Let me recount one incident that I think demonstrates and encapsulates many incidents, especially in respect of conditional sentencing or house arrest.
A sergeant in southern British Columbia, in the White Rock area, was telling me about a situation where they had arrested for the third time a person who was on conditional sentence. He already had two conditional sentences. He was still on conditional sentence. When he was brought back the third time in front of the court, the court said it was apparent that he was simply not listening to the conditions that had been imposed; therefore, it was removing all the conditions and sent the person back out on the street.
So here is an incident, perhaps a radical, extreme incident, of what one judicial reaction was, but the issue of multiple conditional sentences is not extreme. It happens continuously, and police can tell you exactly that. In fact, that contributes to the frustration of many of the police officers who apprehend especially youth involved in auto theft or breaking and entering...to simply release those individuals without even processing them. What we are doing when we release youth in that fashion is in fact creating better criminals. They understand that there is no accountability and their crimes increase. Unfortunately, what happens is that when they hit 18 years of age, eventually there is some accountability, but rather than having to throw them in jail or penitentiary at age 18, if we actually work with them in terms of taking their crime seriously, I believe we can reduce that revolving door.
Conditional sentences aren't doing anybody a favour. In simply apprehending youth and releasing them because of the frustration with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, we aren't doing the young people any favour. Ultimately it catches up with them. Whether it's the justice system that catches up with them, whether it's a serious addiction that catches up with them, or whether it's in terms of the misery that is caused in their families and their community, it catches up. So we need to address that.
This is one of the first steps in terms of saying in regard to conditional sentences, if you are subject to a penalty punishable by 10 years or more, conditional sentences simply should not apply. That was the original intent of the bill when it was brought in, but it was badly drafted, or perhaps deliberately drafted in that way, realizing that it would then extend to violent and serious crime. So we have manslaughter and sexual assaults all punishable now by house arrest.
Quite frankly, the idea that simply because you abolish conditional sentences for those kinds of crimes means you're sending people to jail is not correct. You still have the alternative of the suspended sentence with probation orders, which are much more effective, not as cumbersome, not as complex, and a much better mechanism for police to use in order to hold those individuals accountable. So you don't have to send them to prison, but you have to have a mechanism that holds people accountable when they breach those orders. I would suggest that in these kinds of situations, conditional sentences simply are not appropriate.