Opposition and stats don’t deter government
The clock is ticking on the Harper government’s promise to pass its omnibus crime bill within 100 parliamentary days (expected to come around mid-March). Bill C-10 known as the Safe Streets and Communities Act is opposed by other levels of government lawyers criminologists advocacy groups and virtually every stakeholder. One voice that has remained noticeably mute is the Alberta government’s.
The bill is a 150-page bundle of seven previously introduced measures which were not passed created for the Conservatives’ “tough on crime” agenda. If passed it will among other things: allow the victims of terrorism to sue terrorists; extend the time period required before criminal pardons are granted; discontinue house arrest for violent criminals; introduce safeguards against human trafficking; and usher in minimum sentences for sexual offences against children drug-related offences and repeat young offenders.
The Alberta government has relatively little to say about the omnibus crime bill but it is supportive. Alberta Justice Minister Verlyn Olson speaking recently in the legislature said that Alberta backed the legislation when it was introduced last spring and continues to do so now. Alberta Justice spokesperson Josh Stewart reiterates Olson’s position.
“We were supportive of them (the seven bills) in the past and we’re supportive of them still” Stewart says. “We were involved in quite a bit of the work behind C-10; a lot of the legislative changes at the federal level we’ve been pushing for over the years.” Stewart points to mandatory sentencing and added prohibitions against the sexual predation of children as two of the areas the Alberta government had a hand in.
“I think Albertans definitely are pro for a stance of being tough on crime. I don’t think there’s a question on that” he adds.
Not every province shares that view. Ontario and Quebec’s governments are perhaps the most vocally opposed. Both provinces are fighting the omnibus bill’s hardline stance on crime and refusing to pay for the anticipated expansion of the corrections system.
Stewart and the solicitor general’s spokesperson Jason Maloney dismiss concerns over increased costs as premature.
“There are going to be costs but it does take money to fight crime” says Stewart. “It’s really too early to speculate on what the costs might be or against how those costs might be split.”
While the provincial government appears confident Albertans support the proposed changes those in the province who are familiar with crime and punishment seem unanimously opposed.
Jen Sputek has a unique perspective and a strong opinion about the federal government’s plans. Today Sputek is the project co-ordinator for peer research at Inside Out an agency that works with previously incarcerated women to determine what they need during and after their time in custody. But between the ages of 15 and 19 she repeatedly served time at the Calgary Young Offender Centre.
Sputek was handled under the Young Offenders Act which has since been replaced by the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) a piece of legislation she says is “100 times better” and that the Canadian Bar Association calls “an unmitigated success.” She supports the YCJA for the flexibility it has given law enforcement to address youth crime and use incarceration as a last resort rather than the only resort.
According to Sputek those dealing with young offenders finally “have a better understanding of where some of these kids come from and the trauma that they’ve gone through. And they’re at a place where they’re able to address those issues now whereas before they didn’t know. When I was a 14-year-old crack-addicted prostitute they didn’t know what to do with me.”
Sputek fears the changes C-10 will introduce will reverse efforts made to rehabilitate people who break the law. In particular C-10 would make “denunciation” a priority in dealing with repeat young offenders and encourage imprisonment over community-based restorative justice. She argues that everyone who goes to jail must eventually be released. The longer they spend inside the more difficult life is afterward.
“Lots of people who have gone through the system they get out and they don’t feel like they have the right to access the resources and the services that are out there…. They don’t feel like they have the right to because they are ashamed that they went to jail; they’re ashamed that they fucked up.”
Sputek’s concerns are echoed by Gordon Sand executive director of the Calgary John Howard Society.
“The whole act has until now been quite effective and dealt with youth in a productive way and if we just get back to blaming and punishing I think it’s going to be a detriment to the whole process” he says. Nor are Sputek and Sand’s views exclusive to the non-profit sector. Jack Kelly is the president of the Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association of Calgary. He agrees that the changes put forward by Bill C-10 will be a detriment to a youth justice system that is actually working.
He is also adamant that in C-10 the government is wilfully “hell-bent” on creating legislation that will create problems throughout the justice system.
“There appears to be a presumption that criminals are a certain class of people and the only way to get the message across to this class — which by the way I think that they must view as people who are not like themselves not like the average citizen — is to hit them hard.”
The government has brushed off the concerns of detractors including those invited to testify in Parliament as justice experts since introducing the omnibus bill in September. Opponents generally agree on the principle of requiring people to face consequences commensurate with their crimes yet argue that the penalties and even the spirit of retribution in C-10 have already proven to be ineffective or harmful when tried elsewhere such as in the U.S. The reason the government is doing this says Kelly is to score points with its core constituency which views rehabilitation with suspicion.
“There’s an underlying current of revenge” says Kelly. “They appear to have concluded that measures that might rehabilitate are a waste of their time.”
One of the most prominent challenges Bill C-10’s logic faces is statistical for while legislators are hard at work protecting people from criminals crime rates have fallen to record lows.
Statistics Canada reports that for 2010 the volume and severity of crime fell five and six per cent respectively from the previous year crime rates were at their lowest since the early 1970s and homicide was at its lowest rate since the mid-1960s.
The reason for the change has been attributed to the aging baby-boomer generation once rebellious and now retired. Yet credit is also given to advances that allow judges the flexibility to apply a number of rehabilitative measures in sentences or return an offender to their community for restorative justice.
Alberta Justice’s only response to this contradiction is to point to the harsher measures for sexual offences against children as a primary target in C-10 highlighting it as the kind of evil Albertans need special protection from in a time of decreasing crime rates.
“I don’t know what the statistics are (what) the rates are for increases and decreases but I think anything that can protect Alberta’s children is a good step to take” says Stewart.
Sand says that despite the statistics politicians know how to benefit from responding to fear with hardline rhetoric.
“I think it’s ideology and politics. If you read the summary of the bill and you read the language they use the average person would say ‘Oh God that’s great. They’re going to protect me from vicious sex offenders and they’re going to protect me from violent people’… It sounds good to say we’re going to be tough on crime when what they really mean… is tough on the criminal because tough on crime is better health care better education better resources for families etc. That’s what’s tough on crime.”
