Madam Speaker, the tragic death of Ashley Smith in a federal penitentiary continues to raise deeply troubling questions about the government's U.S. style plan for our prisons. Ashley's story is, first and foremost, a deeply personal tragedy for her family and her community. I know all members of this House recognize that and offer their sympathy.
However, the legacy of Ashley Smith prevails in the public eye as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the government's approach to prisons.
At the young age of 15, Ashley Smith was inappropriately sent into the Canadian prison system. This young woman should have been placed instead in a community mental health setting. Instead of learning from this essential fact, however, the Conservatives still pursue a misguided policy of putting more and more people like Ashley into our prisons. Convicted of throwing a crabapple at a postal worker, she ended up dying in a federal prison cell at 19.
There is a groundswell of opposition that is building to the Conservative crime agenda. Countries around the globe are rejecting policies that inappropriately and needlessly lock up their citizens. They are looking to more effective approaches that focus on increasing mental health and addiction services in the community, and crime prevention. American states, like Texas and Oklahoma, staunch bastions of right-wing ideology, have seen their budgets broken by escalating prison costs and are now actively reducing their prison populations. Even conservative icon, Newt Gingrich, recognizes the failure of the lock-them-up approach. He states:
There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections--300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.
Mr. Gingrich went on to say:
If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.
Mr. Gingrich notes that conservative republicans are instead strengthening their probation system, deciding against building more prisons and choosing to enhance proven community corrections approaches such as drug courts. They are getting better results and reducing crime.
Increasingly, however, this Prime Minister stands alone on the world stage in pressing forward with his wrong-headed and dangerous plan to lock up more and more Canadians for longer prison terms.
The Church Council on Justice and Corrections has written to the Prime Minister on this issue as well. The CCJC is made up of representatives from every major Christian faith group in the country. It represents millions of Canadian Christians. Its letter to the Prime Minister reads:
Proposed new federal laws will ensure that more Canadians are sent to prison for longer periods, a strategy that has been repeatedly proven neither to reduce crime nor to assist victims. Your policy is applying a costly prison response to people involved in the courts who are non-violent offenders, or to repeat offenders who are mentally ill and/or addicted, the majority of whom are not classified as high risk. These offenders are disproportionately poor, ill-equipped to learn, from the most disadvantaged and marginalized groups. They require treatment, health services, educational, employment and housing interventions, all less expensive and more humane than incarceration.
The CCJC told the Prime Minister:
Increasing levels of incarceration of marginalized people is counter-productive and undermines human dignity in our society. By contrast, well supervised probation or release, bail options, reporting centres, practical assistance, supportive housing, programs that promote accountability, respect and reparation: these measures have all been well-established, but they are underfunded. Their outcomes have proven to be the same or better in terms of re-offence rates, at a fraction of the cost and with much less human damage.
The American right gets it, the Canadian faith community gets it and New Democrats get it. When will the government get it and abandon its failed crime policy that is divisive, fear based, astronomically expensive and completely ineffective?