Federal Elections

[lrt's friend]

Harper just pandering to voters with crime policies

Randall Denley
The Ottawa Citizen


Thursday, September 25, 2008


The Conservative party's crime announcements this week illustrate the problem with Stephen Harper. Instead of offering any kind of real leadership for this country, the Conservative "leader" tells you what he thinks you want to hear. Or at least, what he hopes 40 per cent of you want to hear. That's enough for a majority, so the rest don't matter.

People believe there is a big youth crime problem and Conservatives like Nepean-Carleton's Pierre Poilievre have been playing to that perception with frequent pamphlets talking about thugs and gangs. Having helped promote fear, the Conservatives are responding with tougher sentences for the most serious youth crimes and publication of names of those who commit those crimes.

There is a popular view that criminals too often get a slap on the wrist, so Harper also wants to limit the crimes for which judges can order conditional sentences such as house arrest. Among the crimes for which he wants jail time are break and enter and car theft. If Harper's plan is enacted, the Liberals say it will mean about 7,100 more people in jail. The capital cost of that is $2.2 billion. Is jail-building Harper's new economic plan?

Harper's promises are unlikely to reduce crime, but they will please victims of crime and enhance the tough-on-crime image Harper wants to project. It's all about shoring up the core Conservative vote.

The actual statistics don't support Harper's approach on crime. Most criminals are getting either jail time or probation, not a conditional sentence. In 2005/06, only 11,154 people received conditional sentences, Statistics Canada says, while 82,647 got jail time and 108,477 received probation. Those numbers represent what Crown prosecutors and judges who have actually heard the cases consider to be appropriate sentences. Harper seeks to tie the hands of these experienced justice officials.

Youth crime is actually declining, with the overall rate going down six per cent between 1996 and 2006, Statistics Canada says. While property crimes are going down, there has been a slow increase in violent crime, which has gone up 12 per cent over the decade. Both the number and rate of youths accused of homicide were at record levels in 2006, but the total numbers are so small that rates fluctuate wildly. Just five years earlier, homicide by youths was at a 30-year low.

Harper says "we are concerned about young people falling into a life of crime." If so, sending them to jail to get tips from criminals doesn't seem the right thing to do.

Under new Conservative rules, people as young as 14 would face stiffer sentences for serious violent crimes. For example, a killer could face a 25-year sentence rather than the current 10 years. Harper pretends that this longer sentence will deter young killers, but that would only be true if they were rational actors with the reasoning power to determine that the longer sentence made the crime a bad idea. They already face 10 years, six of which must be behind bars. If a deterrent is helpful, surely that is one.

If these teenage criminals were to be deterred by longer sentences and the fear of getting their names in the newspapers, they must also be a lot smarter than adult killers. That group is already subject to both those penalties, but we still have homicides.

To some degree, there is a problem with youth violent crime, but the question is, will the Conservative measures do anything to help? The problem with increasing punishments is that the crime has already taken place. It's a lot more effective, for society and for victims, to focus attention instead on crime prevention. On the positive side, the Conservatives promise $10 million a year for a youth gang prevention fund, up from a little more than $3 million a year now. That's good, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with what the Conservatives are prepared to spend on punishment. Keeping an inmate in a federal institution costs about $95,000 a year.

The facts don't support Harper's latest crackdown on crime, but Conservative voters will. For Harper, that's all that counts. The crime promises might win Harper short-term gain, but they show his weakness as a leader. Strong leaders have the courage to tell people the facts, even when the facts don't fit their preconceived notions and don't benefit the leader politically. Instead, Stephen Harper panders to fear.

That kind of approach from Harper is predictable, but it's a pity that both the NDP and the Liberals are also trying to prove they are tough on crime. What's wrong with being thoughtful on crime?

Contact Randall Denley at 613-596-3756 or by e-mail, [email protected]

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

I often think that Randall Denley is off the wall on many subjects but look at what he says about costs alone.

7,100 new prisoners @ $95,000 per year = $674.5M per year plus capital costs of $2.2 B to build new prisons

That is what we may end up spending on punishment versus $10M for crime prevention.

Are we really setting our priorities correctly?

It reminds me of Lowell Green's comments about the poverty industry, which he claimed was designed to preserve jobs and appease special interest groups rather than really reduce poverty. Sounds like we may now be building the punishment industry.