Bill C-10 2012 02 26 - Open Letter to the Senate and Parliamentarians

Open Letter to Canadian Senators and Parliamentarians

I have personally sat with the Senate since the beginning of February listening to the witnesses and weighing the issues brought up about Bill C-10 and about the nature of Canadian Society and its criminal justice system.  I have tried to listen with an open mind and an  open heart. 

The issues are more complex than I first realized.  I was unaware until near the end that the focus of many of the witnesses was to interpret new language offered that had not been in the old bill. The point is to inform the Senate the consequences of their actions. They try to answer: What is “serious violent crime?”  What is “protection of society?”  Are youth capable of adult moral and rational responsbility?” What actually deters crime?  Do victims have rights to services equivalent to that received by offenders?  Who is a victim of a crime?  How much will this bill cost the system and who is going to pay for it?  What programs will be cut?   Where will the money for prevention come from, and for more drug and mental health courts?  All this to shed light on the consequences of the Conservative desire for tougher mandatory minimums.

Underlying these are other issues.  Will this net put many more people at the bottom of the crime hierarchy in jail?  Will it incarcerate more aboriginal and mentally ill people?  Does the government know that it will and it is still prepared to take that risk in order to make property safer?  When the government and the Senate ignore the warnings of so many that it will be the marginalized that will pay, does this mean these people can be thrown away in the interests of the Canadian middle and upper classes?

The other important question is – how much will this bill cost and how will it be paid for?  Will we have to build more jails?  Will we need more police, more judges, as many have said, or face overcrowded jails and courts and thousands of cases dropped because of unreasonable delays?  Will the government have the cooperation of the provinces, or will this cause more fractious behaviour between the different levels of government, a scenario that is not in the public interest?

You are in a better position than I am to know the answers to these questions.  I beg you to reflect deeply on them and to seek out the answers.  Release the government analysis of the Bill in relation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  If this law does not meet the standards of this Convention – to do what is in the best interests of the child -- do not pass it.  Take it back to the drawing board until it does.  That Convention is the best standard we have, and Canada has committed its signature to it.  Keep our international agreements.

The Following are excerpts from a statement by Unitarian Professor of Theology, David Bumbauch.  He says, “Unitarians believe that our efforts to understand the world and our place within it are an expression of the Universe’s deep drive toward meaning. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe dreams dreams and reaches toward unknown possibilities. We hold as sacred the unquenchable drive to know and to understand.

We believe that the moral impulse that weaves its way through our lives, luring us to practices of justice and mercy and compassion, is threaded through the universe itself and it is this universal longing that finds outlet in our best moments.

We believe that our location within the community of living things places upon us inescapable responsibilities. Life is more than our understanding of it, but the level of our comprehension demands that we act out of conscious concern for the broadest vision of community we can command and that we seek not our welfare alone, but the welfare of the whole. All our lesser loyalties stand under the judgment of that great affirmation. In serving the party, the cause, the national or ethnic identity, am I serving the largest community I can envision? In failing the weak, the lost, the marginalized, have I failed my deepest defining obligations?  We are commanded to serve life and serve it to the seven times seventieth generation.

We believe that those least like us, those located on the margins have important contributions to make to the rest of the community of life and that in some curious way, we are all located on some margin. We believe that all that functions to divide us from each other and from the community of living things is to be resisted in the name of that larger vision of a world everywhere alive, everywhere seeking to incarnate a deep, implicate process that called us into being, that sustains us in being, that transforms us as we cannot transform ourselves, that receives us back to itself when life has used us up. Not knowing the end of that process, nevertheless, we trust it, we rest in it, and we serve it.

Such a faith statement allows us to recognize that ultimately we are responsible to the larger, sacred context out of which we have come, in terms of which we live, and to which we ultimately return. It provides a compass by which to steer amidst the uncertainties of a chaotic world.”

I agree with Senator Lang that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.  Where we disagree is on how to achieve that.  There are times when jail time is the right answer to contain the behaviour of certain troubled and violent people, but there are also times when it is not.  Jail is not the only effective consequence against crime and sometimes it causes more harm than good.  We need judicial discretion.  When the whole community has problems with alcoholism, drug abuse, and family violence, it is no solution to isolate one individual for punishment.  A much bigger investment in prevention and healing in the whole community is required. 

