To start, let me thank you, as always, for inviting the Criminal Lawyers' Association to speak to you about this bill.
Defence lawyers rarely face the kinds of cases that this bill relates to, and one rarely relishes representing people charged with these kinds of crimes. It's one of the hardest things one can do as a professional. Defence lawyers are human beings, of course, and we find these cases difficult to deal with, professionally and personally, just like anybody would. We certainly learn from the inside out of the cruelty and gruesomeness that occurs in a lot of the crimes of the sort that this bill relates to. I think nobody would want to understate the heinousness of the sorts of offences that this bill generally relates to.
However, I hope there is still room at the table for a voice of reasoned moderation, even when looking at a bill that deals with such serious offences for such serious offenders. I think the starting point is to perhaps look a little at where we've come from legally in the current regime we have in sentencing for murder.
When capital punishment was abolished in the 1970s, part of the compromise struck by Parliament was to impose an extraordinarily harsh and exemplary sentence for the worst of the worst offenders: individuals convicted of first-degree murder. That exemplary sentence was life without parole for 25 years.
Even though that sentence was intended to be harsh and exemplary, it was widely viewed as being so crushing as to put the hope of release too far out of sight. As a result, Parliament introduced the faint hope regime, the view being that a sentence that precluded any possibility of release for even more than 15 years would undermine our belief in the possibility of reform and rehabilitation. There were also concerns expressed about endangering corrections staff and other inmates by putting offenders in a situation where they had no chance of release, potentially for the rest of their natural lives.
We know that faint hope has been gone since about 2011, so we've gone from a situation where we viewed 15 years as much of a sentence as anybody could reasonably be expected to take, to 25 years. Here we are with a bill that would take us a step even further, adding from that 10-year increase another potential 15-year increase to the period of parole ineligibility. That, I should say, is a sentence that except for all but the youngest offenders will be a sentence of life without parole.
I think no one disputes that this bill is trying to target some of the worst of the worst offenders. It may be that few of these individuals will ever warrant release during their lives, but that's a difficult thing to know. I think we can be confident in that because we can look at something like the dangerous offenders context, for example. In the context of dangerous offender applications, we have individuals who have been convicted of a series of extremely serious offences. They are viewed as posing a pressing risk to the public. Yet, we have hearings, and we often learn that these individuals, despite their antecedents, may have a possibility of being treated in the community ultimately. It's for that reason we have hearings to determine whether or not they should receive an indeterminate sentence or a long-term offender designation.
Even then, for those who have already been determined to be extremely dangerous, who have committed repeated offences, the parole board maintains jurisdiction to decide that if things change, the person can perhaps be released.
It bears consideration that we should maintain our belief in the possibility of rehabilitation, the possibility that the corrections system can correct individual behaviour and treat potentially even very dangerous individuals, with the hope that one day, after 25 years or more, as the parole board sees fit, they can again be released into the community.
I'd suggest that we should at least be prepared to entertain the possibility that after 25 years we really can't know how a person is going to fare. We know that life without parole for 25 years is a very long time. The people in that situation will receive extensive treatment over the course of a good part of their lives. We ought not to preclude the chance that people in that situation, no matter how serious the crime they have committed, may have a possibility of reform.
It's my submission that life without parole for 25 years is already a lengthy and very harsh punishment and that it is unnecessary to go further.