Public Safety Committee on March 3rd, 2011

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

It went down by 6% and crime went up by 25%.

[Asa Hutchinson]

Well, I'll just go back to my point earlier. I think that the “tough on crime”, the increase in incarceration rate that began in the eighties, has had an impact on bringing crime down, as well as, perhaps, other factors.

But no, I'm here to talk about the American experience. I am not an expert, as these gentlemen are, on the Canadian experience and the members of the panel.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

You know the federal system in the U.S. Would you have federal penitentiaries built in 1835, 1876, and 1880 still in existence?

[Asa Hutchinson]

You know, I was impressed by that fact that was presented. I don't know that age is a factor as much as that they meet the minimum standards that are required today. You can have an old facility that meets minimum standards and has been modernized.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I'm just an old policeman, and I know some days common sense isn't so common, but would common sense tell you that those facilities are going to need to be replaced or updated and they're fairly expensive to do?

[Asa Hutchinson]

Old construction is always expensive construction.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Lee, I was certainly impressed by the fact that what you've used are pure statistics from documents, no opinions on them, nor trying to switch them around. It's interesting, and maybe if you'd just give us some of those numbers.... You talk about the change from 1962 to 2010, the violent crime rates and a percentage of reported crime as opposed to unreported crime. Because that seems to be an issue in the press: everybody thinks there's something funny about unreported crime, but there are good reasons for unreported crime. I'm just wondering if you could give us those numbers, in pure numbers, so that we understand.

[Prof. Ian Lee]

Right. The reason I focused on that was I use normalized data all the time. We talk about the number of new business start-ups per 100,000, the birth rate per 100,000, the death rate per 100,000, so it not only allows you to compare over time in your own country but also, very importantly, allows you to make comparisons across countries for comparative research, comparative purposes. So it's a very useful normalization technique that Statistics Canada is using, and it's perfectly legitimate.

But why I was struck by it was I'm reading almost every day in the paper that the violent crime rate has gone down, and the reason criminologists are saying that is because they're using the last ten years. Well, of course if you go back only ten years, it has gone down. In other words, I can take companies' earnings for one month and show that they made a lot of money and say this company is fantastically profitable, even though they lost money for the last five years. In other words, it's taking too short a time horizon.

I want to answer your question. Why it's so important to go back to the 1960s is human capital: people change very slowly. Our life expectancy is now 85 for a female in this country and 81 for a man. So to go back 40 or 50 years is about one-half of the average life expectancy.

The second point is that there were enormous changes that took place in Canada and the United States between the 1960s and now, what the criminologists and sociologists call the decline in social cohesion. That means we're far less homogenous. We are far more diverse. Religion has declined in importance. Authority has declined. There's been an entire forest cut down about the decline in authority, the decline of the teacher's authority, the policeman's authority, and so forth.

What these numbers capture is a snapshot on the transformations over the past 40 or 50 years of a much more liberalized society where the crime rate has gone through the roof. If you only go back ten years, you won't capture those transformations in attitudes, values, and behaviour. It is deeply misleading, in my view, to only go back ten years, because we don't live for ten years. We are not fruit flies with very short lifespans; we have long lifespans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lee.

We'll now go over to Madam Mendes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your presentations.

Mr. Piché, I want to pick up on some of the statistics mentioned, especially with regard to the increase in crime as it relates to our society's diversity. I get the sense that we are making some unreasonable generalizations here. Society has come a long way, but it has followed the normal progression of a society that is moving forward. From a technological standpoint, we have come extremely far since the early sixties. I would like to hear your thoughts on the link Mr. Lee seems to be drawing between the supposed increase in the crime rate and the diversity of our society. Do you have any information on that specifically?

[Justin Piché]

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.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Would you say that is because between 1996 and 2002 there were more investments in rehabilitation or prevention, as Professor Waller just mentioned? Prevention is perhaps even more important than rehabilitation. Would that be the reason that between 1996 and 2002 you see a decline?

[Justin Piché]

What I'm doing in providing you these figures is showing that the relationship between crime rates and imprisonments is a difficult act. You need to consider a bunch of other factors. Frankly, I don't know the answer to your question, and I don't know which factors in or outside the system would play into this. But it's more complicated than saying that prisons go up, crime goes down. That is sometimes the case and sometimes not. We need more careful analysis, more nuanced claims.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Would you have comment on that, Professor Waller?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Lee was asking....

Go ahead.

[Prof. Ian Lee]

I want to respond. I have three quick points.