Based on the testimony in the Senate, it is clear that we have systemic ills in our society that need addressing.  It is also clear that we must support community-based solutions like restorative justice whenever possible.  They will provide much more healing and ultimate community safety than a short term jail sentence with few opportunities for rehabilitation.  The needs of victims for counselling and sometimes income support must also be addressed.  There are many investments in crime prevention that could make us safer.  I appeal to you with all my heart.  Use all appropriate tools available for particular offenders, and invest as much in prevention as you do in enforcement and incarceration as we move forward with our justice system.

In faith,

Rev. Frances Deverell

President,

Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice.

C-10 Hearings 2012 02 22 - Youth

Bill C-10 – Senate Hearings, 2012 02 22

The focus of today’s hearings was on the youth offender’s act and the changes proposed.  In addition there was a discussion of victims’ needs and rights in the context of the youth justice system.  There seem to be several issues under discussion and witnesses provide information and points of view to enlighten us on those issues.

1.     Senator Lang says that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.  If youth receive no consequences for their actions they are very likely to reoffend until the point is brought home to them that crime does not pay.  Victims see mandtory minimums for serious crimes as providing a framework to give victims security against re-offense and to ensure the sentence will be proportional to the seriousness of the crime.  They see them as an overdue rebalancing of the system between punishment, security, and rehabilitation, putting some stability into an out of control youth justice system.  They give concrete solutions to a serious societal problem.

2.     Lawyers have a problem with mandatory minimums because they focus on the crime instead of the offender.  A fundamental principle of sentencing in Canada is that the focus of the sentence is the offender and the judge looks at the whole picture surrounding that person in choosing the best sentence.

3.     Social workers and psychologists and psychiatrists report that youth do not have a sufficiently developed moral and rational capacity to benefit from mandatory minimum sentences.  They do not develop their full capacity until their early twenties.  This deficit of reason results in a lesser level of responsibility which requires a punishment response to be mitigated with training, coaching, and supervision toward a more socially acceptable set of behaviours.  The current version of the Youth Offenders Act has been designed to take this into account.

4.     Only the judge has full access to all the information needed to select a solution appropriate to the individual person.  The judges have all the tools they need to raise a youth to adult court and give an adult sentence when they need to.  Witnesses testified that we have to give second, third, fourth and even more chances.  That if we put that child in jail we lose them forever.  We have to throw everything other tool we have at the problem first before we resort to jail – unless the young person is likely to get involved in serious violent crime.  Some say mandatory minimums will put more young people in jail, turning an underclass into “throw away people.”

5.     Some victim groups (but not all) advocate putting them to work in jail, for wages, and garnishee the wages to give the victim compensation.  Apparently the old Kingston prison farm is now a laundry service available for contract services.

6.     There was quite a discussion around the issue of publishing a youth offender’s name.  

7.     The need for proper victim services with a reasonable national standard across Canada that is reciprocal between provinces was very evident.  A prisoner gets rehabilitation and training and counseling.  A victim’s family may lose their breadwinner, a parent, their security, their physical or mental health.  They also need income support, grief or shock counseling, and other supports.  In some cases, whole communities are affected.

8.     It is certainly questionable whether there are enough counseling and rehabilitation supports for prisoners either.  One has the impression there are very few services in provincial remand centres where people often service their 3month to 1 year sentences.  There are certainly not enough detox, rehabilitation addiction service centres available in Canada.  Big centres tend to have good services (if not enough of them) but rural communities are not well served.

9.     The main debate is whether minimum sentences, whether for drug trafficking or incest and sexual abuse actually would provide a deterrent.  The research does not support it at all and many witnesses stood on that ground.  Others relied on their common sense, their gut psychology, and believed that they would be a deterrent.  Two witnesses presented evidence that minimum sentences do provide a deterrent.  Both criminologists who testified before the Senate agreed with mandatory minimums.

