Thank you very much, Chair and committee members. It's a great pleasure to be here before you to share The John Howard Society's views on Bill C-5.
For those of you who don't know about The John Howard Society, we are a not-for-profit that is committed to just, effective and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. We have about 60 offices across the country serving communities.
We fully support the policy objectives underpinning Bill C-5, but we feel that they have not gone far enough. I just want to take you through some of the ones that we specifically would like to raise.
One is the cautions, warnings and referrals to programs. It is often the case that it is more timely and more effective to deal with alleged criminal offences through cautions, warnings and referrals to community programs. It's not unusual for people to call the police when they see someone struggling with a mental health issue or an addiction issue in the hopes that by calling the police, they will enable the person to get the help they need.
In effect, that leads to the criminalization of the person and further involvement in the criminal justice system. It allows for the long-term discrimination of having a criminal record. These proposed amendments will allow for individuals with substance abuse issues to be referred to community programs where real assistance might be available.
These measures entrust the police with important discretion. As the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act show, they will lead to fewer people coming into the criminal justice system for less serious charges. To ensure that they are achieving the policy objectives of reducing racial inequalities in the use of such discretion, we think it would be important to track which races and genders are benefiting from this important discretion.
The next one that we like is conditional sentencing. We agree with Jonathan Rudin from the previous panel that this is essentially beginning to restore in some small measure what was there before and which had been proven to work very well. Conditional sentences are custodial sentences that are being served in the community. Unlike breaches of non-custodial sentences, a breach of these conditions leads to imprisonment. A warrant of committal to custody is underpinning the sentence, so if someone breaches the condition they can immediately be placed in custody. We feel that this is an excellent way to hold people accountable through the imposition of conditions that constrain liberties while promoting law-abiding circumstances such as the retention of employment, housing and community-based supports.
The two-year sentence limit for conditional sentences proposed by Bill C-5 seems unduly restrictive. Many people are supervised in the community successfully for more than two years while on parole. It seems to me that this certainly could be extended.
The restriction will also mean that the reform will have no impact on the federal prison population. To determine whether this most welcome reform has the impact of reducing racial inequalities, data would need to be collected on which rates—