Let's deal very briefly with the issue with respect to aboriginal people, because there are some significant errors that the member has made in his statement, first, with respect to the aboriginal people. I'd like to emphasize that neither the research nor the problem analysis revealed that the nature of the current gun crime problem is in any way aboriginal-specific.
In the development of these proposals, significant consideration was given to the importance of ensuring specific types of mandatory minimum penalties for specific types of activities, and I've gone into that quite at length. This is not targeted indiscriminately and certainly would not target aboriginals in a disproportionate way.
My office, Mr. Chair, has provided the clerk with a number of copies of studies with respect to the issue of mandatory minimum prison sentences, and unfortunately, those cannot be translated because of copyright issues. However, they all draw a direct positive relationship between the introduction of targeted mandatory minimum penalties and a reduction in crime rates.
Now, for example, in “Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish between Deterrence and Incapacitation”, by Levitt and Kessler, in The Journal of Law and Economics, volume 62—I believe the Roman numeral is.... At page 343, when discussing the California three strikes law, they state:
Crimes that were affected by the sentence enhancements in Proposition 8 fall by 4 percent relative to crimes that were not covered in the first year after the law change. The impact of the change increases to a decline of over 20% in eligible crimes 7 years after it is passed.
In a further study of these matters, Professor Levitt and Thomas Miles --