Tough On Crime
Crossposted from christindal.ca.
As a disclaimer, I happen to think that the oft-repeated phrases "tough on crime" and "soft on crime" are near meaningless. Too often, the stuff we're told is "tough" is either ineffective or damaging (see mandatory minimums and the presumption of guilt), while the stuff we're told is "soft" would actually lessen the incidence of crime (see the legalization of marijuana).
That being said, the Harper Conservatives want to get "tough," so let's get tough. And if we're going to start somewhere, we might as well start with our own government.
- Stephen Harper's government is breaking international law. By failing to even try to meet our Kyoto targets, we have turned our back on the world and become an international embarrassment.
- Stephen Harper's government is breaking domestic law. Parliamentarians, working on behalf of the majority of Canadians, passed a law requiring the government to introduce a plan to meet Kyoto targets. The government flat-out ignored the law.
- The federal Conservatives are accused of breaking election spending limits by $1.2 million during the last federal election campaign, which they only narrowly won. The scheme involved circumventing legal spending limits by funneling money through local campaigns in order to pay for national advertising. Elections Canada is of the opinion that this is not legal. But, just when it was starting to become news, Harper attacked Elections Canada over the almost-non-issue of whether or not Muslim women can be forced to show their faces before voting. The distraction worked (with the added bonus that it made Elections Canada look like the bad guys) and the Conservative AdScam disappeared from public view, just in time for the conservatives to attempt to block a house committee investigation into the potentially illegal spending (which they eventually succeeded in doing by proroguing Parliament.)
- The federal Conservatives are accused of breaking the law with regards to how they collect and use private information about citizens, triggered by the discovery that they had created a list of Jewish Canadians. Their defence has ranged from "we didn't do it" to "sure we did it but so did those other guys."
I don't know how Harper can afford the constant repairs to his glass house. He must have a great arrangement with a window contractor. Regardless, if Harper wants to get tough on crime, he needs to start with himself. Then, once he's removed the plank from his own eye, we can talk.
- Chris Tindal's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Comments
Good points. We stopped
Good points.
We stopped making criminals out of gamblers and I do remember the raids at Asian gang gambling houses and the occasional gun crimes there.
What changed to stop that crime?
Only one thing , a silly law.
We still have 1.3% killing themselves over their gambling addiction yet no millions in tax payer support to stop the other 98% from gambling.
We need to get tough on our own policies!
Because they are correct policies and not about creating criminals out of our own citizens needlessly or dictating morals with our own tax dollars.
juror.ca
endprohibition@telus.net
Mr. Harper is following the Bush model
Mr. Harper has learned from what works in the United States: When faced with weak opposition, do what you want and lie about it if necessary. The opposition will back down.
Another lesson learned: Dream up phrases that market well, such as "tough on crime." The purpose here is several-fold:
The reason Mr. Harper is following this path is to increase the level of fear and doubt among us, which further plays into our 'need' for a strongman leader.
As Chris has done, we need to focus on Mr. Harper's law-breaking activities to point out his hypocrisy. And Chris uses a great phrase at the end about affording the repairs to his glass house!
Brian Gordon
Nominated Candidate, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca
Green Party of Canada
Trained Presenter
An Inconvenient Truth
People - Planet - Prosperity
The New Green Economy
Well said Chris!
Keep up the good work. Your comments are accurate and level headed. I enjoy reading your posts!
Tough on crime can mean something different:
Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Our criminal justice system does bend over backward to protect the criminal from conviction based on public invasion of the criminal's privacy, even any measures we might take to make it harder for a criminal to commit a crime without detection, identification, prosecution and conviction.
We observe that people tend to avoid offending if the product of risk of conviction times severity of punishment is high.
Raising the penalty does have a direct effect on our formula for avoiding penalty. But the bold and free will say hang the consequences if they perceive the risk of convidtion to be very low.
We then get better compliance if either the risk of conviction rises, or the criminal's perception of that risk rises. It is this as much as severity of penalty that most induces compliance. (Although it is often remarked that where a thief's hand is cut off, there is very little thievery and even less that can be proven.)
If we implement far more effective criminal detection systems, even if they might reduce our privacy, we get better compliance.
For example if we have photographic tracking that allows us to know every person who has passed a large number of points around a city, and can thus reduce to a small number the possible perpetrators of a crime, criminals immediately realize that the risk of detection and conviction have gone way way up. If we allow systematic searches of passing vehicles and persons... way up, random searches of buildings, hey criminals we got you pinned to the floor!
Next we need to advance the sciences that allow us to not only prove guilt, but innocence too,
Sound like 1984? Yes, it is the alternative to interminable prison sentences for those who just happen to get caught.
Totally legal mind-altering substance
There is one totally legal mind-altering substance that has terrible consequences for society, democracy, and the public good.
This is: THE POWER TRIP:
There's no breathalizer for the Power Trip, and it's highly addictive. Its abuse goes largely unrecognized, and when it becomes deadly, users generally point to the victims as the cause. Regular users are often in denial of their use and become capable of justifying to themselves many kinds of destructive acts.