tough on crime

By Avinash Gavai

 

The government's announcement last week that it has invited three leaders from the hemisphere in a special G8 outreach session traditionally dominated by Africa has evoked some surprise.

 

Africa will still be represented by Algeria, Egypt, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. However, the decision to include Colombia, Haiti and Jamaica is being interpreted as an effort by the Harper government to change the old paradigm and involve a part of the world Canada feels should be a global priority.

 

"I think its fair to see that the [prime minister] is hoping that the outreach guests that he has brought to this meeting will enlighten and perhaps move the main meeting with G8 leaders to consider these other countries," confirmed Peter Kent, minister of state for the Americas, in an interview on Monday. Read more »

By Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News

 

OTTAWA — A new prison-sentencing law will cost the federal government an extra $5 billion over five years and the provincial governments even more, Canada's spending watchdog estimated Tuesday in a report that predicts 13 new prisons will be needed to incarcerate 4,000 new offenders.

 

Kevin Page cautioned that his cost analysis is not an exact science, but rather a "high-level estimation" because he says he was stonewalled by the government in his efforts to secure the needed data.

 

"I knew incarceration was expensive, but when we actually did the calculation . . . you get big numbers in a hurry," said Page, the parliamentary budget officer.

 

"It is a lot of money in a period of time when we're generating deficits." Read more »

By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times

 

The new district attorney in violence-weary Philadelphia had vowed not to get tough on crime but to get “smart on crime.” This month, R. Seth Williams began to make good on his word, downgrading penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana from jail time to community service and fines.

 

It was an easy decision, said Mr. Williams, who took office in January promising changes that would reduce prosecutions but increase the conviction rate. Now he also spends hours each week visiting schools, exhorting students to graduate.

 

Philadelphia, after being battered for years by the worst sort of superlatives — the highest murder rate, the lowest conviction rate — seems ready to give Mr. Williams and his ideas a chance.

 

“This is like a breath of fresh air,” said Ellen Greenlee, chief of the city’s public defenders, who described the previous district attorney’s approach to charging suspects as “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.” Read more »

By: Charles Waterstreet, Brisbane Times

 

ONCE a jolly baggie man camped for a bigger bong, under the shade of a coolabah tree. Smoking weed is as Australian as the annual Bong Bong Picnic Race Club Race Meeting in Bowral, so it is disconcerting to observe that mere possession of marijuana is still a criminal offence in most states.

 

Drug dogs run wild in Kings Cross, city and Darlinghurst nightclubs, sitting down next to poor possessors they have sniffed out. People walking out of the local railway station can be tracked down by an addicted dachshund or labrador and be legally searched. Sniffer dogs do not seem to be the ideal or fair way to catch the Mr Bigs of baggies. Outdoor concerts are ruined by packs of dogs running like pelted torpedoes through crowds of partygoers.

  Read more »

By BOB RAY SANDERS, Star-Telegram

 

For many years I had in my possession four medical prescriptions, issued in 1926, for different patients with various ailments.

 

No matter what the "illness," the doctors' prescribed remedy printed on the official government form was the same: Whiskey.

 

This was during "prohibition," that 13-year period in American history when the "manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors" was forbidden under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment, ratified in 1919, went into effect in 1920.

 

Under the National Prohibition Act of 1919 (also known as the Volstead Act), there were a couple of exceptions. Alcohol could be obtained for medical reasons with a physician's prescription, and the clergy were allowed to secure wine for the sacrament.

 

So, in addition to a lot of people becoming ill during this period, there was a significant rise in the number of preachers who were administering communion to a growing number of worshipers. Read more »

American Civil Liberties Union

 

WASHINGTON - May 27 - The American Civil Liberties Union testified today before the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) that mandatory minimums should be abolished or reformed because they generate unnecessarily harsh sentences, tie judges' hands in considering individual circumstances, create racial disparities in sentencing and empower prosecutors to force defendants to bargain away their constitutional rights. Congress has mandated that the USSC provide a report on mandatory minimums by October 2010. ACLU Drug Law Reform Project Director Jay Rorty urged the commission to reaffirm its long stated position that mandatory minimums should be abolished and asked the commission to take steps independent of Congress to mitigate the harms of existing mandatory minimum sentences. Read more »

By John Otis - GlobalPost

 

BOGOTA, Colombia — “Drugs win drug war.”

 

That was the prescient headline of a 1998 dispatch in The Onion. “Despite all our efforts,” the satirical newspaper reported, “the U.S. government has proven no match for the awesome power of the illegal high.”

 

Funny stuff. But a dozen years later, serious news outlets are writing pretty much the same story.

 

“After 40 years,” the Associated Press reported this month, “the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.” Read more »

By Greg Vandermeulen, Altona Red River Valley Echo

 

The dark side of mandatory minimum sentences was revealed in provincial court last week.

 

Long trumpeted as the fix-all for the justice system, the Conservatives and other proponents loudly proclaimed the glory of mandatory minimums.

 

The idea was that judges are flawed, tied to precedent and too inclined to be merciful. Some types of offenses are so terrible they must have minimums attached.

 

Killing or hurting someone with a firearm was one of those categories that most of us couldn't imagine why we wouldn't have a mandatory minimum.

 

Turns out we should have left that decision to the judges. Read more »

By. Edmonton Journal

 

For decades, California has cracked down on crime, punishing offenders with textbook "tough" policies like mandatory minimums and stringent parole. The result has been a dramatic rise in the prison population. Today, about 167,000 adults are in jail in California. Offenders are now being locked up at a per-capita rate well over double what it was 30 years ago.

 

All those prisoners have cost the state's taxpayers dearly. In 1980 California spent about $1 billion on corrections. By 2007 that number had climbed to nearly $14 billion. Today about one in every nine dollars the state spends goes to prisons and prisoners.

 

Prison expenses are cited as a major factor in California's deteriorating finances. Legislators are now trying to push through measures to cut the prison population.

 

Given the California example, it's remarkable how little attention has been paid to the costs of dramatic changes being proposed for Canada's penal system. Read more »

By MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette

 

MONTREAL - Black Montrealers are more than four times as likely as whites to be questioned by police and 21/2 times as likely to be arrested, a public hearing on racial profiling was told yesterday.

 

And black youths between age 12 and 18 are more than twice as likely to be arrested as young whites, said Christopher McAll, a professor of sociology at the Université de Montréal.

 

McAll, who is also scientific director of the Montreal Research Centre on Social Inequalities and Discrimination, unveiled results of a study on blacks in the youth justice system on the first day of hearings by the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission.

  Read more »