Bill C-2 is sufficiently complex and has enormous implications for, among other things, the rate of incarceration; the overcrowding of existing prisons, including detention centres; the issue of double bunking for the safe management of inmate populations, including the consequences of an increase of inmates with mental disorders and substance abuse problems; the issue of overcrowding as it affects the working conditions of CSC staff; the accelerated transmission of blood-borne diseases among inmates and the spectre of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; the already under-resourced range of treatment options, which are demonstrated to reduce recidivism; the expected termination of statutory release and its implications for the effective reintegration of offenders; the economic costs that will accrue from Bill C-2 combined with the national anti-drug strategy and the evidence-based opportunities thereby foregone; the asymmetric distribution of pain and suffering that will accompany implementation of Bill C-2 combined with the national anti-drug strategy, that is, more offenders from lower socio-economic circumstances, more aboriginal offenders, offenders with greater needs, including already overtaxed needs for mental health treatment, substance abuse, etc.; and finally, the implications of this punitive turn for the penal ecology of Canada’s criminal justice system, which has, until now, largely resisted the drift toward a meaner and more retributive Americanization of our correctional system.
Point number three is mandatory minimum sentences. It is no small irony that Bill C-2 seeks to extend the use of mandatory minimum sentences at precisely the same time as jurisdictions in the United States, notably Florida and California, are trying to extricate themselves from them. Mandatory minimums are sold to Canadians as part of a larger strategy to reduce crime. But as Professor Anthony Doob testified on December 6: “The best research on this is quite consistent. Mandatory minimum sentences will not reduce crime.”
Furthermore, Bill C-2 adds injury to insult by ignoring evidence-based approaches that do actually reduce crime and make communities safer.
Bill C-2, particularly in combination with the national anti-drug strategy, signals that the Government of Canada is prepared to tolerate even greater inequalities in the distribution of pain, denunciation, and punishment. It is as good as certain that mandatory minimum sentences will occasion disproportionate sentences for at least some offenders, likely those most marginalized and vulnerable to having their rights trampled. Canadians ought to be consulted on whether our current model of proportional sentencing should be reformed in this hasty and undemocratic manner, particularly if the reform offends against fundamental principles of distributive justice and targets those already most vulnerable to state-sanctioned discrimination.
I sense I'm running out of time, so I'm going to skip over the health consequences of greater incarceration and go directly to my conclusion.
In summation, I wish to reiterate what has long been known among criminologists, penologists, and historians of incarceration: prison is an expensive way to make people, most of whom come from disadvantaged and deprived social circumstances, worse than they already are. The evidence on this is by now so conclusive that it is no longer a point of contention. We ought not pretend that the last 200 years of research into prisons and their effects is irrelevant or ideologically inconvenient. Community-based programs are more effective and cost less. Community-based programs are not incubators of disease, cynicism, and despair as prisons are. They do not harden anti-social attitudes and behaviours as prisons do. Evidence-based community-based programs do not break apart families and poison the minds of young persons as prisons do. Prisons are the solution that is worse, in many cases, than the disease they are meant to treat. They ought to be the very last resort of a policy that aspires to democratic ideals of self-governance. If the government defies its own experts and the evidence base on prisons and proceeds down the path of growing Canada’s incarceration rate, it will bequeath to your children and grandchildren a curse that will be hundreds of years in the undoing.
Thank you.