Is this too Machiavellian? Maybe the Conservatives want the justice system to collapse?

Almost all justice system players say the Crime Bills won't work -- maybe that certain failure is intentional? Maybe the Conservatives want the legislation to fail?

Yesterday I had a long talk with a senior Crown Attorney.

The Crown took no position on whether or not it made sense to increase sentences and send more people to jail -- the Crown said 'that's for Parliament to decide'.

But the Crown did say the Crime Bills can't work because they will eliminate guilty pleas, make people run bail hearing and generally delay matters. The Crown noted that if the 'Conservatives wanted the changes to work they'd have matched them with money for more judges, lawyers, Crowns and prisons'. Accordingly, what will happen is cases will be tossed for delay and the system will shuffle along.

Now the Crown thought people being released for delay was a failure and showed the Conservatives did not think things through. Maybe not.

This Government is not run by fools. They can see the system won't work as set up and judges will start staying charges for delay.

But then the Conservatives can blame the bleeding heart liberal judges for letting out dangerous criminals -- which will allow another round of 'let's get tough on crime' legislation.

And that new 'tough on crime' politicking will come just around the time of the next Federal election ... .

A billion here a billion there -- it adds up to real money

As I have written before, the crime bills are very costly, of doubtful effect and will be a huge drain on the provinces.

http://bit.ly/dbMUTy

Anti-crime laws will cost billions: watchdog

KATHLEEN HARRIS, Parliamentary Bureau

OTTAWA - The Conservative tough-on-crime agenda will cost Canadian taxpayers billions, according to a new report from the parliamentary spending watchdog.

The 125-page analysis by parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page projects spending will more than double to $9.5 billion in the next five years to keep convicted criminals locked up longer - including a multimillion-dollar price tag for building new prisons and heftier annual operating and maintenance costs

The True Cost of Crime Bills

My own view is that much of the recent "tough on crime" legislation is wrongheaded. There are better ways to deal with crime than a reflexive imposition of prison. Drug treatment, especially for drug users, is a cheaper and more effective way to reduce drug addiction than sending drug users to jail. Regardless, the true costs of crime legislation -- who will pay and how such payment will affect other programs -- must be acknowledged.

http://tinyurl.com/2cp88fa

Tough on Crime but on the Provincial Dime

The cost of new Federal crime legislation is high, much higher that previously announced. Bill C-25, limiting the credit offenders receive for pre-trial custody was supposed to cost around $90 million. The actual cost, the government now admits, is in the $2 billion range.

Legislation that increases Canada’s inmate population is, inevitably, costly.

Among various criminal law reforms, the Federal government is bringing back a bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences on people convicted of growing small numbers of marihuana plants. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson suggested that the new legislation will include a mandatory six month sentence for people convicted of growing as few as five marijuana plants.

Last year I testified before the Senate on an earlier version on this legislation. I argued that mandatory jail should not apply to drug offenders who grow marihuana for personal, as opposed to commercial, use. I also pointed out that a serious issue raised by this proposal relates to who would pay for the increase in prisons and their inmates.

Canada’s federal system provides for both federal and provincial prisons. Surprisingly, perhaps, the division between the federal and provincial system is not based on who breached what laws (say provincial offenders going to provincial jails) but rather on the length of sentence. Anyone held pending a trial or sentenced to less than two years in custody goes to a provincial jail; longer sentences are served in a federal institution.

Another aspect of Canada’s federal system is that all criminal law is set by the federal government. Hence, a federal legislative change that increases the number of offenders sentenced to six month custody – as with the proposed marihuana law – sends offenders to jails paid for by the provinces.

As mentioned above, changes to the bail system have limited the credit to be given for pretrial custody. The result of this change will be to expand the number of people sentenced to jail following conviction and to lengthen the time they serve once convicted. This increase Federal costs somewhat but since most accused ultimately serve less than two years the changes serve mainly to increase the number of people in provincial custody.

More generally, “tough on crime” policies have had the effect of increasing pretrial custody – bail is more difficult to obtain. Correctional facilities in the provinces are experiencing ever-increasing numbers of accused being held in pretrial custody, to the point where the population in awaiting trial now exceeds the population in sentenced custody. Ignoring the fact that those awaiting trial are still presumed innocent and so the increase in numbers in problematic, all those awaiting trial are doing so in provincial institutions paid for by the provinces.

