Thank you for the question, and thank you for making it clear that these offenders aren't desperately trying to stop their defence lawyers from getting them conditional sentences of imprisonment in their homes. It doesn't happen. I don't want to be disrespectful, but it's almost humorous--in comparison to prison.
Notwithstanding the fact that nobody is watching them, and if they're having a drink nobody sees whether they're drinking or not, and if they're violating, if they're coming and going, the cops aren't watching, the probation office isn't visiting.... Having said all that, do I have specific research--and we're not a research organization--about the impact, whether gun crime has gone up because of conditional sentencing per se? I don't have that. But what I and my organization and the 150 people who informed the Martin's Hope report believe generally is that the whole sentencing and parole regimen is a big part of why offenders end up back in communities, with little or no impact on rehabilitation, little or no impact on their being healthy and whole.
And until they realize.... Somebody actually read the study. I'll give you an example. In terms of recidivism rates in the way that we conduct ourselves in terms of offenders today, fully 43% of people who had served time in jail, in a penitentiary, had already reoffended and were back before the courts within two years—which means getting out and committing some crimes, getting arrested for those crimes and being brought before the courts, pleading guilty or being found guilty. That's over two years.
I'm not a professor, but I suspect that if you extrapolated that out over eight or ten years, you'd find the true recidivism rate is probably north of 80%.
That tells me, as a former practitioner on the front line of all this, that there's something wrong with the system and it needs to be fixed. What people on the front line, crime victims and survivors, have told us is that the sentencing and parole regimens in this country are big contributors to that. From my own experiences, I believe that.
That's a very general answer to your question, I suspect, Mr. Petit, but that's the best I can do for you today.