Human Resources committee  My second level of concern is that it's a civil penalty on top of a criminal conviction. You're losing something. The state is taking away a benefit that you previously had. Where other people who might be equally at fault may be in the first category--maybe it was a self-induced

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here this afternoon. The John Howard Society of Canada is celebrating its 50th year as a community-based charity in Canada with a mission to support effective, just, and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. Th

Justice committee  We generally refer to that as incapacitation: you're actually removing someone from society who is dangerous, and therefore they're posing less of a risk. I don't think it has much, actually, to do with deterrence. Deterrence would kick in if the person, because of experiencing

Justice committee  I don't want to argue the semantics, but the evidence is that if you take two similarly situated offenders and put one in custody and give the other a community-based sentence—to hold both of them fairly accountable for their offences—the one who is given the community-based sent

Justice committee  That's a very interesting point. What we had been advised—I defer of course to Commissioner Head—is that the federal population base since about March 2010 has gone up by 800 to 1,000 inmates. That's two full penitentiaries worth of inmates being compressed into the existing in

Justice committee  I'm glad you raised that question. Some of my colleagues who are here will be addressing this more specifically later, but it is our view that to preclude a person who has paid their debt to society—they've completed their sentence, they've participated in a crime-free period—to

Justice committee  I believe that you are probably hearing from the same people I'm hearing from, who believe that there should be more access to programs within the custodial facilities. We strongly support additional resources being given to CSC to continue and to expand the programs and to make

Justice committee  Do you mean, to say the same thing with respect to pardons, that there are problems of access to pardons? Yes, I think—

Justice committee  I think there are problems with access to pardons now. As Mr. Jackson pointed out, many of the people who would be entitled to a pardon, based on their statutory entitlement, are waiting for two or three years for these pardons to be processed. I also think the change in pardon

Justice committee  I think there's something to be said for that. You're quite right, we first saw a benchmark by the Supreme Court of the United States in May indicating in the case of Brown v. Plata that 137.5% of overcapacity violated cruel and unusual standards there. In our provincial system

Justice committee  It would be my sense that if the legislation violated rights through the administration of this legislation in the provinces and the charter problems were arising in the provinces, the Minister of Justice would need to take that into account when looking at his certification. Yes

Justice committee  I think there are concerns about vagueness in some of the definitions. For example, the definition of violence in young people is not clear enough. There's no definition of bestiality, which can attract mandatory minimum penalties. There are section 7 problems associated with the

Justice committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. The position of the John Howard Society of Canada is that Bill C-10 will not make streets or communities safer, despite the huge outlay of taxpayers' money. It will instead make communities less safe while eroding rights and pr

Public Safety committee  It's a noble aspiration, but I think you're going to have to deal with the downside risk that it won't take place. There is considerable increased unrest and violence among inmates who are addicted and looking for drugs. Moreover, there's the damage done to facilitating family re

Public Safety committee  I actually have always been of the view that a very small percentage of offenders in the facilities are using drugs, and it's a good sign if the number has moved from 12% to 7%. That's a very positive thing. My concern about things getting worse comes from the implication of the