Canada: Column: The new Prohibition

[medpot]

National Post

Letters to the Editor


The new Prohibition



Steve Bosch/Postmedia News
The federal government announced new measures to combat organized crime like prostitution, illegal gambling and drug trafficking on Aug. 4, 2010.

Terence Corcoran, National Post · Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010

The Harper government, fresh from botching its alleged pander to the libertarian wing of the Conservative party with its voluntary census plan, appears to be having no problem steamrolling over the libertarian wing's sensitivities on crime. In back-to-back performances this week, two Cabinet ministers invoked harsh tough-on-crime motives that show the Tories' concern about individual rights to be a fleeting interest compared with their enthusiasm for escalating the bonkers American war on drugs, gambling and sex.

Under the guise of fighting "organized crime," a global economic sector created largely by government laws and regulations, the Conservatives — with hardly a peep from the opposition or critics — this week expanded the Canadian division of the monstrous U.S.-led war on drugs. For a government allegedly concerned about the "intrusiveness" of a pollster extracting personal information under threat of fines and prison, the Conservatives are disturbingly unconcerned about a massive increase in police power to meddle in the lives of its citizens in the name of fighting crime.

The government's bizarre crime declarations began Tuesday, when Stockwell Day, as Treasury Board Secretary, defended a budget plan to spend $9-billion building prisons at a time when crime rates are declining. Mr. Day, reaching for an explanation, tried to link the prison expansions to "the increase in the amount of unreported crimes that surveys show clearly are happening." This was an obvious head-scratcher for reporters: If the crimes are unreported, how will the criminals perpetrating those crimes end up in the expanded prison system? And, moreover, what is an "unreported crime"? Mr. Day rambled around the subject, ending with the usual Tory calls for tougher sentences and a warning that you can't take a "liberal view" of crime.

"We don't think serious crime should be treated lightly," he said.

It turns out the unreported-crime story may have some legitimacy as a contact sport for the statistical statists who are otherwise at war over the voluntary census. The Crime Victimization survey, conducted by StatsCan, asks Canadians about car and bicycle thefts, residential burglaries, pickpockets, robbery, unwanted sexual assault or harassment, and other physical assaults. The survey, a voluntary non-census effort, shows a discrepancy between the number of crimes people say they experience in real life and actual crime statistics. So what's real: The crimes reported, or the crimes not reported? Are people getting robbed, raped and assaulted but not taking the crimes to police?

Before Canada's vociferous stats community could sort any of this out, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson appeared the next day with a plan that could generate the criminal numbers to justify the prison spending. The government will apparently fill Mr. Day's prisons with thousands of new criminals to be convicted under an expansion of the definition of "serious crimes" under the Criminal Code.

Mr. Nicholson was accompanied by some of Canada's top police chiefs as he explained how the government needed to escalate its war on organized crime. The government, he said, had enacted regulations that, effective immediately, would give police new powers to crack down on a long list of activities that are already covered under criminal law as relatively minor offences.

The list of crimes now considered serious is worth a close look, especially in the context of Mr. Day's concern about unreported crimes. They include:

- Keeping a common gaming or betting house;

- Betting, pool-selling and bookmaking;

- Keeping a common bawdy house;

- Trafficking in barbiturates and other chemical drugs;

- Trafficking in any quantity of cannabis;

- Importing, exporting, producing barbiturates.

Under the new get-tough regulations, keeping a common bawdy-house or selling a couple of ounces of marijuana will now bring maximum prison sentences of "at least" five years in prison. A low-level operator of a bawdy-house could also face five-year prison terms.

More important for police and prosecutors, under the organized crime umbrella, the full force of the gang-war and drug-war crime-fighting machine will be unleashed on small-time players who may appear to have organized-crime connections. These include wiretaps, tougher bail regimes, the ability to seize the proceeds of crime, sentencing conditions and parole rules.

One of the noteworthy characteristics of the new regulatory effort is that it does not include any of the "unreported" crimes — thefts, burglaries and sexual assaults — that Mr. Day seems to think will soon be the source of an expanding prison population.

Take, for example, keeping a common bawdy-house. The sex trade is a booming business in Canada. Nobody sees the transaction between a prostitute and a john as an "unreported crime," mainly because there is no underlying crime to report. There are no criminal victims. The same goes for the thousands of Canadians who smoke dope and take barbiturates or ingest steroids. Bookmakers and hockey-pool organizers ply their trade across the country, but they are not the unreported criminals Mr. Day said exist in "alarming numbers."

The people who are going to fill Mr. Day's jails are thousands of small-time bookies, prostitutes, drug traffickers and others who are seen by government to be a branch of the "organized crime" industry, even though their crime is to deliver a service to Canadians who are willing to pay for it.

Organized crime through the centuries has been the creation of government law. A business gets organized as a crime because government declares it to be illegal. Alcohol trade became an organized crime under prohibition, and disappeared after alcohol was legalized. Pornography was once controlled by organized crime, but now the industry is legitimate and the criminal behavior — smuggling, guns, violence — that once surrounded it is gone. Want porn? Turn on the TV, where it's available 24/7 on cable.

The criminalization of gambling over the decades created a major outlet for organized crime syndicates — until governments came along and organized the crime themselves, in the form of national lotteries and government-owned casinos. Still, private gambling among citizens who like to bet on outcomes other than lottery draws is a continuing business. Governments' war on private book-making and private poker dens is more to protect their own monopolies than to eliminate crime.

