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Wallace G Craig
Guest speaker at the August 25, 2007 “WE HAVE TO START TREATING CRIMINALS LIKE CRIMINALS” Edged with bitterness and frustration, those words, under the headline “It’s time to take a stand,” are the gist of comments by a decent citizen in the aftermath of being beaten severely by young rowdies he had asked to stop revving up their engines outside his home in Vancouver. My friends, we must take a stand. Here’s a take-a-stand grab bag for politicians:
We have too many youth and adult thieves and thugs who sneer at our tattered scarecrow of criminal justice as they go about their burgling, stealing, drug dealing and violence for violence sake; and, when arrested, mouthing off at police about the certainty of release on bail or that they will finagle a sweetheart plea bargain. The same thing can happen in court, particularly bail court which is often as entertaining as that old TV show about an American night court. Etched in my memory is a two-bit addicted drug dealer that I ordered held in custody awaiting trial. “Hey wait a minute” he shouted, “I’ve got rights you know, I have a right to bail so that I can go to detox and get off drugs before my case comes to trial.” “Is that so,” I replied turning away to get his criminal record. The clerk handed me a folded document, a seamless computer printout and as I unfolded it and held it up with my arms fully extended I was appalled to find that it spanned six feet. “Take a look at this! It’s your record. This is what you have done for your country, now get out of the dock and get back in the jail.” Off he went loudly protesting that he was being wronged. During my 26 years in provincial criminal court at 222 Main Street, a virtual endless conveyor belt of crime brought me into contact with upwards of 10,000 criminals, an allsorts variety, nine-tenths men. Some of them demented, disabled, and dispirited warranting sensitive consideration while the majority, seasoned property criminals, dangerous violent offenders and heartless drug dealers remained totally undeterred by a justice system in disarray and denial. The breakdown of the criminal justice system began in the 1970s when the federal government chose to coddle convicts at the expense of public safety. On Oct. 7, 1971, then solicitor General Jean Pierre Goyer announced in the House of Commons the government’s intention to stress rehabilitation of criminals even though it posed a risk to the public. Goyer said that “For too long a time now, our punishment oriented society has cultivated the state of mind that demands that offenders whatever their age and whatever the offence, be placed behind bars. “Even nowadays, too many Canadians object to looking at offenders as members of our society and seem to disregard the fact that the correctional process aims at making the offender a useful and law abiding citizen, and not any more an individual alienated from society and in conflict with it. “Consequently, we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than protection of society.” In making rehabilitation of criminals the prime purpose of our justice system government has abrogated the one area of its constitutional responsibility which is absolutely inalienable: that is to enforce the criminal law and maintain order. The simple language of our constitution which burdens the federal government with ensuring peace and order in our communities affords every citizen the right to be protected against violence. I say: Rehabilitation, maybe, but never in the community among unsuspecting innocent citizens. Through all the years since then, I have witnessed and agonized over the increasing inability of the criminal justice system to protect society. I have seen a mounting affront to victims of crime perpetrated by the judicial and penitentiary systems as they obstinately engage in so-called restorative justice and nonsensical attempts at rehabilitation. In heedless fashion they send predictably dangerous convicts among us on conditional sentences, probation and parole. Public safety, once a reality, is fast becoming a legal abstraction. Let me give you a stark example: In 1970 a young immigrant opened an auto service station and has continued in business to this day at the same location. I know him to be a dedicated family man, proud of his citizenship in a free country. Not too long ago he took me outside his shop and told me to look carefully at the fence surrounding it. He pointed out the remnants of a four-foot decorative green fence; then he pointed to a sturdy seven-foot chain link fence with barbed wire on top; and finally he pointed to the gleaming malevolence of coiled razor wire on top of the barbed wire. The same razor wire surrounds our jails and the camps of our Canadian troops in Afghanistan. A decent man finds himself behind barbed wire. As he has been betrayed so have all of us. Our True North is slowly becoming “fortress Canada” and we are expected to accept the unthinkable as normal: barred windows multiple locking devices, security systems and security guards, all formerly the accoutrements of jails. It is a terrible metaphor: decent citizens behind bars while rogues they fear prowl about on bail, probation, parole, or while serving sentences in the community. Here is the mindset that brought us to this irrational state. In 1975 Dr. Guy Richmond published a memoir: Prison Doctor. It included his 17-year stint at British Columbia’s notoriously tough Oakalla Prison. “If I were asked to summarize what I learned I would submit that traditional methods of punishing the criminal, and attempts to deter him, have proved a failure; some other ways must be found. It is not as if we are dealing solely with the criminal. He reflects the state and guilt of society as a whole, so the criminal and his crimes are only one facet of a task of stupendous magnitude.” “The great majority of offenders can be retained in the community to continue to pay their dues under varying degrees of supervision. A few will need a therapeutic setting; others will need to be detained in some kind of residence, be it among the forest or in the cities. Anywhere else but gaol.” Richmond’s purpose of “Anything but jail” has been fulfilled and it is, to a large degree, the strategy of first and last resort in our criminal justice and penitentiary systems. Faced with these inane attempts to rehabilitate criminals using soft sentences, conditional sentences and early parole, our police forces have consistently attempted to do their sworn duty to keep the peace and maintain right over wrong. Never forget that you are the most important component of our criminal justice system, and you alone do your duty in blood-and-guts reality at the risk of injury. You deal face to face with criminals and their victims. It is an actuality in which you know real facts in every detail. Many of your cases will have gone through the prosecutorial process and the courts too often softened from a detailed reality to an abstraction that barely reflects the offence committed. A process of distillation removes essential facts and implications to the extent that first degree murder becomes second degree or even manslaughter; a breaking and entering is transformed into mischief; aggravated assault to common assault; trafficking to simple possession. It is a process that brings the administration of justice into disrepute and is deserving of stringent criticism. Through it all you soldier along largely in silence. But there is an awakening within your ranks that a police voice, collective or individual, must be raised on behalf of society to demand the resources and manpower you need to produce law and order. I call upon you to engage in discussion with your elected representatives at all levels of government. Provide them with a constant stream of special knowledge and information you garner. Keep them informed, particularly about any of their constituents who have been victimized and left bewildered and confused; and press them to keep in contact with victims. Tell them that it is their duty to maintain a watching brief as cases proceed. I urge upon you the words of Louis Brandeis, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1930s and 40s: “The single greatest threat to freedom and democracy is an inert people.” I state the obvious in saying to you that among all law abiding citizens it is you, and you alone, who know the true nature and extent of crime in our communities. No one else can say more accurately than you whether crime is lessening or worsening. You are a barometer of change in family violence, the rise of Clockwork-Orange youth violence, and the growing number of young people who choose addiction, the ultimate act of self-indulgence, over citizenship. No other group is better positioned than you to offer parliament informed information and advice on changes that ought to be made in the Criminal Code. However it is not enough to be united under the banner of the Canadian Police Association in pressing for reforms to the criminal law and procedure. Each one of you has the same right that I have, to enter the arena of public debate over the decades-long experiment stressing rehabilitation of convicts over protection of society. This corruption of our criminal justice system blunders along leaving a trail of murder, mayhem and property crime. IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO TAKE A STAND.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you. |
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