First off, it wasn't my theory. I was quoting Steven Levitt at the University of Chicago as well as Kessler at Stanford. This answers an earlier question: What is the research on deterrents? That was one of the two leading articles, Kessler and Levitt. In a separate article, “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 90's”, Levitt did not attribute it 100% to prison. He attributed one-third. In a 2004 article published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives he said: “Incarceration over the 90's in the United States can account for a reduction in crime of approximately 12% for homicide and violent crime, 8% for property crime, or about one third of the decline in crime”.

I was quoting that. It wasn't my theory.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Lee, I want to give Mr. Waller a chance.

[Prof. Ian Lee]

Point two: I'm not using overall crime rates. I'm only using violent crime rates.

Point three: Mr. Piché talked about the prison population; that's not normalized data. Over time, the population grows. If you're going to quote crimes per 100,00, violent crimes, you have to normalize the prison population, because the population of Canada is changing over time due to birth, death, and immigration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Waller, we're already over the time, but I will give you the time because she directed it to you.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

If any of you have comments that you don't have time to make, submit them through the chair.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

I would appeal to this committee to look at consensus documents like those produced by the World Health Organization or produced by the U.S. National Research Council and to be very wary of individual authors. I'm an economist, and I don't trust articles written by one economist alone.

You have to understand that in the United States the higher your violent crime rate, the higher your use of incarceration and the more likely you are to have the death penalty. It's not the other way around. If you want to abuse statistics, then that's the way to do it. While their crime rates were coming down, while they were using lots of incarceration, our crime rates were coming down without using lots of incarceration. What we have to do is understand that throwing $30 million or $60 million at prevention is not going to give you the results you want, and $400 million in construction is certainly not going to give you reductions in homicides or car thefts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Waller.

Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.

As is my habit, I usually make sure I address my comments to the folks at home, because they're the people whose pockets we are--I wouldn't like to use criminal terms--digging into to fund this very meeting. And they need to know that statistics are statistics and people may--I'm not saying they do or anyone here does it--manipulate them to fit a certain particular way that we think or our view of society.

Some of the statistics I'm going to quote actually came from Corrections Canada. First of all, we hear about double occupancy and people get the impression that there are two people sharing a bed. That is entirely incorrect. It is two people in one cell, very much similar to two-in-one living accommodations, very similar to our Canadian military who share the same room and often have to share a bathroom and there is a facility within there.

By the way, Corrections Canada does meet the UN standards when there is double occupancy, and that we have from the evidence given by the head of Corrections Canada.

Another statistic we heard was that the budget increase for the creation of additional occupancy in our correctional facilities is $2.7 billion. What was left out from that statistic is it's $2.7 billion over five years. So I think it's necessary to include that.

Also, the head of Corrections Canada appeared before this committee, and we were talking about how some people were saying that as a result of the Government of Canada's changes to some of our Criminal Code we're going to create more criminals. In actual fact, if you look at the changes to the regulation, we're not creating more criminals. We're talking about those who commit, generally speaking, violent criminal acts or who commit serious crimes, white collar crimes, and we're saying that those who did commit these serious crimes are going to spend a little more time in prison. So it's not going out there and capturing new people who are creating crimes; it's actually locking up people longer who do commit crimes.

Then I'll have a question for former Congressman Hutchinson. One of the things this government did, because there was serious lack of investment in our federal penal institutions, was the former public safety minister had a report commissioned, “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”, and within that it talked about the current need for our correctional facilities to be improved and modernized. And no, sir, Mr. Hutchinson, you can't take a 150-year-old institution that looks like a dungeon and make it a place that is good for rehabilitation.

We always hear about those evil mandatory minimums, and you used the word “conservative”, and they love it over there, but I would suggest to you that many Democrats in the United States look at the Canadian Conservative Party and think we're a bunch of flaming socialists in their eyes. I have a friend who was a Democrat in the U.S. who called me that.

Canada is a pleasant blend, and I think a pleasant blend of American, because we're exposed to the U.S. culture and western European. That's our identity. We're a pleasant blend of both. I think if Mr. Waller studied it, he might agree we're a blend of both, this system of governance is that.

One of our mandatory minimums is one year, sir, for organized crime who are selling drugs, and one is a two-year mandatory sentence for those who would sell drugs to our children in and around schools. So my question would be, in the United States does that compare favourably? What is your opinion on that, sir?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

In twenty seconds.

[Asa Hutchinson]

Our mandatory minimums are five years for an offence in which someone's carrying a firearm. It's five years for some levels of cocaine distribution.

So again I leave that to your good discretion in terms of what mandatory minimums should be. From the American experience, though, I would urge you to make sure they're imposed fairly, that either a judge has some discretion or there's a sentencing commission to oversee that, because even under the circumstances you're going to find somebody caught up in that who's going to get hit with a mandatory minimum when otherwise some discretion might have been applied. From our experience, mandatory minimums are society's expression that this is a really terrible offence. But you have to make sure they're applied fairly.