Yes, Mr. Murphy, you're absolutely correct. The very long periods in the American law are counter-productive, because the lesson gets learned pretty quickly, and the many years after the lesson is learned are wasted years. One of the first points I made in my testimony earlier today was to commend you for making the proposed periods of time in your mandatory minimums much shorter than those in the American system.
The inherent failure is to think that handcuffing judges is the way to go. Is there a study that shows that judges in Canada have been egregiously lenient? Do you have studies that look at judges across the country in the application of their drug sentences? We have broken that data down on a district-by-district basis. The sentencing commission could tell you exactly how long a sentence is that a judge has imposed, and they have this data now going back for more than 20 years.
One of the questions you need to ask is whether the case has been made that the sentences are wrong, rather than rely on polling data in which the public says, “I think the sentences are too long, because I recall hearing about some case that seemed like an outrage to me.” You have thousands and thousands of cases being brought by judges all over your country, and certainly news media can always find at least one a week to object to.
The message that mandatory minimums sends to judges is that we really don't trust you, we don't respect you, we don't think you can look at all of the facts of the case and do what you're supposed to do, which is to do justice.
Similarly, a mandatory minimum says to the prosecutor, we don't think you can convince the judge which cases deserve long sentences and which do not.
I think those messages are very insulting and ultimately undermine the respect that your judges and your courts deserve.