The incapacitation point has come up a few times, and I've made the submissions about deterrence. Obviously protection of society through incapacitation is another of the goals of the sentencing process, but we always have to keep in mind that it's only selective incapacitation for a particular period of time, right? Unless we're prepared to go to the ultimate position, which would be to keep people in jail indefinitely for every offence because we think there's some risk that they might potentially reoffend, then we simply cannot rely on incapacitation beyond that very narrow promise it offers for that period of time. The concerns we have are around the allocation of resources and the great cost of allocating these resources without allocating, at least somewhere, a proportionate amount of resources to community reintegration for people leaving prison.
The Auditor General's report--I believe it was in 2003 or 2004--mentioned specifically the proportion of resources spent on imprisonment versus community release. It's not surprising that we see prison not working in the way we suggest it should work when there aren't the resources for supervision and support in the community when people leave a three-year sentence, a four-year sentence, or whatever.
I agree with you that there is a role for selective incapacitation in particular cases, but ultimately it doesn't deliver on the promise that the public is being given for it, and we need to always keep that in mind. Again, just to reiterate the point, when the public has more information about sentencing.... There have been numerous studies in Britain and in Canada to the effect that if you give them the one-liner that someone committed a particular offence involving a firearm and they got a one-year sentence or whatever, there's usually going to be a primary response that it's too lenient. When they have more information, even just a paragraph of facts, about that particular person and the nature of the offence, the public generally supports the range of proportionate sentences, from very low sentences in some cases, in which there are many mitigating factors and not many aggravating factors, up to more serious offences.