We know the cost of crime bills is high – several American states have started releasing low level drug offenders (the sort the federal government proposes to put in jail in Canada) to save money. What is less often realized is that the bulk of these new costs come out of Provincial coffers. Federal changes impose costs on cash strapped Provinces who will have to find cuts in education, healthcare or somewhere in order to put potheads in prison.

My own view is that much of the recent “tough on crime” legislation is wrongheaded There are more effective and cheaper ways to deal with crime than a reflexive imposition of prison. Regardless, the true costs of crime legislation, who will pay and how such payment will affect other programs must be acknowledged.

Crime doesn’t pay – but the taxpayer will.

Federal "Tough on Crime" costs downloaded to Provinces

Note the downloading to the Provinces -- I flagged this issue months ago (see post of October 2009: http://jmortonmusings.blogspot.com/2009/10/tough-on-crime-soft-on-federal-budget.html ). The Federal Government is being "tough on crime" at the expense of the Provinces:


Tory law-and-order agenda costs up to $10-billion, budget office says

Heather Scoffield

Ottawa — The Canadian Press
Published on Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2010


A price tag for part of the Conservatives' law-and-order agenda is about to be made public — and the number is in the billions, far higher than any previous estimates.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer forecasts the cost of implementing just one of the Tories' many tough-on-crime bills is between $7-billion and $10-billion over the next five years.

Kevin Page's complex investigation into the budget implications of the so-called Truth in Sentencing legislation — also known as the two-for-one sentencing law — is expected to be made public early next week.

Sources familiar with the document told The Canadian Press the study concludes the provinces will have to pick up about three-quarters of the costs, while Ottawa pays the rest.

The cash-strapped governments of Quebec and Ontario will be particularly hard hit.

Tough on crime, soft on the [Federal] budget

I have written here before about how the "law and order" agenda downloads most of its costs to the provinces.

The story below is fascinating because the Federal government is obfuscating wildly by suggesting the Provinces will save money be longer sentences leading to Federal incarceration.

The new sentencing requirements will dramatically increase the number of prisoners on remand and serving sentences of under two years -- all these will be a cost to the Provinces.

Federal prisoners will increase in number also. But that increase will be a small fraction of the Provincial increase. The Federal government is spending the Provinces money -- and now we see they don't intend to admit what they're doing.

Saying the Provinces should focus on "keeping communities safe" is disingenuous at best. The Federal government is ignoring the costs, especially those falling on the Provinces, and hiding that ignorance by cant.

Provinces want Ottawa to help pay for overcrowded jails

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009


OTTAWA - The provinces will ask the Harper government this week to help them pay for the federal law-and-order agenda, which they say will put extra strain on their overcrowded jails.
...
The provinces run jails, which house offenders serving sentences of less than two years. The federal government is responsible for prisons, reserved for terms of two years or more.

...
Mr. Van Loan told Canwest News Service he will not be taking his chequebook when he meets with his provincial counterparts -- and that they can expect to absorb any extra costs themselves, because they will benefit from several new and proposed laws that will put more offenders in prisons and jails.

"I think the real question is: Can we focus on keeping our communities safe and keeping the public safe? And I hope that will be the main focus of the provinces, as well," he said.

At least one federal initiative, which became law last week, will be "a huge benefit" financially to the provinces, because it will send more people to federal prisons, who are currently being detained in provincial facilities, awaiting the conclusion of their trials, Mr. Van Loan added.

The new law will eliminate a judicial practice, when sentencing offenders, of giving a two-for-one credit to compensate for time already spent in custody.
...
Mr. Van Loan has refused to reveal the total tab for the federal law-and-order agenda, which would put more people in jails and prisons and keep them there longer.

Among other things, the government has proposed legislation that would impose minimum mandatory sentences for a variety of crimes, including financial fraud and drug trafficking.

Automatic incarceration takes away discretion for judges to impose lesser sentences as they see fit.

The government is proposing other measures that will also keep offenders imprisoned longer. A bill introduced this week would repeal accelerated parole, which permits an offender serving time for a non-violent crime to be released on day parole after serving one-sixth of his sentence.

