Harper's plan is about denunciation, not deterrence
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Wednesday's Globe and Mail September 23, 2008 at 11:32 PM EDT
Article Link
I've never understood how a call for tougher sentences is invariably interpreted as doomed to failure because there's no evidence harsher punishment is a deterrent.
Here's a thought: How about forgetting deterrence for a minute?
The one thing a longer sentence inarguably does do is punish the offender. And punishment, however grudgingly, is still an element in Canadian sentencing, even in the kindly Youth Criminal Justice Act, where it is known as “meaningful consequences.”
All this is in the news now with the recent Conservative campaign push for law and order, a prospect that is oddly terrifying to many of those who live (and certainly to those who write newspaper editorials) in the country's biggest cities, where there isn't always such a lot of law and order around.
Two days ago, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper proposed two simple changes for youth offenders – giving judges the option to give a life sentence for those 14 and older who are convicted of first- or second-degree murder, and allowing their names to be made public where now they are protected by a mandatory publication ban. On Tuesday, he was saying his government would crack down on the use of house arrest, or conditional sentences, for 30 more serious crimes.
The usual suspects – a couple of well-regarded criminologists, a defence lawyer or two – were rounded up and duly predicted the sky was falling. Mr. Harper was unmoved by their concerns.
“These are the people who have advised soft-on-crime policies for 30 or 40 years,” he said Tuesday. “Yes, we believe they are wrong.”
Well, I don't know if he's right and they're wrong, but I have to say, for all the criminologists who keep saying crime is going down, that is not my anecdotal experience. Twenty years ago when I worked for Toronto's pre-eminent crime paper, the Sun, a mere spray of celebratory gunfire would bring half the cops in the city and all available police reporters to the location. Gunfire, all on its own, was shocking.
Last weekend, there were 10 shootings in the Greater Toronto Area, most in the city – no one was killed, but there were some fine woundings, my favourite the guy who shot himself in the groin – and you can bet these were greeted with yawns, if not by the police then by most in my business. If we are inured to gun crime, it's not because there is less and less of it.
One of the promised youth act changes, to allow publication of the names of teenagers convicted of murder and manslaughter, is almost unnecessary already. Young killers, bless their little hearts, far more than their adult counterparts, tend to blog, join what are invariably called social networking sites and otherwise yammer on ad nauseam about their homicidal thoughts and plans, and so do their friends.
In the most recent three youth murder trials I covered – the Jonathan Madden case in Toronto, the mother-drowning sisters' case in Brampton, the trial of the 13-year-old girl in Medicine Hat two summers ago – either the defendants or their friends had all been cheerfully spilling their guts online. My point is that anyone with a modicum of Web-smarts can often pretty much find out who is whom from public Web postings.
In the Medicine Hat case – the girl called J.R. who was convicted of first-degree murder in the slayings of her parents and little brother – the statutory pub ban was even more of a laughingstock than usual.
Newspapers chose one of two ways of protecting the girl's identity, both conforming with the law: Some identified the family relationship between victims and killer but didn't use the victims' family name; others identified the victims by name, but didn't identify the family relationship. As a result, the accidental reader of two newspapers that had handled the ban differently could have put the information together.
Besides all that, everyone in Medicine Hat damn well knew already.
More on link
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Wednesday's Globe and Mail September 23, 2008 at 11:32 PM EDT
Article Link
I've never understood how a call for tougher sentences is invariably interpreted as doomed to failure because there's no evidence harsher punishment is a deterrent.
Here's a thought: How about forgetting deterrence for a minute?
The one thing a longer sentence inarguably does do is punish the offender. And punishment, however grudgingly, is still an element in Canadian sentencing, even in the kindly Youth Criminal Justice Act, where it is known as “meaningful consequences.”
All this is in the news now with the recent Conservative campaign push for law and order, a prospect that is oddly terrifying to many of those who live (and certainly to those who write newspaper editorials) in the country's biggest cities, where there isn't always such a lot of law and order around.
Two days ago, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper proposed two simple changes for youth offenders – giving judges the option to give a life sentence for those 14 and older who are convicted of first- or second-degree murder, and allowing their names to be made public where now they are protected by a mandatory publication ban. On Tuesday, he was saying his government would crack down on the use of house arrest, or conditional sentences, for 30 more serious crimes.
The usual suspects – a couple of well-regarded criminologists, a defence lawyer or two – were rounded up and duly predicted the sky was falling. Mr. Harper was unmoved by their concerns.
“These are the people who have advised soft-on-crime policies for 30 or 40 years,” he said Tuesday. “Yes, we believe they are wrong.”
Well, I don't know if he's right and they're wrong, but I have to say, for all the criminologists who keep saying crime is going down, that is not my anecdotal experience. Twenty years ago when I worked for Toronto's pre-eminent crime paper, the Sun, a mere spray of celebratory gunfire would bring half the cops in the city and all available police reporters to the location. Gunfire, all on its own, was shocking.
Last weekend, there were 10 shootings in the Greater Toronto Area, most in the city – no one was killed, but there were some fine woundings, my favourite the guy who shot himself in the groin – and you can bet these were greeted with yawns, if not by the police then by most in my business. If we are inured to gun crime, it's not because there is less and less of it.
One of the promised youth act changes, to allow publication of the names of teenagers convicted of murder and manslaughter, is almost unnecessary already. Young killers, bless their little hearts, far more than their adult counterparts, tend to blog, join what are invariably called social networking sites and otherwise yammer on ad nauseam about their homicidal thoughts and plans, and so do their friends.
In the most recent three youth murder trials I covered – the Jonathan Madden case in Toronto, the mother-drowning sisters' case in Brampton, the trial of the 13-year-old girl in Medicine Hat two summers ago – either the defendants or their friends had all been cheerfully spilling their guts online. My point is that anyone with a modicum of Web-smarts can often pretty much find out who is whom from public Web postings.
In the Medicine Hat case – the girl called J.R. who was convicted of first-degree murder in the slayings of her parents and little brother – the statutory pub ban was even more of a laughingstock than usual.
Newspapers chose one of two ways of protecting the girl's identity, both conforming with the law: Some identified the family relationship between victims and killer but didn't use the victims' family name; others identified the victims by name, but didn't identify the family relationship. As a result, the accidental reader of two newspapers that had handled the ban differently could have put the information together.
Besides all that, everyone in Medicine Hat damn well knew already.
More on link
