National Post Editorial: Do the crime – do the time
Date: Oct 26, 2006 8:34 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2006.10.26
EDITION: All but Toronto
SECTION: Editorials
PAGE: A14
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 637

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Do the crime – do the time

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In May, Canada’s Conservative government introduced a bill to limit
conditional criminal sentences. As things stand, more than 5,500
criminals a year convicted of assault causing bodily harm, sexual
assault, robbery, drunk driving causing death or injury, car theft,
arson, break-and-enter and theft over $5,000 serve no prison time at
all, but instead are sentenced to house arrest or community supervision.
During the last election, the government promised to end this leniency
in a drive to “get tough on crime.” But Tuesday, the members of the
three opposition parties on the Commons justice committee gutted the
Tories’ bill. They joined together to pass amendments that preserved lax
sentencing for all but the most violent offenders, arguing the
government’s plan was a “radical, extreme overreaction.”

Vic Toews, the Conservative Minister of Justice, vowed that he would
introduce the unamended bill in the Commons anyway, lamenting that the
opposition are “so out of touch with Canadians when it comes to tackling
crime.”

We agree.

For the past decade, a vast social experiment has been ongoing in
Canada’s criminal justice system, largely without Canadians’ knowledge.
In the mid-1990s, Ottawa and most of the provinces agreed that
incarceration should be the exception rather than the rule for most
criminals. Rehabilitation and supervision in the community were to
replace imprisonment in the hope that with such compassionate treatment,
thieves, burglars, arsonists, rapists and impaired drivers would see the
error of their ways and be discouraged from reoffending.

Since then, the number of convicted criminals in provincial and
territorial jails has declined by 31%. Of the 153,000 under federal or
provincial sentence, four out of five are in the community rather than
prison.

While crimes reported to police are generally down — marginally — more
Canadians than ever tell Statistics Canada that they have been victims
of crime. Each year, 28% of Canadians are victimized, up nearly 8% since
1999, and more than the 24% of Americans who admit the same. In all,
each year there are eight million criminal offences in Canada, 2.7
million of them violent, resulting in 650,000 personal injuries. Fewer
are being reported because victims no longer see the point. If they do
go through the hassle of a police investigation and the stress of a
trial, there is a better than even chance their victimizer will remain
on the streets.

If anything, the Tories’ proposal did not go far enough. Most suspects
arrested would still have been eligible for non-custodial sentences.
Only those convicted of a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence
of 10 years or more would have no chance at conditional sentences. True,
as opposition critics charged, some property crimes carry 10-year
maximums, even though no person is injured in their commission. But some
property crime is very serious — arson, for example. The risk is
significant that someone will be unintentionally injured or killed, even
when the perpetrators do not set out to harm anyone.

Break and enter of a private home is always traumatic for the residents,
whether they were home at the time or not. Stronger sentences are a good
way to discourage burglars and send a signal that society will no longer
shrug off such acts.

The Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Quebecois parties are wrong to
believe that Canadians want a continuation of the country’s decade-long
test of every-boy-a-good-boy justice. It is time to restore some sense
into our criminal justice system to recognize again that protection of
the community is at least as important a factor in sentencing as the
criminal’s feelings and rehabilitation.

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