...
Mr. Van Loan said he expects that eliminating accelerated parole would cost the system about $60-million, but he has repeatedly declined to disclose the cost of any other measures, saying they are "cabinet confidences."

Mr. Van Loan's predecessor, Stockwell Day, stated publicly soon after the Conservatives came to power in 2006 that the government has set aside as much as $245-million over five years to pay for additional prison cells at the federal level.

For three years, provinces have been pushing for extra cash for their overcrowded jails, but they are expected to sharpen their lobbying this year, because several bills have become law, or are on the verging on passing.

James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4

416 225 2777

Tough-on-crime agenda is cheap for Feds but not cheap for taxpayers

A point I have mentioned before, "tough on crime" is generally cheap for the Feds but not cheap for taxpayers.



Most of the new mandatory sentences will be served in less than two years -- so the convicts will be sent to Provincial institutions paid for by the Provinces. Taxpayers will pay but it will not come from the Federal budget.



Similarly, the enforcement by police, the extra legal aid and (most of) the extra judges (and all of the extra Justices of the Peace) will be paid by the Provinces.



Federal costing is misleading here. The Conservative "tough on crime" agenda will be costly and will be paid for by taxpayers -- but not at the Federal level.





"Liberals request financial analysis, hoping to determine implications of crime bills



Bill Curry

Ottawa— From Monday's Globe and Mail



Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is launching the first stages of a financial analysis aimed at pinning down the total cost of the Conservative government's tough-on-crime agenda.



The preliminary work is being done in response to a written request by Liberal MP Mark Holland. The MP hopes it will determine the financial implications of three crime bills already passed into law and four others that are still being debated in Parliament.



"The government has supplied Parliament with no costing for these policies, despite the fact that the cost to our correctional system will inevitably be in the hundreds of millions of dollars as a significant influx of new federal inmates will result," Mr. Holland wrote."

James Morton

1100-5255 Yonge Street

Toronto, Ontario

M2N 6P4



416 225 2777

Globe -- who's really killing the crime bills?

Who's killing the crime bills?

That's a simple whodunnit that the Conservatives will solve for you: the Liberals, they say, will be killing C-25 and twelve other tough-on-crime bills if they force an election this fall.

"What is of concern with an election looming is the number of pieces of legislation that we have on the tackling-crime front that would be at risk," Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan warned Wednesday.

But it was the Tories themselves who killed crime bills last year, when it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper who called the election.

As the Conservatives ratchet up a campaign to make the Liberals and other opposition parties bear the blame for a fall election, some of the criticisms may clash with the record. Their attack on an opposition forcing the fourth election in 51/2 years may be weakened because they triggered the past two.

On Tuesday, the Federal Court of Canada was hearing arguments into whether Mr. Harper broke his own law setting a fixed 2009 election date when he called the 2008 general election. If the court rules quickly, it could unsettle the anti-election arguments Mr. Harper is aiming at the opposition.

"The line that they're being opportunist is simply hypocritical for the government, given what they did last September," said Duff Conacher, the long-time government-ethics gadfly who sued Mr. Harper in Federal Court.

On Wednesday, Mr. Van Loan was complaining that an "unnecessary election" would kill 13 bills winding their way through Parliament that would end "faint-hope" parole for murderers, stiffen drug sentences and reduce house arrest.

What he didn't mention was that Mr. Harper's 2008 election call also killed bills on drug crime, youth crime and identity theft.

Bills that are already winding through Parliament, including some that have passed the Commons and are before the Senate, are wiped out by an election, and must start at square one in a new Parliament.

One of the bills Mr. Van Loan fretted over is legislation to address identity theft – a bill that was also killed when Mr. Harper called last year's election.

"This will be the third election we've had that bill before the House," said New Democrat justice critic Joe Comartin, complaining that Canada's identity-theft laws are years behind those in Europe and the U.S.

Crime has proved to be such a no-risk political winner that the Harper government has for three years stacked up a long queue of crime bills in Parliament, sometimes letting them sit without debate, and blaming the opposition for stalling them.

Mr. Comartin said the Conservatives are transparently slowing the progress of some crime bills so that they can use it as a political weapon, mainly against the Liberals.

