get enough money to survive. A very vicious circle indeed.

    Comment by Nicholas — March 25, 2012 @ 08:06

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