In Panel 5, Justice Merlin Nunn testified as an individual.  He conducted an important inquiry into the functioning of the Young Offender’s Act in Nova Scotia, instigated by a young offender who had 38 charges and still had not had a hearing or done any jail time.  He was running wild (stealing cars and joy-riding) and the system seemed unable to stop him.  Justice Nunn knew nothing about youth justice, but learned a lot.  He shared the history and his lessons with us.

The first Juvenile Delinquent Act was passed in 1908 and it survived into the 1950’s.  Kids were put in jail.  There was no rehab.  There was lot’s of abuse.  At your first offence you were put in jail.  In the second half of the 20^th century three events coincided:  The Passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the passage of the Canadian Charter of Rights, and the creation of the new Young Offender’s Act.  Canada was one of the first to sign on to the UN Declaration.  The Charter of Rights recognized that children had rights.  But by the late 1990’s, Canada had more youth in custody than almost anywhere – more even than the USA.  We moved to the Youth Criminal Justice Act – an act designed to put almost nobody in jail.  If it was not a violent offense there was no chance of custody.

Problems arise in the system when the courts get clogged.  Listening to witnesses it became clear to me that the primary problem is that court is too slow.  A youth will fear going to court if it happens within at least two (preferably one) week of the offence.   The consequence is immediate.  When there are months or even years of delay then a youth believes they will always evade having to confront the consequences of their actions.

The Judge heard much testimony that the system is good and the system is working for 95% of youth offenders.  He recommended that only for really high flyers they have the capacity to put them in pre-trial detention to prevent any further offenses.  He wanted to open a very small window without opening the floodgate.  The judge also recommended that they put in language around “Protection of Society” as a value, adding an extra consideration besides the best interests of the child in sentencing decisions.  He also recommended that it be stipulated that the changes were for “violent offences” and that language be put in to describe what is a violent offence.”  I suddenly realized that most of the discussions I had been listening to were offering opinions on the meaning of this language that was being inserted – defining “the protection of society” and what offences would be included in “violent offences.”  The judge was against all measures in the bill that focus on denunciation and deterrence (manadatory minimums).  He said he took seriously the professional assessment that children do not have the same responsibility as adults and that these kinds of sentences were not in the best interest of the child.  The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child puts the best interest of the child at its centre and it provides a standard that the amendments to Bill C-10 should meet.

An interesting aside.  Sentator Jaffer tried to get a copy of the Federal Assessment of C-10 in the light of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child.  She has been told that it is a secret, Cabinet document and will not be released.  One has to wonder whether the government is fully aware that C-10 does not meet that standard and is deliberately opening itself to constitutional challenges in order to force through mandatory minimum sentences anyway.

C-10 Hearings 2012 02 21-Sexual Abuse

Blog C-10 Hearings 2012 02 21 – Sexual Abuse

Panel 3 – Paul Gillespie, Lucien Landry, Tony Dusset

These people represented those people in Quebec subjected to sexual abuse in the Catholic church who never received an apology, an acknowledgement of the damage done, or restitution.

Panel 4

Lawrence Ellerby, Assoc. For Treatment of Sex Abusers

Ellen Campbell – Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness

(survivor, ordained minister, and founder)

Mark Allan, Director of Public Safety and victim of Hockey Coach abuse

Ellen Campbell called for us to put children back into the centre of policy.  For them, abuse is a life sentence.  Prevention is critical.  She thinks Canada is soft on crime and it is too easy for people to reoffend.  Children are not protected.

Lawrence Ellerby brought 5 points to our attention

1.    Who are committing sexual crimes:  every demographic.  No typical offender.  All races, religions, ethnic groups, professions, economic status, etc. The vast majority of offenders are known to their victims and it is an abuse of trust or power or authority in many circumstances.  Strangers are rare. 

2.    We are evolving valid assessment and risk analysis tools. 

3.    Treatment works – there is a good literature developing on this.  More treatment is consistent with what works and produces better outcomes.

4.    10-18% of sexual offenses are reported.  82-90% are not.  How do we enhance disclosure to prevent more harm?

