Poly Ticks

Crime And Punishment

I knew it was coming. There is an election on after all, and "Tough on crime" is a very easy sell for the Conservatives. Every one of their hard core voters believes that crime is on the rise in Canada and there is something that needs to be done to fix the system. It's also a hard policy to be against. Surely you're not suggesting we let those criminals walk?! Like most things coming out of a politicians mouth during an election campaign, it's complete and total garbage.

Let's look at the facts. In the developed world Canada ranks second in the number of it's own citizens it jails. First place is held by our neighbours to the south. Let that sink in for a moment. Canada jails a (much) higher percentage of it's own citizens than any other developed country except the U.S. There are fewer people thrown in jail in Northern Ireland. Tough new sentencing will increase the number of people in jail. Is this really an area where we want to keep up with the U.S. example?

On top of this the reality is that violent crime rates in Canada have been falling steadily for the last 30 years. Not to mention Canada actually has an incredibly low rate of people who re offend. One of the lowest actually.

Now politicians say a lot of things during an election campaign in order to convince people to vote for them. We're used to that, but this particular bit of campaigning has a very unfortunate side effect. It devalues the incredible work that thousands of people in Canada's criminal justice system do. We should be standing up and applauding the work these people do - in Canada, they do it very well.