Mr. Speaker, I believe, on all sides of the House, it is fair to say that we abhor these terrible crimes and we should all seek to have fewer victims.
I would like to have an adult conversation about mandatory minimum penalties.
We believe in evidence-based decision-making. In 1990, the justice department said, in a report:
The evidence shows that long periods served in prison increase the chance that the offender will offend again.
In 1999, research commissioned by the Solicitor General concluded that:
To argue for expanding the use of imprisonment in order to deter criminal behaviour is without empirical support.
In 2004, a Massachusetts report called mandatory minimums “a recipe for recidivism rather than a recipe for effective risk reduction.”
Would the parliamentary secretary point us to one study that shows that mandatory minimum sentences would create fewer victims?