Sudbury Steelworkers Hall decision

R. v. P. (Z.) 2009 ONCJ 580, the Sudbury Steelworkers Hall case is difficult to get. It is not available, yet, on CanLII. While the entire case is worth reading, perhaps the most striking sections follow:

6:2 Protection of the Public

45 Before dealing with this particular sentencing, I will digress to several factors that either detract from or aid the public protection. This will help to put this particular sentence in a proper context.

46 There are two pillars to the protection of the public. The first is public social and economic policy that targets the root causes of crime. It recognizes the need to minimize the people coming into the criminal justice system in the first place. The second pillar is judicial sentencing practices. By far, the first pillar is the most important in protection of the public.

47 So how has Canada done in public policy to target the root causes of crime? Canada lags behind most western democratic countries. A barometer of public policy targeting the root causes of crime is the incarceration rate.

48 At one end of the spectrum are Sweden and other Scandinavian countries with well less than one hundred people in jail for every one hundred thousand population. The United States is at the other end of the spectrum. It has now broken through the one thousand barrier- one thousand people in jail for every one hundred thousand population. For decades, Canada had the second highest incarceration rate, though far behind the United States, in a range of 120 to 150 per one hundred thousand population. Most European countries have incarceration rates lower than Canada.

49 The Scandinavian countries have lower crime rates on a per capita basis, far fewer people in jail on a per capita basis and a better rate of recidivism - compared to Canada. Many European countries outperform Canada.

50 Why such a discrepancy? Because Scandinavia has figured out the best protection of the public is a sound socio-economic policy. It pours funds and resources into the root causes of crime. When people do come into the criminal justice system, including the youth justice system, they do not simply respond with the mantra of jail; they effectively fund rehabilitative services and utilize creative and enlightened rehabilitative strategies. The bottom line is they have the societal and political will to take this approach. They view judicial sentencing practices as supplementary to public policy and understand the inherent limitations of judicial sentences.

51 What about the American experience? They have by far the most punitive sentencing practices in the democratic world. Does this better protect the public? It does not.

52 Take for instance capital punishment. When it came back into use, the prevailing thinking was it was required as a deterrence to prevent murder. It has not worked. The American murder rate is hundreds of percentage points above Canada. The deterrent argument has been an abject failure. Americans no longer pretend to justify capital punish-ment as a deterrent penalty. It is a purely punitive penalty.

53 Most of the people that commit murder in the United States are so hardened because of socio-economic circumstances that the logic of deterrence is lost on them. The American rate of violence is worse than ours. Torontonians may complain about guns and gun violence, however, it does not even come close to the per capita gun violence in the United States. Putting people in jail more frequently and for longer periods of time creates an illusion of safety. The public may be protected while they are in jail but what kind of condition are they in when they get out. The more punitive the sentence is, the worse they will be and the more likely they will continue to commit serious crime.

54 The balance between public policy to target the root causes of crime and judicial sentence practices has been tipped too heavily toward punitive sentence practices. The Americans have failed to target the socio-economic causes of crime.

55 For those in this country who would like to see an American style approach to judicial sentencing practices, which usually involves frequent, harsh and lengthy jail sentences, I can point out that the United States stands alone in the democratic world with their approach. They are roundly criticized by the British common law countries, European countries and Scandinavia. They are considered to be a model for failure. No democratic country in the world is emulating their practices.

56 A further argument against the American approach is the staggering cost to the public treasury of incarcerating one thousand people per one hundred thousand population. On a per capita basis, most American states spend far more than Ontario on their penal and correctional system. This money is going into warehousing people and not enough into rehabilitation. For all practical purposes, California is now broke, contributed greatly by the cost of their prison system. If those in Canada and Ontario want this kind of an incarceration system, which caters to punitive instincts, the cost will be adding billions of dollars annually to the federal and Ontario budget. Is the public pre-pared to pay for this? When you do a cost benefit analysis, how is society better off and protected with this approach?

57 In Canada, we do a far better job of protecting the public from crime than the United States, though we incarcerate people significantly less. However, the United States should not be the standard of measurement. We should be looking at public policy in most other western democratic countries, who perform better than we do.

58 Understanding the causes of crime is not difficult. It starts with poverty. This has a domino impact on other so-cial and psychological factors, such as substance abuse. Twenty years ago this week, Parliament voted unanimously to eliminate child poverty within a decade. It is not come close to happening. The most recent statistics, from 2007, before the recession hit, indicate 9.5% of Canadian children are living in poverty. For a mature civilized democracy, this is a shameful performance. Canada has fared poorly in United Nations and other international reports as to its management of child poverty.

59 Poverty is the first fuel that drives crime. It becomes mixed in with the destabilization of families, widespread substance abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence. If you review the pre-sentence reports before Ca-nadian judges in relation to serious crime, you will see this constellation of socio-economic factors that go to the root causes of crime. Most of today's serious criminals were once victims. They patterned their behaviour after the societal forces that shaped them.