5.    We need legislation around the world.  We need to develop best practices on what to do with sexual offenders once they are detected.  We must invest in prevention.

Senator Fraser quoted Rupert Ross, a long-time crown attorney:

“At first I insisted on long sentences for these horrible offences.  Few people pleaded guilty.  The case went to court and depended on the word of a vulnerable child.  It turned their whole world upside down to testify against people they knew and depended on.  There was overwhelming pressure on the child.  Acquittals were the norm.  After the child would ask me “How can he say he believed me and then pronounce “not guilty?”  Why did you put me through all that for nothing?”  I turned to conditional sentences that would produce a guilty plea.  The child’s story was affirmed and the child was believed.  A first step toward healing.”

Ellen Campbell says our techiques with children are better today and new processes allow the court case to win more often.  Also, we have many adult survivors testifying.

Lawrence Ellerby suggests that longer sentences generate more ambivalence about whether to prosecute or not.  People’s offence occurs in particular circumstances based on their particular experiences and have different risk levels for reoffence.  Individualized sentencing is important.  We need evidence-based decision making and a lot more research.

Information – they are developing different classifications of offender.  For example there is a difference between a pedophile (someone with a sexual preference toward children) and a sexual offender (someone who abuses children.)  People may not be sexually oriented toward children but may still abuse for power and control or other dynamics.  Some people are voyeurs on line but don’t act in the world.  Some pedophiles have control of their impulses and act them out in the fantasy world only.

Senator Jaffer wants a comprehensive strategy – Healing of abused, Treatment of abuser, and healing of the whole community.  I agree.

Ellen Campbell made it clear that she does not seek that mentally ill people should go to jail.  They should be diverted to appropriate treatment and Treatment services should be available.  Especially male victims have no services available to them.  Nevertheless, if we must err, we must err on the side of children.

Blog C-10 Hearings 2012 02 16 – Canadians Imprisoned Abroad

Blog C-10 Hearings 2012 02 16 – Canadians Imprisoned Abroad

This bill gives the Minister flexibility to refuse Canadians return to Canada.  The Conservative position is that all Canadians abroad want to serve their sentence in Canada because Canadian jails are more comfortable and they are likely to gain their freedom sooner.  In some countries they will serve 85 % of their sentence before release and in many countries there are no objectives to reform or rehabilitate the prisoner so no programs for that.  Conservatives want to know why we should bring dangerous criminals back to Canada so they can walk our streets sooner, endangering Canadian society.

Furthermore, foreign jails may have barbarous conditions and prisoners may be subjected to torture. 

The advisors to this panel were:

Nathalie Des Rosiers, Canadian Civil Liberties Assoc.

John Conroy, Lawyer representing such inmates from Abbotsford BC

Fannie Lafontaine, Prof. of Law, University of Laval.

All of these put a very different point of view.  Nathalie Des Rosiers cautioned the Senators that refusing Canadians return to Canada would open the door to Charter challenges on several different grounds. 

Both Fannie Lafontaine and John Conroy emphasized that these prisoners will complete their terms and come back to Canada.  It is to our advantage that they experience some treatment programs before they are released.  It is to our advantage if they are entered in the Canadian Criminal Record Data Base.  It is to our advantage if they are assessed by Canadian Corrections officials as to their risk to reoffend, and if they are released with supervision so that we can monitor their behaviour.  We can do none of this if they come back having finished their sentence abroad.

It seems perfectly clear to me that it is in the public interest to bring Canadians home, and that the attempt to keep them away is perhaps a cost-saving measure and more likely a vision that punishment is best with no regard for either investigating the circumstances of the Canadian’s conviction under a different system of law or ensuring public safety on their eventual return to Canada.  I agree with Civil Liberties – we will see Charter challenges with this.

C-10 Hearings 2012 02 15 - Police and Drugs

C-10 Hearings 2012 02 15 –

Police Perspective and Drug Perspective

I expected this to be a dialogue between a police perspective of drugs must be kept illegal and a drug perspective that they should be legalized.  It was far different and more complex than that as I listened to the various witnesses. 

