Justice committee  May I speak to that? Even when the penalties are well known, there is very little reason to believe there is deterrence. This is one point where I may disagree with my friend Alan Borovoy, and no doubt I'll pay for it afterwards, but I don't believe that whether there is an exem

Justice committee  To the degree to which there's evidence—it's not very strong evidence, but it is significant evidence—it would be reduced by.... Professor Paul Gendreau of St. Thomas University shows the degree to which there's a correlation. The correlation is that longer time spent in prison

Justice committee  There's just one point I'd like to make. Serious crime—violent crime—produces two reactions. One is fear and the other's anger. Mandatory minimums address anger very well, and to the degree to which people want the justice system to address the frustration and anger they feel, ar

Justice committee  Yes, you're quite right. That's what it was about.

Justice committee  I'd say two things. First I would say that the impact of the police in Toronto was done with the existing laws that didn't require new mandatory minimums, and clearly by having a greater presence and tackling the problem head on. They were probably having some impact, both in ter

Justice committee  I'm opposed to the notion of mandatory minimums. I'm not opposed to principles being articulated, and I'm not opposed to Parliament setting some guidelines, but our society is opposed to the notion of a rigid mandatory minimum sentencing regardless. Our view is that the existing

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Clearly the statistics can be very confusing. You note that in Virginia there was a decrease in crime after a particular law was brought in place in a particular set of years. We also had the same reduction of crime in Canada. It wasn't because of what happened in Virginia.

Justice committee  We have. We've had it since 1964. We've had 30% in murder and we've had 60% in violent crime overall in the last 15 years in Canada, according to the justice department that presented this data to you. The point is that we're in declining situations, and everyone takes credit. I

Justice committee  In relation to that, this is not a debate between pro-crime people and anti-crime people. What we're talking about here is finding the most effective way to reduce crime. I think that in terms of criminal justice there's far more we can do to prevent future crimes than we can do

Justice committee  I have a couple of comments about that. It seems clear from other jurisdictions where they've used mandatory minimums that minorities are largely overrepresented in the group that gets captured. The very nature of mandatory minimums is that it doesn't set the sentence, it just

Justice committee  I would, and Alexi may as well. Yes, as we've said, there are some studies that claim that there's a relationship. Most of the literature that says this is in fact done by economists, not by criminologists. The primary study, for instance, that one should be talking about is o

Justice committee  What I was saying was that your interpretation of the chart was wrong, not that the chart was wrong. I was trying to illustrate that other factors can explain variations of crime much better than sentencing. What I was saying, for instance, with this chart and the previous chart,

Justice committee  This is not my chart. This is Statistics Canada. If they produced false data, then I guess we should ask them. You keep saying this is a direct relationship between unemployment and crime. What the chart is showing is that differences in unemployment seem to correlate very stron

Justice committee  Thank you very much. The question asked why there does not seem to be conclusive evidence about the deterrent effect of sentencing. I was going to make the point that I've been appearing these committees for many years, and it seems that almost every time I've appeared, the qu