VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu says B.C.'s criminal justice system isn't doing nearly enough about a 'plague of career criminals who infect our city'. Chu and the VPD are asking judges to protect the public by giving these 'super chronic' criminals significant prison time.
The VPD says it believes property crime in Vancouver is now the worst in the world, and Chu has a stack of statistics to back the claim up. The VPD says these 'super chronic' offenders--many with more than 100 criminal convictions-- primarily steal to feed expensive drug habits.
But Chu notes that around the point of their 30th conviction, sentences start to get shorter, not longer. "We say '30 strikes and you're out', which means that we are asking our judges to protect the public by giving these criminals significant prison time. Every day these chronic offenders are off the street many grateful victims are saved from having their homes broken into and their lives disrupted."
VPD Inspector Rob Rothwell says rehabilitation--or the lack of it--can no longer be the only consideration for judges. "When someone's exhibited an unbroken chain of criminality, they're completely incorrigible, and they're engaging in habitual offending, the primary consideration in sentencing has to become the protection of the public."
Vancouver Police say chronic offenders should be in jail for at least a year to get access to drug and alcohol treatment. Police will begin working more closely with Crown and appeal sentences they disagree with.
The VPD has made their complete report on chronic offenders available to the public on their website.
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