As I said, the special legislation on dangerous offenders is ineffective because it is difficult to pinpoint which offenders will end up causing serious harm to others. When I say special legislation, I am thinking of the time when Canada had both legislation on habitual offenders and legislation on dangerous sexual offenders.
Part of the problem is that we do not know exactly whom we should target. Furthermore, when very harsh legislation is introduced, such as the act providing for indeterminate sentences, there is sometimes resistance within the criminal justice system itself to using them. That explains, to a degree, the huge disparity and the way different provinces apply such legislation. The way it is applied essentially depends on the attorney general and certain prosecutors. It seems also true of California, where a single prosecutor is said to be responsible for a huge number of convictions.
To my mind, the current dangerous offenders legislation has its shortcomings. However, it is not widely applied, and I am glad of that. That being said, I believe that it is both flexible and stringent enough to pinpoint those multiple repeat offenders who are likely to commit serious crimes against persons in the future.
As a general rule, statistically speaking, these laws primarily affect people over 40. Indeed, most people who go to prison are over 30 years of age. By the time they get to their third conviction, especially if they are convicted of a violent offence, they will generally be over 40 years of age due to the length of time they will have spent serving their first two sentences. Yet the vast majority of these offenders do not commit violent crimes after the age of 40.
I therefore believe that the current legislation is both flexible enough and stringent enough to deal with those exceptional cases where prosecutors and specialists have reasonable grounds to believe that an offender will commit a serious crime.