"Pushing the crime button has worked for them fairly effectively," he said. "They'd love to be able to beat up on the Liberals."
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4

416 225 2777

Incarceration

This is an important story from the Star. The lead-in shows that even Texas is rethinking its criminal justice system. It's time we realize here that prisons have failed -- either we radically revamp them or we replace them. If we want to lower crime let's use an evidence based approach. If we just want to make political noise then, ok, but try to not make crime worse with badly thought our 'tough on crime' initiatives. Remember when medicine used magic it didn't work -- the same thing is true for law.



http://mobile.thestar.com/mobile/NEWS/article/668064



A real-estate guide to incarceration



Jim Rankin



Staff Reporter







Texas is looking for jail guards and offering $1,500 recruiting bonuses for those willing to move to understaffed prisons. The need is not surprising in a state with the highest incarceration rate, in a country with such fervour for imprisonment that one in 100 adult males sits in jail.



But here's the news: Soaring prison costs – and neighbourhood maps that show where inmates come from and return to, and the underlying social conditions in those areas – have caused policy makers, Republican and Democrats alike, to rethink this love affair. "It's such a socio-economic concern. Inmates come from poor neighbourhoods, and they go back to neighbourhoods, and it just happens that they have some of the worst schools, worst health-care delivery system," says Texas Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.



"How do you fix that? It's a generational deal, almost," he says. "But, that don't mean you don't try."



Instead of building prisons, Texas is investing in programs to keep people out of jail.



Similar thinking is occurring in Wisconsin, where the prison population is projected to go up by one-quarter within the next decade, and in seven more states with out-of-control prison bills, including Michigan, Kansas and Nevada.

Not a serious crime agenda at all

From the Globe and Mail:

With great fanfare, the federal government has recently announced an array of legislation aimed at bolstering its law-and-order credentials. It has succeeded in directing considerable public attention and debate toward everything from the enhancement of victims' rights to the end of conditional sentencing, to an increase in police surveillance powers. Yet the timing of these announcements suggests that attention is what the government is aiming for.

If any of these measures were a legislative priority for the Conservatives, they would have been introduced months ago, with a subsequent attempt to push them through the House of Commons. Parliament sat steadily from January through the end of last week, and was by no means overloaded with legislation. Yet the government waited for the final weeks – in some instances the final days – of the spring session. Given the strong possibility of a fall election, many of these bills may never be debated, much less voted upon.

...

For the Conservatives, this approach has its advantages. They are able to appear to have an active legislative agenda, and can appeal to their support base. At the same time, they can avoid putting their proposed reforms to the constitutional challenges that some of them would face. Nor are they forced to come up with new crime-related legislation to prove they are tough on crime (and perhaps that their opponents are soft on it); instead, they keep the same issues on the table as if in perpetuity.

...

Full story here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/eleventh-hour-gestures/article1191498/

An early election over justice issues?

I don't see this as plausible but stranger things have happened... .

Won't back crime bills, MPs say

Opposition vow to block get-tough measures; Tories won't back down

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
November 5, 2008

OTTAWA — Opposition MPs, including Liberals who have worked on justice issues, say they would plunge the country into another federal election before agreeing to a slate of Conservative proposals that would see convicted criminals treated more harshly.

The measures, including tougher penalties for young offenders and the reduced use of conditional sentences that allow criminals to serve their time at home, are likely to be among the first tests of Liberal willingness to challenge Stephen Harper's new minority government.
The Conservatives are not backing down from threats to make the measures matters of confidence.

"I don't think there has been any change in our position around that," Kory Teneycke, spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told The Globe and Mail. "We are prepared to make them [justice issues] confidence matters if necessary."

During the last session of Parliament, the Conservatives passed a law that removed judges' ability to hand down conditional sentences for a range of serious violent crimes.

Full story here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081105.wjustice30/BNStory/politics/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20081105.wjustice30

Real crime is repetition

I disagree with the Conservative approach -- it's just politics -- but crime is an issue that needs debate and the Conservatives are talking about it.

Brantford Expositor (ON)
Thu 25 Sep 2008
Page: A10
Section: Editorial/Opinion
Column: Editorial

Fewer than 50 people turned out for a Conservative campaign event in Brantford Wednesday featuring Justice Minister Rob Nicholson promoting the government's tough on crime agenda.

