Tuesday, February 24, 2009

New anti-gang legislation

Mandatory sentences are not as useful as better policing. Increase the risk of arrest and sentence and crime will go down.


Ottawa to unveil tough anti-gang legislation

The federal government is expected to unveil new legislation Thursday that will include an automatic first-degree murder charge for any gang-related killings, CTV News has learned.

CTV News has learned that the federal government is set to unveil a new law on Thursday that aims to crackdown on gang violence.

In other proposals contained in the bill, drive-by shootings and some serious drug offences would carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence.

2 comments:

WesternGrit said...

I have a question.

When youth crime is down in Canada (by quite a bit - from stats I heard yesterday), why is a "gang" offense more "first degree" than a "normal" first degree murder? Am I missing something here?

Is this just feigned "action" for political purpose? I thought we have "organized" crime legislation to deal with "gangs"?

Maybe I missed something. I just don't think it is constitutional to treat people this differently. And how do we define "gang". It seems most murders in Canada can be attributed to personal disputes/domestics, etc. All the rest are probably planned out by groups (by definition, "more than one person)... Are they all automatically defined as "gangs"?

We need more clarity on this... More police officers, treatments centers, and youth centers may work better. More efforts to create solid home lives may also be more effective (and have proven so in other countries)...

James C Morton said...

Western, We'll see when the legislation comes out but my sense is this is really just politics