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Tories unveiled legislation last week to create mandatory minimum prison terms
By Hempology | December 2, 2007
Montreal Gazette, QU
28 Nov 2007
Richard Foot
FEDS TOLD: MINIMUM JAIL TERMS DON’T WORK
Ottawa Adamant. Two Studies Ignored
OTTAWA – Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is pressing ahead with plans to create mandatory minimum prison terms for drug crimes in spite of two studies prepared for his own department that say such laws don’t work, and are increasingly unpopular as crime-fighting measures in other countries.
“Minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool: that is, they constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime-prevention benefits. Nevertheless, mandatory sentences remain popular with some Canadian politicians.”
That’s one conclusion of a 2005 report prepared for the Justice Department, titled Mandatory Sentences of Imprisonment in Common Law Jurisdictions.
An earlier 2002 report, titled Mandatory Minimum Penalties: Their Effects on Crime, also compiled for the department while the Liberals were in power, offers a similar view:
“Harsh mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way.”
Despite such conclusions, the Tories unveiled legislation last week to create mandatory minimum prison terms for drug possession, production and trafficking. The automatic minimum terms range from six months for growing and selling a single marijuana plant to three years for producing cocaine or crystal meth in a home lab. A clause in the bill would allow judges to exempt certain offenders from jail if they pass a court-monitored drug-treatment program.
The proposal has been widely criticized by criminal lawyers, criminologists and at least one former Canadian judge.
Nicholson did not respond to a request for an interview on the subject yesterday.
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