Supt. Eric Slinn represented the Drug Branch of the RCMP and Barry MacKnight, Police Chief in Fredericton, represented the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs. 

The Senators are mostly lawyers although there are a few coming from other perspectives.  They are extremely knowledgeable about the issues.  They all there all the time, listening carefully and respectfully to every witness.  They each ask 2 questions.  Unfortunately the Liberals sit on one side and the Conservatives on the other.  They go back and forth so it is very fair, and the chair, Senator Wallace (who is doing an extremely good job), is allowing some latitude in the discussion so that these deeply important societal questions are fully explored.  It is perfectly clear that they have been inundated with letters, and it is also clear that some of them come to find specific answers to specific questions because of the letters they receive.  Throughout the hearings, for example, the Senators ask each witness certain questions to find out their attitude about central questions. 

For example, they have been inundated with letters pointing out the unfairness of a minimum sentence longer for 6 pot plants than for a pedophile caught with child pornography.  Where is the justice in that people are asking?  Many witnesses have had brief dialogue with the Senators on this question.  They have asked the police how much pot that is and whether this is enough to constitute trafficking.  They have asked the lawyers how this should be weighed in law.  They have asked the Department of Public Safety what their criteria was to set these particular minimum sentences and how they came to those results.  Today we will also hear other perspectives on the drug side of the equation.

The RCMP told us that cannabis is still the biggest seller on the market but it is just over 50% of the street drugs used.  He told us that in the past decade many other substances have been added to the street marijuana being sold and that marijuana is much stronger.  He also told us that the average age of a person when they start smoking pot has gone down from 15 years to 9 years.

Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, Psychiatrist and Neroscientist at McGill University told us that they now have some longitudinal studies on the use of cannabis and its effect on youth who started smoking between the ages of 12 and 18.  (Adolescents.)  In the 1980’s I was teaching professionals about the difference between the effect of alcohol on the brains of children, adolescents, and adults.  We taught that an adult takes 10 years to be come physically addicted to alcohol.  A youth takes 10 months.  A child takes 10 weeks.  This is a time when the brain is under development.  The brain is not fully developed until a person is between 21 and 25.  Dr. Gobbi told us that both the emotional and the rational parts of the brain are still under development.  All drugs interfere with normal development.  Youth are more vulnerable to addiction.  Increasingly studies make the link between cannabis in adolescence and an increase in psychotic episodes, risk of depression, anti-social behaviour, and heavy use of other drugs.   Dr. Gobi said we have a moral imperative to educate our youth and all adults in society of the dangers of this drug for children and youth.

Gwendolyn Landolt from the Drug Prevention Network of Canada suggested strongly that  the current generation of judges do not take the distribution and use of marijuana seriously.  To them it is a very minor offence.  She calls it an ideology of permissiveness about drug use.  She challenges the statement that prohibition doesn’t work.  We have the largest percentage of our children in the world of any country smoking pot because it is too easy to get and the consequences for dealing it are non-existent.  She supports mandatory minimums. 

She also supports a huge expansion of the drug courts in Canada.  Bill C-10 allows an addict to take a detox and rehabilitation program instead of a mandatory minimum but this option is not available to the majority of Canadians.  We have only 6 drug courts in Canada.  The have thousands in the United States.  Many witnesses called for much greater availability of drug courts including right in First Nations Communities.

Rebecca Jesseman, Research and Policy Advisor for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, and Heather Clark, youth advisor, told us they do not support mandatory minimums because they have not been able to find any evidence that they work.  The best practices among youth to prevent involvement in drug use are health and social interventions to build skills, improve family relationships, and build a sense of belonging in community.  These are both most effective and most cost-effective. C-10 needs to add health and social services to the budget.  Drug testing and zero tolerance have not proven to be effective strategies.

A panel from First Nations groups gave us their perspective.  Ron Evans, Chief of Norway House Cree Nation, spoke for Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, Inc. with Michael Anderson, his Natural Resources Secretariat, Research Director.  Scott Wheildon, Criminal Law Counsel, spoke for Legal Services Board of Nunavut. 

