Public Safety committee  I can't comment on that. I don't have any comment to make.

Public Safety committee  What I know is that the public safety ministry is not in conformance with the UN standards on crime victims or on crime prevention. And my whole case here is yes.... I have, by the way, visited most of these penitentiaries--not recently--and clearly I think it is a good idea to

Public Safety committee  We have nothing in Canada on the cost of recidivism, but the Washington State Public Policy Institute, which is like our Library of Parliament working for their legislators, has prepared major reports looking at the return on investment of a series of programs designed to reduce

Public Safety committee  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

Public Safety committee  Some of the legislation that this government has introduced has basically been focused on the extreme cases, the sensational, exceptional, and dangerous cases. Expanding the use of dangerous offender legislation, for instance, would incarcerate more potentially dangerous people.

Public Safety committee  Yes, absolutely. I'm well aware that the administration of criminal justice, policing, courts, and corrections up to two years less a day is in the provincial mandate. I'm also very clear that education, health care, social services, municipalities are in the provincial mandate,

Public Safety committee  Yes. The large increase in the remands is partially affected by the Criminal Code. When you abolish two-for-one, you're going to start seeing more of these cases coming into the federal system. I think, as a country, we have to look at incarceration. I'm a taxpayer, and I pay th

Public Safety committee  I think one of the very sad realities of discussion of penitentiaries in Canada today is the lack of independent evaluations of the recidivism rate. All the evaluations done by Correctional Service of Canada are done internally and they tend to put a very positive view on the lik

Public Safety committee  I am not aware of a similar measure elsewhere.

Public Safety committee  It is very important to understand that the increased use of remand in Canada has far surpassed international standards. For instance, I have done some work for think tanks in England, and the proportion of inmates in remand is much lower there. With the exception of Saskatchewan

Public Safety committee  It's very clear that it is a very cost-inefficient way of dealing with crime. When you have 2.3 million or 2.4 million people incarcerated, as you do in the United States, you do, of course, have some impact on property crime. The issue is really one of how could you use this mon

Public Safety committee  I will be very quick. You have recommendations in front of you. The goal of all criminal justice policy, federally and provincially in Canada, should be stopping harm to crime victims. We need federal leadership to develop an action plan to reduce that harm. We need to get to

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I've made available to the committee some materials in both English and French, first of all a book called Less Law, More Order: The Truth About Reducing Crime. This book is totally consistent with what Senat