Posts Tagged ‘corrections’

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Liberals come out against Tory ‘dumb on crime’ legislation

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

February 9, 2011
“We’re all in favour of cracking down on serious criminals, but this bill doesn’t distinguish between massive grow-ops and a first-time offender with a small amount,” he said. “What’s more, the Conservatives won’t tell us what the fiscal implications of this bill are. How many billions will it cost? How many mega-prisons will have to be built? For these reasons, we just can’t support it.” … That looming expense has convinced Liberals they can safely vote against S-10 without suffering political consequences.

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Better way to fight crime

Friday, January 28th, 2011

January 27, 2011
Statistics Canada data show a downward trend in the crime rate, including crimes committed with guns, over the past two decades. So what have we done right over the past two decades? That’s what we need to discover and use as a guide. Crime breeding environments exist where there is social injustice, particularly poverty. By getting tough on social injustice we can change environments where crime is accepted. We can see small positive changes have been happening over the last 20 years. More social justice is a better route to less crime and a safer Canada than more policing and more prison cells.

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Prison mental health

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

January 26, 2011
The Canadian Psychiatric Association (To Heal and Protect – Jan. 22) agrees with the warnings of Canada’s Correctional Investigator that the scarcity of treatment for mentally ill inmates is a growing crisis and that getting tough on crime by locking up more Canadians as proposed by the federal government will aggravate the problem. What is needed, are services for inmates and policies that favour early detection and treatment, preventing our citizens with mental illness from filling our prisons.

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Prisons grapple with increase in mentally ill female inmates

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Jan. 27, 2011
Across the country, prisons are grappling with the problem of a sharp increase in mentally impaired inmates. But the issue is particularly acute with women. Female offenders are twice as likely as their male counterparts to be diagnosed with a mental-health condition when they’re admitted to prison, according to a recent report by the federal Correctional Investigator. Moreover, the number of women admitted to penitentiaries with mental problems doubled from 1997 to 2009… but the needs of the mentally ill are playing a small role in federal expansion plans.

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The war on drugs is lost

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Jan 23 2011
The illicit drug trade will continue as long as there is demand for drugs. Instead of sticking to failed policies, that do not reduce the profitability of the drug trade — and thus its power — we must redirect our efforts to the harm caused by drugs to people and societies, and to reducing consumption… But… Drugs are harmful to health. They undermine users’ decision-making capacity… Cutting consumption as much as possible must, therefore, be the main goal. But this requires treating drug users not as criminals to be incarcerated, but as patients to be cared for.

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To heal and protect: mental illness and the justice system

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Jan. 21, 2011
Behind bars, effective treatment is rarely more than a promise while reality is a severe shortage of psychiatric professionals and a patient population so diverse it can explode if different kinds of inmate mix. The cost to society is immense… untreated prisoners often are released only to get into trouble all over again. Recent figures indicate that nearly 35 per cent of the 13,300 inmates in federal penitentiaries have a mental impairment requiring treatment – triple the estimated total as recently as 2004, and far higher than the incidence of mental illness in the general population.

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Expanding prisons: Getting it right on crime

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Jan 16 2011
Building more jails is a waste of money. We need a fundamental rethink on how to rehabilitate prisoners — not just punish them. Locking up more and more people doesn’t make the public safer. Typical rhetoric from the liberal “soft on crime” crowd? Think again. Newt Gingrich, one of the foremost paladins of the U.S. conservative movement… he best-known leader of Right on Crime, a new conservative group that is blowing the whistle on the idea that more prisons, more prisoners and more money poured into punishment is the way to keep people safe.

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Why the Tories will win the prison expansion political battle

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

January 12, 2011
Our crime rate is trending down. It’s the politics of fear, say the opposition parties… the Tories will win this battle, anyway. So long as our criminal justice system keeps giving average voters a reason to want to see the system “fixed,” the party promising to do that will get the votes… Rehabilitation is great, redemption is dandy, but when Canadians get the sense that criminals are getting off lightly, and that that problem can be made to go away by spending a mere few billion dollars, they will vote for that.

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Government’s tough on crime agenda is bad policy

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

January 10, 2011
The main reason for the explosion in prison building is the government’s tough on crime agenda, including the abolition of the two-for-one pre-trial custody credit, which will lead to a significant increase in the number of criminals incarcerated… The Liberals have made this “wasteful” spending central to their message, pointing out that the country can ill-afford such expenditure at a time of declining crime rates. They say that the Harper government is investing in “U.S.-style mega-prisons” at a time when the Americans are retreating from such a model because it doesn’t work.

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Helping others helps us all

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

Jan. 8. 2011
When I hear people complaining about more crime, I never hear them come up with a solution to the prison overcrowding that exists… Proper rehabilitation programs can prepare people in many ways to overcome addictions, lack of education, poor self-image, anger and emotional issues. .. Can total crime be stopped? No. However, we can reduce it. We can provide the resources that will reduce the reasons for crime.

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