Your organization is the only one here that's representing front line police officers. I think there's a bit of a myth out there; we saw some statistics, and one thing they showed us was that since 1996, there's been a steady increase in the use of conditional sentences. You mentioned in your testimony that when this was introduced--and we as legislators know this, because all of us have looked back at the debates of the time--it was for non-serious, non-violent offences. It was seen as a reasonable thing, as just opening the door a crack. Now the door has been opened full swing, and we see conditional sentences being used for very serious crimes.
One of the myths out there, I think, is that somehow there's this strict monitoring when somebody's serving a conditional sentence or house arrest. People intuitively know that this is a joke, but I've heard that perpetuated here. You represent front line police officers. Presumably these would be some of the people doing the monitoring.
When someone is serving a conditional sentence, how much or how closely are they monitored? When someone says it's cheaper to monitor someone dangerous, or a repeat offender, than it is to have them in jail, it would be cheaper still not to monitor them at all. Let them out; you'd spend zero on monitoring.
When I hear the figure used for what it costs to monitor someone...and you've already recognized that this couldn't buy much monitoring.