The hon. member says it works. The evidence is that it does not work. I would not want to confuse him with facts.
I am talking about alternative punishment that we know we talk about. We have heard a lot of talk about alternative punishment, but when it comes right down to it we have not done a great deal about it. We have not looked at alternative ways of dealing with people aside from putting them on probation. The public regards probation as a cop-out, something that has happened where instead of putting the person in jail we put them on probation.
Jail is the measurement of punishment in this country. The longer the sentence, the more serious the crime. If someone commits a serious crime and gets a short sentence the public tends to regard it as a miscarriage of justice. Why? Because there is no other punishment. If a person goes to jail, normally when they get out of jail they are scot free. Everything is over. There may be a period of probation and there may be something else added but usually if there is a jail term nothing else is added. The jail term is what the public looks at as the measure of punishment. I suggest
that we have to change that. I invite hon. members opposite to think of changing it and look at alternative measures.
Why, for example, when someone commits the crime of theft, do we not look at making them pay back the person they stole the property from at something like double the value of the property they stole?