Liberal and Conservatives have agreed that our criminal justice system should rehabilitate offenders — until now
In February 1993, Canada’s crime rate
stood at an all-time high, Brian Mulroney was prime minister, and a
Conservative-dominated House of Commons committee released a report on
crime prevention that held no surprises for those who followed criminal
justice policy. It described the “inherent inadequacy of the criminal
justice system” as a means of addressing the problem, pointing out: “If
locking up those who violate the law contributed to safer societies then
the United States should be the safest country in the world. In fact
the United States affords a glaring example of the limited impact that
criminal justice responses may have on crime....Evidence from the U.S.
is that costly repressive measures alone fail to deter crime.”
The committee chair, Conservative Member of Parliament and former RCMP
officer Bob Horner, told the press, “If anyone had told me when I
became an MP nine years ago that I’d be looking at the social causes of
crime, I’d have told them that they were nuts. I’d have said, ‘Lock them
up for life and throw away the key.’ Not any more.”
Skepticism about
the idea that imprisonment constitutes a good solution to the crime
problem began decades before these stark statements. In 1938, for
example, a Royal Commission examining the country’s penal system
concluded: “The undeniable responsibility of the state to those held in
its custody is to see that they are not returned to freedom worse than
when they were taken in charge. This responsibility has been officially
recognized in Canada for nearly a century but, although recognized, it
has not been discharged. The evidence before this Commission convinces
us that there are very few, if any, prisoners who enter our
penitentiaries who do not leave them worse members of society than when
they entered them.”
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