We have seen this picture painted before several times.  The country is vast and communities are small and isolated with few resources.  The whole court has to fly into the community and often it is cancelled for weather.  There is so much dysfunction in some of these communities that everyone is a victim and everyone is an offender.  They have issues relating to health, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, addictions, family violence, and sexual abuse and incest.  To try to use a tough on crime and mandatory minimum approach will simply clog up the system and throw the whole community into institutional settings, in the South – since there are no facilities in the North.

Chief Ron Evans told us we are committed to community safety.  To achieve this in our communities we need opportunities for reconciliation between the victim and the offender and the community as a whole because when one is harmed, all are harmed.  Sentencing circles and elder counseling are more effective than sending our children to jail in the South.  A Recividism study showed that out of 500 cases of people diverted into sentencing circles vs a control group who were not, less than half of the number who reoffended in the control group reoffended.  A 50% reduction in recividism.  We need to build on this success.  Chief Evans asked for a Gladue-style exemption for First Nations from the mandatory minimums so that they could continue this work.

There is terrible damage to the family and the community when they are separated.  More women and more youth and more aboriginals are incarcerated . This puts more children in foster care.  It would be much better to address the health, education, poverty and housing issues and less expensive.

Scott Wheildon, Nunavut Legal Aid, spoke passionately about the need for in-house addictions treatment and other preventive services.  In the communities he serves there is six time the crime rate of the national average.  It has doubled since Nunavut was created.  98% of inmates are Inuit.  Baffin Correctional Centre has inmates sleeping on the floor and the new 45 beds in Rankin will be full the day the door opens.  He said, “We are bracing for the impact of Bill C-10.”  There is a 33% vacancy rate for social workers.  Most are first year grads with no training for these circumstances and they hardly last a year.

Dr. Darryl Plecas, Director, Centre for Criminal Justice Research, University of the Fraser Valley, has done much research in the area of drugs.  He spoke to a subject which came up over and over – our 6 pot plants.  He sided with the police and the prosecutors that the police are far too busy to be bothered trying to find let alone prosecute for six pot plants.  Their focus is organized crime.  The size of the problem is huge.  The police can only investigate 3 % of the grow-ops out there.  He was very unhappy with the statistics that only 11 % of cases get charges laid and of those, only 20% go to prison. 

Organized crime is any group of people who purchase or produce enough of a banned substance to require to form a distribution network to distribute it.  Usually they are dealing with 100 plus pot plants.  Often the networks are international in scope, but the gangs live and operate here.  Some believe they do because of our lenient justice system.  Canada now has a large export industry in both Cannabis and chemical drugs like ecstasy.  We’re feeding the world these drugs.  Even the lowest guy on the totem poll is in a hierarchy in organized crime.  Organized crime is

The arguments:

Mandatory Minimums - Cons	Mandatory Minimums - Pros
Fear that non-violent first offenders or medical users will get caught in web. Teach youth to be criminals in jail.	Focused on putting people involved in organized crime in jail
Catches the low levels of the org. crime hierarchy	Might deter these early starters from continuing on that path.
Police are targeting organized crime and want the big guys, but if they strike out they charge the ones they do catch – Senator Baker pointed to cases where 12 people were each charged with passing one pill to an undercover officer.	Police don’t normally target such small users.  The focus on priority is to stop these drug wars and gang shootings going on in the streets of Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal and Toronto.  They need tools.
We would do better if we legalized drugs.  We could control availability, quality, and price and take source of income away from org. crime.  Use treatment courts instead. (I have not yet heard anyone present this case.)	We are doing something wrong.  Our drug problem is getting worse.  Our lenience is not working.  A recidivist with 15 charges still doesn’t get jail time. We have to stiffen the penalties even if a few go through the cracks.
In today’s world, once you have a criminal record you will live with it for the rest of your life.  The stigmatization may ensure a person is dysfunctional and non-contributing to society for life.	Because our culture is addicted to drugs, we need to create serious consequences in order to prevent more people from making those bad choices.

