My department can provide you with some of those statistics and some of those studies. Certainly the studies in Canada are not very clear on that. I think you're right to look for examples in other jurisdictions. That's something we will have to do. I don't think it's particularly clear from the evidence. For example, there are certain things I think we can say. I did note, for example, an individual stating recently in an interview following the very unfortunate incident in Montreal last week that she had noticed over the last 16 years that gun offences had gone down because of our laws. I also noted that would have been about the same time that mandatory minimum prison sentences for gun crimes were enhanced, which was well before the gun registry was brought in. The gun registry in effect only came into force in the last few years. It really has had no discernible impact in that respect.
I think if you look at the statistics on where we have gone and what has been effective in terms of dealing with gun crimes, there's a good solid argument to be made that mandatory prison sentences for those kinds of gun crimes have resulted in a reduction.
I was speaking to one of my staff who had spoken to prosecutors in the United States, and they talked about the benefits of mandatory minimum prison sentences in respect of certain types of offences. For example, the prosecutor he was talking to indicated that especially in the case of sexual predators the sentences are very effective, because in those cases, when you put one of those sexual predators behind bars, there's no one taking their place. So you will see an actual drop in crime by ensuring that individual is not out on the street. Again, this is anecdotal evidence.
We have studies. For example, I mentioned the study that showed that incarcerating a person for one year for a serious offence prevented the commission of 15 less serious offences that individual would have committed during that one year. We can argue about that, but I think generally speaking--and this is a point I want to make--it's not simply the elimination of conditional sentences, or mandatory minimum prison sentences. It's a combination of a number of issues that you have to bring together. It also involves alternatives to incarceration. Are there individuals we can deal with outside of the penal institutions? The Hollow Water situation may well be one of those examples. There are other examples.
I was involved as the provincial Minister of Justice, and I'm sorry to be always referring to that experience, but it is in a real way much more hands-on than being a federal Minister of Justice, in which case you're not actually involved in the day-to-day enforcement of the Criminal Code. In Manitoba the youth justice committees have been a tremendous success. I don't know how many are still running, but I know when I left that office we were running over 50 in Manitoba and they were tremendously successful, not just with youth, but also with adults, seniors, for example, who for the first time in their life were involved with the law. There was obviously something wrong in their lives. So we made provisions to allow those kinds of individuals to also benefit from the so-called youth justice committee. The theory was that we have a very young senior population in Manitoba. The point is that they were helpful in that respect.
So I think we have to look at it in terms of policing, law, and alternative programs, whether they're for youth or others.
The example I like to point out is New York, where the murder rate was brought down from a high of 2,200 a year to about 550 a year through effective enforcement and laws. That's still high, given the prevalence of guns in that society, but the point is that 1,700 more people were alive last year or the year before because of effective enforcement and tougher laws.