{"id":13552,"date":"2012-02-14T10:39:13","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T15:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13552"},"modified":"2012-02-14T12:19:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T17:19:56","slug":"the-harper-crime-policy-is-less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/14\/the-harper-crime-policy-is-less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Harper crime policy is less than the sum of its parts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s odd to find myself on the same side of a debate as Roy McMurtry, but he and his co-authors Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are much more right than the government in this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Harper crime policy is less than the sum of its parts because it does not add up to a crime policy that addresses, or even acknowledges, these basic facts. It squanders resources that could be used to reduce crime. Making it more difficult for people to get out from under the shadow of their much earlier offences (through a pardon or \u201crecord suspension\u201d) makes it harder for millions of Canadians with criminal records to reintegrate into society. Adding mandatory minimum penalties will do nothing to deter offenders, who, the data demonstrate, do not expect to get caught.<\/p>\n

But the Harper crime policy is more than the sum of its parts because it tells us that the government is committed to ignoring evidence about crime, and does not care about whether our criminal-justice system is just and humane.<\/p>\n

The student who grows six marijuana plants in her rented apartment to share with friends will soon face a mandatory minimum sentence of nine months in prison. Meanwhile, assaults have no mandatory minimum sentences. The law says that trial judges are required to impose sentences proportional to their seriousness and the offender\u2019s responsibility for the offence. Is someone who grows six marijuana plants much more dangerous than someone who grows five (for which there is no minimum sentence)? Or who commits an assault? The Harper Tories seemingly think so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/b>: Of course, Stephen Harper rhetorically cast the libertarians out of the Conservative party years ago. The current attempts to provide the police with powers even they have said they don’t need<\/em> merely provide extra proof. Chris Selley<\/a> summarizes a National Post<\/em> editorial on the subject:<\/p>\n

\n

The National Post<\/em>\u2018s editorialists do not understand<\/a> how a government that considers the long-gun registry (and, we\u2019d add, the mandatory long-form census) an unconscionable invasion of Canadians\u2019 privacy and a waste of their money can possibly get behind legislation that would \u201cgive the government unprecedented access to Canadians\u2019 online activities, by allowing police to collect the personal information of Internet users \u2026 without having to go through the cumbersome process of obtaining a warrant beforehand.\u201d We share this frustration. But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews made it quite clear what he thinks of such complaints yesterday, when he said Canadians \u201ccan either stand with us or with the child pornographers.\u201d In other words: \u201cAttention, libertarian wing of the Conservative Party of Canada. We think you are immoral, and no longer desire your votes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s odd to find myself on the same side of a debate as Roy McMurtry, but he and his co-authors Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are much more right than the government in this: The Harper crime policy is less than the sum of its parts because it does not add up to a crime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10],"tags":[343,119,267,83,154,258,417],"class_list":["post-13552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-drugs","tag-justice","tag-marijuana","tag-privacy","tag-stephenharper","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3wA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13552"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13558,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13552\/revisions\/13558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}