It's about the audience the tired Conservative message deserves.

Didn't we just have 2 1 /2 years of being governed by a law-and-order, tough-on-crime party?

Wasn't getting tough on crime one of the Conservatives' vaunted five priorities when they got elected? Or was that getting tough on the arts?

Aren't we already tough on crime, given that the Conservatives have pushed their justice bills through the House of Commons with the threat of an election?
To be trotting out this issue on the election trail seems bizarre for a party that has led in the polls since the election's start and in a country where we all know crime has been in decline for a generation.

Yet the Conservatives cling to their crime and justice mantra, almost in desperation.

We wonder how long they would have to govern for the nation to be sufficiently tough on crime.

The bigger issue is why changes to the justice system, presumably well thought-out for both their preventive and rehabilitative impact, are being introduced during a campaign.

If the criminal justice system is an integral part of a democracy -- and we believe it is -- fundamental changes to it are too important to be flaunted for votes midway through a campaign like a tax break or some other promise.

So far this election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced his intent to reduce conditional sentences -- or house arrest -- for a wider variety of crimes and to increase the number of serious crimes for which youth as young as 14 could be tried and sentenced as adults.

The thrust is to move towards a more American style of justice system, even though the crime rate is higher south of the border and there is no evidence that sending more people to jail for longer sentences helps reduce crime.

No wonder the Conservative event in support of Brant candidate Phil McColeman drew such a small crowd, which included media, party supporters wearing buttons and a few protesters, who were targeting the wrong minister to address native land claims.

(We doubt we'll see Indian and North Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl in Brantford during the election, though we would certainly welcome him.)

Polls show that crime ranks in single digits as the major issue for voters, behind the economy, health care and the environment.

No mystery why the Conservatives prefer talking about getting tough on crime over any of the three latter issues.

We declared earlier in the election that crime and justice were among the five issues we would be watching.

We want action to reduce crime and agree with criminologists and other experts that there is no reason to believe incarcerating more people for more time has any effect except diverting money from more effective crime prevention measures.

We will say this for the Conservatives, however -- at least they're talking about the issue.

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4

Passing crime bill worth another election, says Tory justice minister

Rob Nicholson is a very solid Justice Minister. That said, he is not correct in saying that we needed this election to pass crime legislation -- the Liberal Party is solidly behind sensible criminal law changes that are 'tough on crime'.

However, we need to go beyond 'tough on crime' to programs that actually work and cut crime for real. No one is talking about, for example, mandatory drug treatment. Criminal justice is, as Rob Nicholson points out, too important to be mere politics.

The Canadian Press
Sun 21 Sep 2008
Section: National General News
Byline: BY MICHAEL OLIVEIRA

MISSISSAUGA, Ont._ A minority Conservative government would rather force another election than back down on its law and order agenda, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Sunday.

Nicholson told a rally in Mississauga, Ont., that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already made clear he would not tolerate any more ``obstruction'' like the government faced last October when it introduced the Tackling Violent Crime Act omnibus bill.

``We're making it very clear about how serious we are about getting that anti-crime agenda through Parliament,'' he said.

``We will be taking a zero-tolerance approach. Our crime measures will be confidence measures, we are determined that our law and order agenda will be passed.''

The Conservatives have tried to make crime, with an emphasis on getting tough on criminals, a major issue in the election, in part because it appeals to core supporters.

Meanwhile, both the Liberals and New Democrats have stressed tougher gun control measures.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion vowed he would ban military assault weapons, but not handguns. New Democrat Leader Jack Layton said he would enable municipalities and provinces to ban handguns if the NDP assumed power.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty also called for a handgun ban last week after a schoolyard shooting in Toronto.

Nicholson said the Conservatives aren't interested in banning handguns since pistols are already effectively outlawed.
``I think the problem in this country is people who steal guns and people who use them for improper purposes,'' he said. ``It's not sportsmen or antique collectors that I believe (are) the problem.''

Although he criticized all opposition parties for stalling Conservative bills in the last parliamentary session, Nicholson aimed his sharpest criticism at Dion, saying he had put ``partisan gains ahead of public safety.''
James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4