Police Chief MacKnight told us that the police believe that prevention is the most important strategy to deal with our problems.  It should be a regular part of every school curriculum.  There needs to be a balanced approach to these problems:  prevention, education, enforcement of order, counseling and other services, consequences for breaking the law, and rehabilitation and reintegration.  Approaches need to be both lawful and ethical, serve the needs of all, and find a balance between the rights and responsibilities of the individual and the needs of society for safety and security.  A society should be evidence based.  That is why their brief did not specifically support or not support mandatory minimums.  They will work with the law they are given by the politicians.

When asked whether these minimums would be a deterrent, he replied that while there is no statistical evidence they are, he could report anecdotally that people they talk to in the streets do fear going to jail and he believes that would act to avoid that if possible.

Conclusion

This bill C-10 is an attempt to put a finger in the dyke to stop the huge societal problem that we have with poverty, addictions, and mental health issues from swamping us as a society.  Although some aspects of it are likely necessary, it is no longer acceptable to simply throw people in jail who are the scapegoats for the problems in our society.  We must dramatically increase our funding and support for prevention and healing work, both in First Nations Communities and in our cities and southern rural communities.  The drug problem is everywhere. 

Each community must have some say in which approach is likely to be most effective in that community.  Leaders in all aspects of the community need to be educating themselves as to the full facts and issues involved, and be participating in developing a plan towards moving toward health in their own area.  Mandatory Minimums are too blunt an instrument and must be mitigated by judicial discretion through sentencing circles, drug courts and treatment options, and mental health courts with suitable treatment options. 

We need to set some concrete goals in Canada to reduce drug use of all types, and have widespread discussion on the best approach to doing that.  For every type of community the answers may be different.

C-10 Hearings 2012 02 09 - Victims

Joseph Wamback represents Canadian Crime Victim Foundation  www.ccuf.net

Marie France Mariel is an individual whose brother was murdered.

I met Mr. Wamback before he testified and he told me about the work the Foundation that he founded does.  It provides scholarships to the children of murdered people to help them get an education.  It does research on the harm done to families.  “Carla Homolka got a University Degree.  Leslie McAffy’s sibling got nothing.

Mr. Womback told us it is a lie that mandatory minimums have no deterrant effect.  He says there is hard data from California that there was a 50% reduction in the crime rate in the first five years after the three strikes law was enforced.  The next eight years saw a further reduction of 26%.  The massive cost predictions did not happen.  Studies from Harvard Law School and California show the opposite.  There were cost savings of 54 billion in California.  He then went on to talk about the cost of crime to victims.  He also told us that convicted murderers on parole have killed over 400 Canadians.

Mr. Womback also claims that there is no evidence that incarceration trains criminals, an argument often made.  Youth learn to be criminals in malls, high schools and hockey arenas from older youth who are smarter and don’t get caught.  He strongly supports the idea of minimum sentences and more incarceration to send a strong message that crime doesn’t pay.

Marie France Mariel also supports the law.  Her brother’s murderer has since committed another murder.  Victims are terrified when a person comes to the end of their sentence and is eligible for parole – especially if they don’t know anything about the person.  One criminal she is aware of refuses any sort of treatment but applies every two years for parole.  We need better rehabilitation programs.  The victims need better information about what programs the offender is in and how he is doing.  And some offenders need to really stay in jail for life.  We can’t help them if they cannot reflect on their actions or learn empathy for others.

There was a discussion on the costs to victims whether in real expenses or the kind of life insurance compensation for loss of life or limb.  Lost opportunity, lost wages, medical and psychological costs, etc.

There was discussion about who is a victim.  If someone is murdered is their mother a victim?  Their sibblings?  Their children?  To get benefits you have to be legally designated as a victim and you have to apply.  You need to have someone point the way.  It is a bureaucratic process and easy to get lost in the system.  When people are in shock they don’t know to apply.

There was talk of restitution to victims.  Some propose the offender’s wages in jail be garnisheed as a token recompense.  Unfortunately most do not have assets from which to pay the victim.

