Posts Tagged ‘corrections’
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Doctors decry crackdown on drugs
Friday, April 8th, 2011
Feb 7, 2011
The principle target of the 564 signatories – which includes doctors, nurses, social workers and law professors – is a provision that would impose minimum prison sentences of at least six months for a variety of drug offences, including operating small-scale marijuana grow operations… minimum sentences will serve only to fill up prison cells at great expense, while doing little to protect the public.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, Health, ideology
Posted in Child & Family Debates | 1 Comment »
Invest in police, not prisons
Monday, April 4th, 2011
Apr. 4, 2011
… the money needed to fund an expansion of the force remains locked behind bars, a prisoner of the government’s nonsensical jail-building crusade. How can a Prime Minister who is so philosophically committed to freedom be so fascinated with incarceration? Why does he worship the discredited American approach of locking offenders away instead of trying to reduce people’s proclivity to offend by investing more in social work, treatment for mental illness and drug addiction, as well as good, solid policing?
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Legal system is a lousy alternative to intervention for addicts
Sunday, March 27th, 2011
March 26, 2011
Two new U.S. studies suggest special drug courts are far less effective than thought at combating addiction, reducing case backlogs and lowering the number of low-level, nonviolent offenders in jail…. Drug courts were meant to decrease the number of people in prison for drug offences, help addicts kick their habits and improve public safety. By helping non-violent offenders overcome their addictions and improve their social stability, the court programs hoped to reduce the criminal behaviour associated with substance abuse while eliminating backlogs. Nice in theory, but not in practice.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, Health, ideology, youth
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Prisons should be repair shops, not garbage dumps
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Mar 12, 2011
Prison should not be a place of languishing; its purpose should be punishment, reparable stigmatization other than for extreme offenders, and largely regimented time to be spent in activity sensibly designed to make the returning prisoner less likely to reoffend. This would include therapy, skills training and reorientation. It should be authoritarian enough to incite non-return, but not so heavy-handed that it over-penalizes and breaks the will of inmates to resume life with a promising likelihood of success.
Tags: corrections, ideology, Indigenous, mental Health, poverty, rights
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
The Conservative crime agenda sells, until the bill arrives
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Feb. 28, 2011
… even if the public would like tougher sentences, there appears to be no wish to pay a tab in the billions each year (in combined federal and provincial costs). The federal corrections budget alone is set to rise by $861-million, or 36 per cent, by 2012-13 over 2009-10. The provincial costs will probably rise by at least that much, because of federal sentencing changes. Ottawa’s position is either that Canadians want a get-tough approach at any cost, or that they aren’t entitled to know what the cost will be.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, tax
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Paroles decline as Conservatives fill board positions
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Feb. 20, 2011
The percentage of offenders in Canadians prisons who are granted parole has dropped steadily as the Harper government fills up posts on the National Parole Board with like-minded conservatives. Two dozen members of the National Parole Board appointed since 2006 have donated to the Conservatives or have close political links to the party… the Tories had promised to make boards and tribunals more independent but since they were elected, have stacked them with loyalists.
Tags: corrections, ideology
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Let’s build opportunity, not prisons
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
Feb. 18, 2011
Even if all of the government’s criminal justice bills were sensible, taken individually (and frankly, we have no philosophical objection to Truth in Sentencing), the costs need to be known and weighed, on their own merits and against other uses for that money. If Canada has money for an expansion of the jails, which is doubtful, it should think instead about ambitious ways of investing in productivity and people.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Don’t let Canada be jailed for debt
Thursday, February 17th, 2011
February 17, 2011
Parliament… is failing to live up to its basic responsibilities, because it doesn’t know what the financial implications are of the government’s many crime bills… To the extent Canada allows for untrammelled (and unnecessary) growth of the prisons, it will have less money available to invest in people and productivity… Mr. Page told the committee he does not accept the government’s contention that the costs are a “cabinet confidence.”
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
When jails become a jobs program
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Feb. 15, 2011
The jails plan to hire 5,000 new employees, according to Don Head, the commissioner. He says the service is trying to count up the costs of the government’s multiple crime bills. Did no one think to do that first? Even apart from all those jobs is the cost of the new infrastructure needed to house a spike in the number of prisoners… Yet the Conservative government has provided no comprehensive costing, and none for a new bill, Bill S-10, that provides for mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug crimes, such as six months for growing six or more marijuana plants.
Tags: budget, corrections, ideology
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Fight over cost of Tory crime bills sets up Commons confrontation
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Feb. 11, 2011
The debate exposes an anomaly in Canada’s political system. Whereas legislation in the United States or Germany must be accompanied with estimates as to what the measures will cost, that doesn’t happen in Ottawa. The creation of the Parliamentary Budget Office was supposed to help with this, but the Conservatives dispute the PBO’s estimates of how much the justice measures will cost. Further, watchdog Kevin Page has said he often runs into problems getting documents from government that parliamentary committees have asked him to find.
Tags: budget, corrections, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | 1 Comment »
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