wanna Ban something?!?!!?!?!?!

HOW ABOUT REPEAT OFFENDERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blame the person NOT the TOOL!

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Repeat offender rate nearly four times what corrections service reports
Date: Nov 7, 2004 1:12 PM
NOTE: This story also ran in the Victoria Times Colonist

PUBLICATION: Edmonton Journal
DATE: 2004.11.07
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A5
BYLINE: Joel Baglole
SOURCE: CanWest News Service
DATELINE: VANCOUVER

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Repeat offender stats skewed by gov’t: Rate nearly four times what corrections service
reports

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VANCOUVER — The number of repeat offenders in Canada is nearly four times as high
as the official figure issued by the federal government, figures show.

The federal Correctional Service of Canada, which operates 54 prisons nationwide,
proudly claims the rate of recidivism — repetition of criminal behaviour — for
felons incarcerated in its institutions is only 10 per cent.

But that figure excludes some important criteria:

- The 10 per cent refers only to the number of convicted criminals who return to
a federal prison within two years of being released into society.

- It does not include people who return to a provincial jail within two years of
leaving federal custody.

- It also does not include people who return to any prison after being back in society
for three years or longer.

If the number of convicted criminals who return to a federal or a provincial jail
within two years of leaving federal custody is included, the recidivism rate increases
nearly four-fold to 37 per cent, according to Corrections Canada.

In some provincial prisons, 50 per cent of inmates are repeat offenders.

Provincial prison terms are given to people sentenced to less than two years in
jail. Federal prisons are for people sentenced to more than two years.

Assessing which criminals are likely to commit multiple crimes, and whether prisons
successfully rehabilitate people, is becoming increasingly important as courts divert
a growing number of people away from jails and give them conditional sentences to
be served in communities. It’s also becoming a bigger issue as the provinces and
Ottawa try to decide how many prisons to operate.

However, defining repeat offenders and calculating recidivism rates among convicted
criminals is a murky subject, and one where there is little co-ordination or co-operation
between provincial and federal branches of the justice system.

Critics say recidivism statistics are deliberately manipulated by the justice system
to play down the seriousness of crime in Canadian society, to justify giving convicted
criminals early release from jail, and make it appear that prisons are able to successfully
reform hardened criminals.

“The corrections system wants to show that it is racking up impressive success
rates. And to accomplish that they fudge definitions and skew statistics. It amounts
to a campaign of disinformation,” says Manitoba MP Vic Toews, justice critic
for the federal Conservative party.

“Unfortunately, the corrections system does not think that the Canadian public
can handle or understand the complexities of rehabilitating criminals.”

Even some proponents of Canada’s justice system acknowledge there are problems with
the way recidivism rates are defined and calculated.

“A lot of people will tell you that the official recidivism figures are ridiculously
low and don’t show the true level of crime. And they’re right,” says Graham
Stewart, executive director of The John Howard Society of Canada, a national charity
that helps offenders re-integrate into society. “These short-term figures taken
over a two-year period are very useful for people in the justice system to collect.
But they don’t necessarily paint an accurate picture for the public.”

The national crime rate rose six per cent in 2003, the first increase in a decade,
according to Statistics Canada’s Centre for Justice Statistics. The increase was
driven largely by a rise in counterfeiting and property crimes. Break-ins, motor-vehicle
thefts and robberies all rose last year. Robberies with a firearm jumped 10 per
cent, one of the highest increases. The violent crime rate remained unchanged, although
the incidence of homicide and sexual assault fell.

One of the major problems with calculating recidivism is provincial and federal
corrections systems don’t share information about repeat offenders. Corrections
Canada doesn’t even know when one of its inmates is sentenced to serve time in a
provincial jail after leaving federal custody.

“We wouldn’t know if someone served a provincial jail term in between two federal
terms until they re-enter the federal system,” says Christa McGregor, a spokeswoman
at Corrections Canada.