Despite having spent most of last year arguing that his “tough on crime” agenda was urgently needed, Stephen Harper killed off most of it when he prorogued Parliament.
This means the legislation will have to be re-introduced and debated all over again over the next few months.
It is also a second chance for Canadians to see that his initiatives aren’t going to accomplish much, but they are going to cost taxpayers a lot of money.
Harper’s agenda involves increasing the amount of time people have to serve in jail or prison (at taxpayer expense) by imposing more minimum sentences, and making it harder for inmates to get parole.
More time, he argues, should equal less crime. It’s a simple solution and like most simple solutions to complex problems, it doesn’t work.
In real life, there is little correlation between crime rates and sentence lengths. Most people who break the law don’t stop to consider the consequences; they act on impulse, they may be under the influence or they don’t think they’ll get caught. Whatever the case, stiffer sentences do not stop people from breaking the law.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper ushered in five new senators at the end of January to help solidify his tough-on-crime policy, but tough on crime might just mean being tougher on some of Canada’s most marginalized people.
For the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Sisters in Spirit (SIS) initiative, the new appointments did cause some alarm as stacking the Senate means that the Conservative’s legislative law-and-order agenda gets a right of way. The only problem is that this might mean more policing and under protecting Canada’s Aboriginal women.
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.
The proroguing of Parliament has been all over the news lately and whether or not you believe that Mr. Harper has the right to use the option to prorogue parliament the way he has, one thing is certain: He has not been on vacation.
With the appointment of five new senators, Mr. Harper has tipped the balance of the senate further towards the political right. Now, it’s time to dust off some old plans.
You see, conservatives (and I mean conservatives in general, not just the political party) are a lot like communists. They’re both obsessed with undertaking courses of action that have been proven to be ineffective (often highly ineffective) in the past.
OTTAWA — In the world according to Stephen Harper, it has become something of a political maxim that when the going gets tough, the Conservatives get tough on crime.
Seems just about every time the Harper gang needs to get out of trouble, it offers up some new piece of lawmaking that promises to put the bad guys behind bars.
Gunslinging always seems to please the Conservative core.
It is certainly came as no surprise, therefore, that the prime minister’s latest round of Senate appointments he once promised never to make came wrapped in the Conservative flag of law and order.
Remember when the pundits were begging the oratorically inept Stéphane Dion, and then the equanimous professor Michael Ignatieff, to take a page out of Senator-cum-President Barack Obama’s playbook and inspire Canadians to quiet revolution? It never made a heck of a lot of sense, and we’ve heard less and less of it since Mr. Obama began grappling with the cold, greasy realities of Washington. This week’s starboard lurch in Massachusetts is probably the death of it. “Mr. Ignatieff has been around long enough for Canadians to know he’s not going to excite them,” sighed Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail this week. “The issue, then, is whether he can intrigue them — not by his persona but by his ideas.”
Ironically enough, Mr. Ignatieff’s recent appearances reveal one notable policy intersection between him and Mr. Obama: status quo, relatively speaking, on the war on drugs. Back in March, during the radiant new President’s “online town hall,” he played a serious question about legalizing and regulating marijuana for cheap laughs. While not very hopeful or changeful, the takeaway message was at least coherent: Get a job, you bunch of useless hippies.
On Sep. 15, Cy Vance Jr. overwhelmingly beat Leslie Crocker Snyder in the race to be Manhattan's next district attorney. Since there is no Republican challenger, Vance will be voted into office in November.
Snyder, who built her career as a ruthless prosecutor and judge, was beaten so bad that the Village Voice quoted her on election night saying that she was retiring from politics and going to China. In my view, Snyder lost because of her over-reliance on a misguided tough-on-crime approach, and because of her inability to balance her decisions with common sense and compassion.
In the past Snyder portrayed herself as a John Wayne type of crusader of justice who kicked butt and took no names. Yes, I know she says she only aimed the barrels of her gun at the bad apples of society. But the main problem with that was she could not tell the difference between apples and oranges. Read more »
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Harper’s tough-on-crime policy may just hurt Aboriginal women 
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.
by Jonathan Ryan, The MUSE
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