Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for inviting us here to give testimony regarding Bill C-10.
I believe you all have received the French and English versions of our presentation.
This afternoon, I would like to give you a brief summary of what has already been presented. I hope you don't mind.
I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Criminal Justice Association. Before assuming this position, I worked for the Correctional Service of Canada for 35 years. For most of those years, I held senior positions.
The Canadian Criminal Justice Association is one of the longest-serving, non-governmental organizations of professionals and individuals interested in criminal justice issues in Canada. The CCJA began its work in 1919, and it has testified before this committee on numerous occasions.
Our association consists of over 700 members. It publishes the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the Justice Report, the Justice Directory of Services, and the Directory of Services for Victims of Crime. We also organize the Canadian Congress on Criminal Justice every two years.
We are not an advocacy group for offenders. Our mission is to promote a humane, equitable, and effective criminal justice system. We support research-based and reasoned policies that lead to such an effective criminal justice system for Canada.
Mr. Chairman, our association welcomes the initiative of this government in putting forward a proposal designed to deal with the problem of gun crime. Our concern with needless deaths of Canadians as a result of gun crimes goes back decades. Indeed, our organization provided testimony to the subcommittee on firearms control, on then Bill C-17, in August 1991. In that brief, we hoped that our recommendations would lead to a reduction in criminal activity involving firearms, a reduction of unnecessary deaths, and better control of firearms.
In May 1995, we provided evidence to the justice and legal affairs committee concerning Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons. We supported the passage of that bill, with the exception of mandatory prison terms. I quote:
Our association has a long history of opposing mandatory sentences. Of course, the sanctions fail to take into consideration individual characteristics of the offence as well as that of the offender. They tend to shift discretion away from judicial officers toward the police and prosecutors. They increase populations in overcrowded penitentiaries. They are often the subject of plea negotiations. They undermine the totality rule in sentencing and they often increase both the costs and time of litigation in our courts.
Finally, the evidence isn't clear that mandatory prison sentences deter those planning to use a weapon in the commission of a crime.
It would appear that certain problems and deemed solutions are intractable.
Today I'm here to tell you that, with respect, our association has some grave reservations concerning Bill C-10. I will outline them briefly and look forward to your questions and comments.
First we need to ask ourselves what we are trying to accomplish with new legislation. Obviously, the government is attempting to implement new measures in order to ensure greater safety for Canadians. Every Canadian should agree with this intent. As a citizen, as a father, and as a husband, I want to be sure that my family and my neighbours are as safe as can be. How safe? Based upon what we read in the newspapers, probably safer. I want to be sure that they can go about freely wherever they need to be—be it in school, shopping, or at work--without fearing assault or injury.
So how does Bill C-10 intend to do this? By increasing the criminal sanctions for offences involving firearms. We already have mandatory minimum sentences for about 40 criminal offences, including a number for gun crimes, that were instituted in 1995. How well are they working? Are they not harsh enough and thus potentially leading to the commission of more crimes?
I can tell you that in 12 years of direct daily contact with inmates, I never met one who indicated that he would not have committed a crime had the potential sentence been longer. Few ever remarked that they used complex decision-making models, dependent upon the length of sanction, before committing a crime.
Evidence presented here today by us and others, and that we cited in our paper, demonstrates that there is no relationship between the length of a sentence, in particular a mandatory sentence, and deterrence of crime. If anything, it is a certainty of apprehension and rapid sanction that may deter a criminal act.
What then is left but greater harshness of punishment? If that is the case and the intent of the legislation, we need to turn to an enormous meta analysis that reviewed 111 studies, involving 442,000 offenders, which was carried out by Paul Gendreau and his correctional research colleagues in 2002, on behalf of the Solicitor General of Canada. This study seemed to indicate that, if anything, harsher punishment may have led to a 3% increase in recidivism. Again, as has been cited, many of the jurisdictions that evoke the harshest punishment, including the death penalty, have the highest rates of violent crime.
Bill C-10 will further blur the lines between police, prosecutors, and judiciary. By further moving judicial discretion and sentence determination, discretion will be enhanced for police in charging and for crown counsel in prosecuting offences. The impact will be more plea bargains for those who are less guilty but fearful of mandatory minimum sentences--as has been stated a moment ago by my colleague--and as well, curiously, lengthy trials for those who might normally admit their guilt were it not for a lengthier mandatory sentence.
We need to reiterate the impact this will have on the correctional side of criminal justice as well. Obviously, the number of inmates will increase. At the provincial and federal levels, it will lead to even greater burdens on overcrowded facilities, more double-bunking, and increased risk to staff and defenders.
Programs that have a positive impact in safely reintegrating offenders will become even harder to obtain in a timely fashion, because mandatory sentences have a negatively differential impact on the disadvantaged. We can expect a further increase in the number of offenders who would best be served by the mental health system rather than the correctional one. The proportion of aboriginal offenders will grow further, even though they're already overrepresented by a factor of six or seven in penitentiaries relative to the Canadian population at large. The number of incarcerated aboriginal women in particular will continue to expand beyond all reason.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, we need to consider the cost of more inmates serving longer sentences. Certainly one could say that no cost to ensure public safety is too great. However, if the measures adopted do not work or, worse, have the opposite effect, then the expenses incurred are wasted money and wasted resources that can better be used for Canadians' health care, educational opportunities, and other social needs, which will also in fact assist those communities that suffer daily from the effects of crime. It's by investing in these causes that we can indeed have a positive impact in reducing crime and assuring public safety.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although I made most of my presentation in English, I will be very pleased to answer any questions in French.