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Bill will double the maximum penalty for cannabis production to 14 years
By Hempology | December 2, 2007
Regina Leader-Post, SN
24 Nov 2007 Don Butler
HARPER’S GET-TOUGH POLICY MAY NOT WORK
OTTAWA — As Parliament prepares to pass Criminal Code changes that would lengthen penalties and expand mandatory minimum sentences, a new report says the American experience with similar measures has been a costly waste of money.
Due largely to tough-on-crime policies, the Unlocking America report says, there are now eight times as many people in U.S. prisons and jails as there were in 1970.
Yet the crime rate today in the U.S. is about the same as it was in 1973, and there’s little evidence the imprisonment binge has had much impact on crime, says the report by the JFA Institute, a Washington-based organization that does criminal-justice research.
In fact, the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates generally have the lowest crime rates, it says.
Since 1990, the growth in American prison populations has been driven by longer sentences, including mandatory minimum sentences and laws that require offenders to serve most of their sentences in prison.
The report calls on American lawmakers to embark on a concerted program of “decarceration” by shortening sentences, eliminating the use of prison for technical violations of parole or probation, and decriminalizing “victimless” crimes such as drug offences.
The recommendations run directly counter to measures in the Harper government’s omnibus crime bill, which increases mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of violent offences and includes reverse onus provisions that could keep repeat violent offenders behind bars for life.
The bill, which the government has designated as a matter of confidence, passed through committee this week without amendment and is expected to receive third reading before the House rises Dec. 14.
The report’s proposals also fly in the face of legislation introduced this week that would provide mandatory minimum penalties for various drug crimes and double the maximum penalty for cannabis production to 14 years.
Critics accuse the government of relying on the same tough-on-crime strategies that have failed in the U.S.
“We hopefully don’t want to start importing crime policies that have been demonstrated to be ineffective and counter-productive in the United States,” says Don Stuart, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston.
Rather than looking for effective ways to deal with crime, says University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob, the government has opted for simple changes in the criminal law “which obviously aren’t going to do anything. But they sell the public on the idea that these things are going to be effective.”
Unlocking America’s nine authors are leading U.S. criminologists and sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment.
“We are convinced that we need a different strategy,” they say.
With 2.2 million people behind bars on any given day, the U.S. leads the world in imprisonment. China, with 1.5 million imprisoned, is second.
American taxpayers now spend more than $60 billion a year on corrections, says the report.
“The net result is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of taxpayers’ money from more effective crime control strategies.”
Much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities.
Blacks and Latinos make up 60 per cent of America’s prison population.
According to the report, eight per cent of American black men of working age are now behind bars.
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