I've read the book chapter produced by Professor Lee. I was surprised by the arguments he marshalled, particularly the one that increasing the length of prison sentences has a significant deterrent effect and reduces crime. If we were to follow Professor Lee's theory and apply it to the Canadian context, an increase in the use of imprisonment in Canada over the last 50 years should have reduced crime. So I did a little exercise last night to see if his theory panned out.
We have the crime rates in Canada based on Statistics Canada data, and he is right to say that crime did increase from 1962 to 1991. But what's the correlation or connection that we could make with the prison rates? Well, in 1962 the number of federal prisoners we had was 7,000; the crime rate was 3,000 per 100,000. In 1972 the prison rate goes up to 7,800, with a crime rate of 5,000 per 100,000. In 1982 the federal prison population was 9,700, with a crime rate of 9,000 per 100,000. In 1991 the prison rate goes up to 13,800, and the crime rate is 10,000 per 100,000.
If you want to talk about longitudinal data and make comments about the crime rate, you have to consider that the federal prison population in this country went up—the crime rate went up. Then the crime rate started going down in 1991—I'm talking about the overall crime rates. We see a rise in 1996: federal prison population, 14,500; crime rate, down a bit. In 2002 the prison population dropped to 13,000 and the crime rate continued to decline. So it's not as simple as Professor Lee is making it look in his book chapter.