I know we're short on time, so I will be brief.
Like you, I would like to see some evidence that these measures were actually effective. It would be nice to know that in all the states that have passed these laws they were actually doing something positive. But the evidence just isn't there. Like you, I have spent most of this summer researching, and my team under me has been researching, trying to go through the information provided.
The first thing we did was go to the states that were mentioned by the Minister of Justice. As I said before, despite contact with his office.... We wrote to him and we said, “Can you tell us what studies you're talking about, because we can't find them. If you have studies that show the other way, sir, I would love to see them.”
I've spent months trying to find them and wrote to the Minister of Justice asking him to show me these studies. The ones we have been able to find clearly support what you are saying: that mandatory minimums do not, in and of themselves, actually reduce crime.
They seem as if they would be a nice answer. They seem easy in a way, but they're not actually doing anything to reduce crime.
When I hear the reasons of people who are saying, “This is why we want to introduce mandatory minimums: we want to have mandatory minimums to prevent crime, to protect victims, to stop gun violence”, they are great objectives, absolutely. I don't think anyone would stand here and say they are bad objectives.
I spend a lot of time in high schools teaching as part of my job, and I have three questions that I tell the kids to use whenever they're looking into any rule, whether it's a school rule or a national law. The first question is, why? Okay, we have our why. The second question is, does it work? And here, I'm afraid, no, the evidence I've seen is it doesn't work. And the third question is, what else does it do? And here, as my colleague has said, there are so many other things of what else it does. We'd have that officer locked up for five years, which I'm sure nobody would support.
In addition, it seems almost that it would be an excuse: “We've passed these mandatory minimums; we've done what we need to do.” No. The mandatory minimums are not going to reduce crimes. The evidence just simply isn't there that they're going to be reducing crimes.
In addition, my final point, if we look at the whys you have presented; if we look at why you want to pass these bills, I can find absolutely no reason why our suggestion of a presumptive mandatory minimum doesn't achieve your objective. If your objective is to do all of the things you've said, then I can't understand why a presumptive mandatory minimum suggestion wouldn't fly, because it would achieve what you've been saying, and then it would also alleviate some of the bad effects that have happened, such as the Latimer case, such as this case that we have found with this one officer. Yes, they may be few and far between, but they exist.