Mr. Wamback spoke as an employer.  He agrees that there should be a longer wait for a pardon because, he thinks it is important they tell the employer they have a record.  The ability to say so up front indicates you have accepted what happened , what you did, and you are moving on.  It shows honesty.  He said to me, “When I hire people I want people I can trust.  If someone hides behind a pardon and I find out later, I don’t know if I can trust them.”

The victims rights should be as good as the offenders.  It needs to be recognized that victims have value.  One change in this law that is good is the offender cannot cancel a parole hearing within 14 days of the hearing.  This gives victims the ability to make plans to attend with some confidence the hearing will happen as planned.  Apparently they would go to a hearing and it would be cancelled the day before.

Senator Runcimann asked about the CBA position that this bill would increase the costs of the whole system.  Mr. Wamback asks, “What are the costs of reoffending over and over again and having the same people processed through the system so often?  This is why the system is so jammed.”

When asked about the new provision to detain youth while they are waiting for trial, Marie France said, “The earlier you send them to jail and the longer they stay the first time, the greater the chance that they won’t spend their whole life there.”  She believes a good scare and some decent counseling the first time will be a deterrant.

On the issue of publication of young people’s names, Wamback pointed out that the crime is a badge of honour and everybody at school knows who did it.  Playing it down does nothing to hold them accountable.  Jennifer Stoddard (Office of the Privacy Commissioner) took a different view.  She defends publication bans.  She said that in today’s internet and social media environment that information would never be surpressed.  It would be there to haunt a person forever.  There would be no such thing as a pardon or a removal of record.  You should not do that to a 12-year-old. (She reads the act to have no limit on how young the offender might be whose name might be published.)

When Marie France was asked by Senator Jaffer what she saw as the right thing for victims she said:

·      Not to be a victim.  Prevention of crime is essential.

·      The victim can never be compensated for their losses.

·      More services for victims.  Even if you are an identified victim, you only get 8 counseling sessions.  You need more.  I wouldn’t be able to function without the counseling I have done.

Mr. Wamback said

·      We need more compassion and support for victims. Canada is 26^th in the world in provision of services for victims.  We do not meet the standards set out by the UN for victims of crime.  My agency gets no government support.  A victim whose source of support has been killed has no access to EI services.  Our eyes are closed to the victim.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard also defended publication bans as good protection for witnesses and victims.    Regarding prisoner ankle monitoring bracelets, the Privacy Commissioner said they are problematic.  They have found in the current pilot project with volunteers that they are not reliable.  They produce a lot of detailed information about a person (such as medical information) that is not relevant to their crime and at the same time the quality of that information is suspect.  There is evidence that what the bracelet says is not true – ie it reports they were in one place when we know they were in another.  She does not recommend mandatory ankle bracelets for people on short term leave or parole for that reason.  She recommends it stay voluntary.  She also recommends the processes for determining when the data should be destroyed should be reviewed and made more transparent and consistent.  Conservative Senators were very unhappy with this advice.  They thought the monitoring bracelets added a real element of increased safety.  Prisoners who have committed crimes should have less of a right to privacy. 

Sue O’Sullivan, Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, was pleased with the amendments in C-10 for victims.  They need still more changes.  C-10 addresses

·      The right to present a statement at parole hearing.  The right to attend needs to be added.

·      It removes the right to cancel within 14 days.  This is good.  It could be 30 days.

·      It allows victims to receive information so they can plan for their own safety at the discretion of officers (such as the Parole Board.)  This should be a right.

·      They need the right to see an updated photo of the individual at the time of release.

·      They need advance notification when the offender is being transferred somewhere, especially if it will be close to where the victim lives.

·      They would like the right to attend, at least by video

·      They are interested in restitution orders (paycheck deduction)

·      They would like to see participation in rehabilitation programs a condition of early release.

·      The issue of minimum sentences is not a consensus.  For some victims this is very important.  For others other issues are more important.

·      And they need victim treatment programs.

Balanced against these requests are the needs of the offender.  If personal information is released to the victim, do they then have the right to send it wherever they want?  How could that be stopped? 

I came away from this session feeling quite disturbed.  I realized I didn’t know enough about the situations of victims and the need for right to privacy for offenders and what the right balance between these might be.