We know very little about this man, except he's clearly a 'chronic offender', and whatever sanctions have been applied to him before haven't stopped him shoplifting. (He's undoubtedly been though the court system an probably spent time on remand ad/or in prison). That's where the conversation about prison beds and how much they cost is relevant.
There seem to be three options: imprisonment, supporting him living in the community and try to change his behavior, or do nothing and accept that this is where we're at.
If you lock him up (for an indeterminate period, or for a year, or two, or whatever) it has a cost to society of at least $110,000 a year. But if everyone who is in this category is going to be locked up, you're going to have to pay for a lot more prison cells at around $500,000 a cell. They're not available now, and many argue that they just warehouse problems temporarily, and make them worse in the long run. (More
here in McLeans from earlier this year).
Or we could try to find out what's causing this behavior, and try to address it. To quote the
Department of Justice "A disproportionate amount of criminal activity, particularly for property and administration of justice offences, is committed by a small number of offenders. Often, these ‘chronic offenders’ experience substance abuse and mental health concerns, and are disproportionately Indigenous." That's where providing housing for everyone irrespective of what they've done, what drugs they take, what their criminal record is, is an approach some advocate.
Canada has recently adopted it, in theory, but in practice we don't yet have enough welfare rate housing to house everybody - especially people with complex behaviors and multiple diagnoses. Finland is
a good example of a country that has provided its homeless population with small apartments and counseling without preconditions. "As a result, the country reversed conventional aid, emphasized the importance of stable living conditions, and saw a sharp decrease in its homeless population."
This isn't a panacea. People still take illegal drugs, carry out crimes and shoplift in Helsinki. But it costs less than locking them up, and it offers the possiblity of their lives improving and lowering both substance dependence and criminal activity to pay for their drugs.
If he's stealing to get money to pay for drugs, then providing a safe source of drugs and an offer to support if/when he wants to try to become less dependent on drugs might change things too. Decriminalization might help - it improved things in Portugal, although again, it doesn't 'stop' drug use. Once someone is addicted, you're dealing with a different dynamic than trying to prevent drug use in the first place.
Or your third option is do nothing. Leave things as they are. (You could write angry posts to irrelevant webpages saying he should be locked up and 'made to work' to pay for the costs of his imprisonment.)
But don't expect dramatic changes to the behavior that some people exhibit in the street. In fact, that will probably get worse rather than better.
This (long) article from last month explains a lot of the behaviors that we see in Downtown and the DTES (and Nanaimo, and Kamloops, in my personal experience). The chemical composition and production of meth has changed. As supplies of ephedrine to manufacture meth were limited to try to reduce supply, a different more powerful version was produced - P2P. It's more volatile (hence the exploding meth labs) but it's easier and cheaper to produce, and it is made here, not just as an import. The biggest downside is that while ephedrine meth damaged people slowly, P2P meth accelerates brain damage, which in turn heightens paranoia and delusions. That's what you see today.
I favor providing more housing, a safe drug supply and more treatment beds, without expecting dramatic or overnight improvements in the situation we find ourselves in. Not because I've been desensitized to the situation, but because I've tried to read and understand why things are the way they are. In the meantime I do what I can to support positive local initiatives like
Mission Possible, whose employees you see cleaning up the streets, and
Guru Nanak's Kitchen, who recently bought an East Hastings SRO building to build a facility to provide free meals.
What's your proposed solution?
Prev
Linear Mode
