Thank you.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here.
First, I want to tell you I strongly support this legislation and I hope I can give you some solid reasons why you should too. Of course, I don't think for a minute, and I know you don't, that this legislation is the be-all and end-all, and certainly through sentencing practices, we are not going to make some of the kinds of gains doing something about the drug problem as we might through public education and treatment programs, the kinds of things you all know are being done right now through the national drug strategy. There's no question that all kinds of other things that could be done are being done.
We also know, looking at those kinds of things that are being done--it's true now and it's been true for a long time--that we still have a problem. None of those things work as well as we want them to. Nowhere is that more obvious than when you come to British Columbia. Certainly, when you talk about production and distribution of drugs, we have a serious gang/organized crime problem in British Columbia. Why do we have that problem? That can be traced directly to drug production. There is no question about that.
We also know, with regard to this legislation, and we certainly heard it here today, that people have a number of concerns about it. There are concerns we're going to limit judicial discretion; there are concerns we're going to sweep up people in the course of this; and that mandatory minimums are not effective at all anyway. I ask you to consider those criticisms in the face of what we know now about what's going on with respect to sentencing and correctional practices.
To begin with, on the matter of sentencing at judicial discretion, I would say strongly that you want to be attentive to what judges are doing now and what they have been doing for the last decade. They are, in a word, doing an absolutely terrible job at sentencing. We should be doing something to limit their discretion. Let me tell you why I think that.
One of the things judges are supposed to take into account is prior record. If they don't take into account prior record, at the very least, they argue, they take into account prior record on like offences. That is an absolute lie. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have studied that specifically. I know other research out there claims to have studied that, and I would argue they haven't studied that properly. When you look at that and drill down to exactly what's happened to people today and over the last two decades with regard to that, you will find--and I have some charts here, if somebody wants to look at those later--that if somebody is sentenced, for example, on their seventh offence and they're not getting any more time than they did on their first offence.... For example, somebody shows up in court for their seventh assault; those individuals get the same amount of time as they did on their first, and they walk into that seventh sentencing with over 30 prior convictions. It's the same kind of nonsense that I find whether I'm looking at break-and-enters, at assaults, at robbery, or at drug offences. It never changes. The claim that judges take into account prior record is not true, and I would challenge anybody to find otherwise.
The second issue is on what I also know from my own research about what happens in sentencing, and I have studied this under a microscope. I've studied entire communities of individuals who have been apprehended for one reason or another, before the courts for one reason or another, and one of the things I know for sure, and I'm not the only person who's made this observation, is that most people, especially people who are highly recidivist, can't even get through the sentence they're awarded without being convicted of another offence. We have a problem here with what we're doing. We're not even able to provide effective sentences in the first instance.
The third thing I call your attention to, which you may be aware of--and these are statistics hot off the press from StatsCan with regard to what's happened with sentencing over the last decade. That report came out in October and showed, if you can believe it, that 27% of people who are given a prison sentence in this country are given a sentence of eight days or less.
We also have a situation where we have people who are given a sentence of less than a year. That amounts to most sentences. We're not talking serious sentences here. As a matter of fact, that report calls our attention to the fact that those percentages, in terms of under eight days, has literally doubled in the last decade. Those claims that the judges aren't becoming more lenient certainly flies in the face of that Statistics Canada data.
The more important thing I would ask you to consider is, why would we be doing this anyway? What are we trying to do? The concern is that we're trying to get tough. Certainly, I wouldn't argue that there's a need to get tough, but there's a need to get effective. Sentencing is supposed to address rehabilitation, public safety, general deterrence, specific deterrence--of course, it isn't only deterrence--and denunciation of the offence. It's those five things. I ask anybody in this room, is there a single soul here who believes for a minute that you could address any one of those goals, let alone any collection of them, with an eight-day sentence? What are we doing?
I call this absolutely stupid sentencing. It's particularly tragic because we also know that we have an opportunity within our federal system. I know people have criticized the prison system. Well, the statistics and track record of federal corrections and national parole simply don't hold up in terms of the reported failure of those systems. It's simply not true. Most people who set foot in a federal institution in Canada never set foot there again. Of course, we should expect that to be the case, because what they have there and are not getting elsewhere are treatment programs and rehabilitation programs.
We also want to remember that it isn't only about treatment. People who find themselves in these situations come there with a multiplicity of problems. They need a multifaceted approach and they need stuff on post-release. What those prison sentences of two years or more do, which we can't get any other way, is an insurance policy that allows us to aspire to reach the goals of that sentencing, and if they don't work, then we have an opportunity to hold that person for the entire length of time.
People talk about mandatory prison sentences as though somebody flattens it. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you get a sentence in Canada of two years or more, as you all know, you can be released in as early as one-sixth of the time. Anybody who ends up doing more than one-sixth has gone through a battery of assessments that tells correctional officials and parole officials that there's some concern about public safety, rehabilitation, or whatever.
I would argue, why wouldn't we seize on that opportunity to have that multiplicity of assessments and give credit to those who deserve to be released early? As well, as I read this legislation, every person would have that opportunity. Why would we say we're not interested in that, but put it in the hands of a single individual, a judge, who, I'm reminded, may well be someone who has never taken a single course in psychology, let alone have the ability to make assessments about somebody's capacity or suitability for rehabilitation, public safety, or whatever?
I think we have to put this whole thing in perspective. What are we doing now? I would argue that if we don't do this kind of thing, doing what we're doing now is a colossal big zero. We have evidence that we can be effective and this points us in the right direction.
The other thing about which I would remind people is that we have, particularly in British Columbia, an outrageous disrespect for the criminal justice system. By various polls we have shown that 90%-plus of British Columbians believe that our courts are doing a lousy job, that politicians aren't doing enough, and that other people in the criminal justice system aren't doing enough. Of course they think that. They're mad, especially victims are mad, because we're not doing enough. We're not doing things that are effective. Again, the issue is not getting tough.
Finally, I caution you to be guarded when looking at that research that comes out of the United States. I would argue that it is seriously methodologically flawed. We have a wildly different situation here in Canada.
We are not talking about locking people up for forever and a day, 25 years, life, that kind of thing. Of course that's stupid. But when you're talking about sentences as proposed here, relatively short sentences, the only thing I would do differently is increase the length of minimum sentences by some distance, because even if you awarded somebody a six-year sentence, conceivably that person can be released after one year. Then we have the assurance, as a society, of the effectiveness of rehabilitation, public safety, deterrence, whatever.
Again, I feel good about it because I know the track record of the system that would be responsible for implementing it.
Thank you.