mandatory minimum sentences

By Amber Hildebrandt, CBC News

Drunk driving and drug possession charges were dropped against former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer in court Tuesday, but he pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of careless driving.

Jaffer, 38, was ordered to pay a $500 fine within a month. He also donated $500 to the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, his lawyer said.

An agreed statement of fact read by Crown lawyer Marie Balogh said that last Sept. 10, an Ontario Provincial Police constable clocked Jaffer driving 93 kilometres an hour in a 50 km/h speed zone in Palgrave, northwest of Toronto.

The village is in the southern Ontario riding of Simcoe-Grey held by his wife, federal Tory cabinet minister Helena Guergis.

Jaffer said he had consumed two beers two hours earlier and was travelling home to Angus, Ont., from Toronto, the statement said. The constable said Jaffer failed his breathalyzer test.

By. Tonda MacCharles, Toronto Star

OTTAWA–Provinces are spending $2.7 billion to expand or replace aging and overcrowded jails across Canada – with little public scrutiny, an Ottawa researcher says.

Justin Piché, a PhD candidate in sociology at Carleton University, obtained data through freedom of information requests, email and phone contact with each of the provinces and territories.

In all, Piché says at least 22 new "bigger and better" provincial-territorial prisons are at various stages of completion, some still in the planning or early tendering stages. If all are built, he says, they will increase the capacity of provincial adult jails by at least 5,788 beds.

The Conservatives are anything but "tough" on crime. Their crime and drug policy has three parts: 1) To pander to myopic, media-addled, punishment-fetishists who make up his voter base and who think jail is the best cure/deterrent for any behaviour; 2) to paint anyone who speaks sensibly about drugs as "soft" on crime; 3) to impose a U.S.-style, for-profit prison industry onto Canadians.

There is no evidence to support the notion mandatory minimum jail sentences work (and Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson raged against them when he sat in Opposition), and since crime has been dropping for 25 years, there seems little need for them.

By. HARRIS MACLEOD, Hill Times

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his recent Senate appointments would help make Canada a safer place by allowing his government' s justice legislation to pass into law unchanged, but with the Independent Senators now holding the balance of power things aren't likely to be much different.

The government introduced 17 law-and-order bills last year, of which three were passed into law, and the rest died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on Dec. 30. Of the three bills that were before the Upper House two were still making their way through the normal legislative process, and one was amended by the Liberal Senators with the support of four of the five Independents, with one absent due to illness.

By. KIRK MAKIN, Globe and Mail

In a decision that bucks the trend toward tough-on-crime sentences, the Supreme Court of Canada has spoken in favour of reducing prison terms for defendants who were abused by police.

The 9-0 ruling in the case of an Alberta man who was beaten by police after a car chase also created a noteworthy crack in the previously impenetrable wall of mandatory minimum sentences.

By HARRIS MACLEOD, The Hill Times

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who is pushing the government's tough on crime agenda and plans to revive the bill on mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes in the next Parliamentary session, did not support the proposed law when he was a Mulroney backbencher.

In 1988, Mr. Nicholson vice-chaired a Parliamentary committee that released a report recommending mandatory minimum sentences not be used, except in the case of repeat violent sexual offenders. The committee found, based on testimony and the U.S. experience, that the law didn't work and increases prison populations.

The report, titled "Taking Responsibility," cited many of the same arguments that led Liberal Senators today to make amendments to the bill, which died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on Dec. 30 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), although Mr. Nicholson has said it would be reintroduced in its original form when Parliament returns on March 3.

Moncton Times and Transcript

So here I am, a public offender, sitting at my kitchen table, slurping a double cappuccino, reading the morning paper, when suddenly I come across a story that confirms the federal government's intention to introduce mandatory minimum sentences.

Well, now, that makes me think twice about my chosen profession, doesn't it? I guess I'll cancel next week's home invasion. And I won't even think about that bank heist next month. Does anyone know a good career counsellor?

The Harper government would have us believe that most violent criminals are a calculating, coolly rational bunch sensibly persuaded by legal edict to change their ways as one might change one's socks. Curiously, a growing number of Canadians concur.

By Cindy Wockner in Jakarta

Australian union official Robert Paul McJannett, arrested last week in Bali and accused of trying to bring 1.7 grams of marijuana to the holiday island, will be one of the first people to be dealt with under the new regime.

The new narcotics law, enacted late last year, stipulates minimum sentences for drug possession and import and export and makes it harder for people to claim they are addicts in order to be dealt with leniently and receive just a few months in jail.