Canada's Criminal Code definition of organized crime, adopted as part of an international policing campaign a few years ago, is an open door to extreme law enforcement. An organization "composed of three or more persons in or outside Canada" is a criminal organization if it "has as one of its main purposes or main activities the facilitation or commission of one or more serious offences [see above], that, if committed, would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group or by any one of the persons who constitute the group."

With that wide-open definition, the organized-crime enforcement juggernaut already has spawned a largely futile attempt to curb biker gangs, and an expensive and wasteful money-laundering data agency — whose bureaucracy, incidentally, is to get a new $9-million budget increase this year under the Conservatives.

There is no space or need here to review the already well-documented grotesque criminal culture and social deterioration spawned by the U.S.-led war on drugs — a war the Conservatives are now bringing to the streets of Canada. The enforcement of these new regulations, aimed a low-level providers of services that have willing buyers, will be as effective in curbing genuine criminal activity as the other organized crime measures have been, which is not at all. They are likely to make things worse.

[dld0122]

Does anyone else notice that all of these so-called crimes have to do with money.

Money money money.

The government doesn't give a shit about crimes on children...the helpless...the sick.

They don't get tax money from helping any of these people.

But how dare anyone try to make a buck or two and not give the government their share.

[medpot]

National Post

Letters to the Editor


'A Frankenstein of neoconservative theocratic zealots'


National Post · Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010


As one of Canada's leading MDs authorizing medicinal marijuana, via whole plant cannabis and pharmaceutical preparations, I am aware that there is illegal activity going on regarding cannabis, opiates and other illicit chemicals.

Something Health Canada and the federal Department of Justice need to understand, but will not listen, is that sick Canadians have been engaging in illegal activities with whole plant cannabis due to the absurd Medical Marijuana Regulations Program -- for the past 10 years. The regulations sabotage the program every step of the way and invite illegal actions by MM users. Plus, sick people, trying to get medical help and comfort for their afflictions via cannabis, are easy targets for law enforcement and will not make trouble for correctional officers when sent to jail. This does nothing to get the "real" criminal element off the streets and behind bars where they belong.

If only we could get a national debate going about the new medical field of cannabinology -- between doctors and politicians. The budgets of the Canadian health-care system and the judicial system are both at stake here, as well as the safety of Canadians.

Dr. David Saul, Toronto.

[dld0122]

Wow.....great letter.

So awesome to have someone like himself (medical doctor) speak out in support.

[SteveG]

I had an appointment with him this week and have a couple of sheets to post ... as soon as I access another scanner, mine is buggered.

[medpot]

Comox Valley Echo

Letters to the Editor: dmartin@comoxvalleyecho.com


What's Stockwell Day smoking?



E. A. Foster, Comox Valley Echo
Published: Tuesday, August 10, 2010


Re: Canadian Press story, "Stockwell Day confounds critics says new prisons needed for unreported crimes", .

The news has reported Mr. Day has requested a rather large amount of money to build prisons. It was reported this was partly due to unreported crimes.

First let me say, as a taxpayer, I do not wish to see any of my tax dollars spent on prisons when the crime rate in Canada is actually going down.

Further, if crime is unreported, what makes Mr. Day think it will suddenly become reported. If there are no reported crimes, then it follows there are no criminals to be tried, convicted, and sent to prisons.

I don't know who Mr. Day thinks is going to fill these prisons, but criminals, not so much.

Now he might want to use these funds to build social housing and better schools so children do not turn to crime.

Mr. Day might use the money to improve roads in Canada and thus reduce the number of unemployed and thus reducing crime.

Mr. Day might consider using the money to build rehab facilities to assist addicts to over come their illnesses so there is less crime.

The money could be better spent providing services to members of the Armed Forces.

All the chat about stiffer penalities and minimum sentencing has never reduced crime but it has made a lot of money for those individuals who build, run, and supply prisons. The Americans have tried this scheme with no positive impact. The Americans have approx. one million people in jail. That is a lot of people and a lot of money. Had the money been spent up front on social services these people might not be in prison. Some states have had their "three strike" policies increase the prison population to the extent it is a drain on their economy. I would suggest Canada not go this way.

I am sure there are people who have made a great deal of money on the prison system in the U.S.A. Now if Mr. Day wishes to make these same free enterprise opportunities available to Canadian entrepeneurs, then maybe he needs to get into another line of work in another country.

Mr. Harper might be advised to have a good look at Mr. Day's mental health because I don't know who would spend precious tax dollars on prisons when the crime rate is going down nor spend tax dollars on prisons for unreported criminals.

Yes, there are a number of criminals who should go to prison for a long time because they are serious repeat offenders but nothing was ever solved by sending run of the mill criminals to jail.

People who are sent to jail because of addiction and mental health issues are best dealt with in a medical setting.

I don't know if our local M.P. can give us any insight into the situation but if I didn't know any better I would think Mr. Day has taken up smoking our B.C. bud.

E. A. Foster

Comox




© Comox Valley Echo 2010

[medpot]

The Daily Gleaner (NB)

Letters to the Editor


The war against imaginary crime



Published Thursday August 12th, 2010
C9


It was like watching a kid's party game, with children staggering around with blindfolds on trying to pin the tail on the donkey. Or maybe it was the adult version, except everybody's drunk and they're using daggers.

I was watching a video of Stockwell Day, Treasury Board minister, making a presentation to the media on Canada's Economic Action Plan.

He was asked why, "during a time of declining crime rates he wanted to blow nine billion dollars on prisons." He was asked if that didn't send a confusing message to Canadians about the government's role as deficit fighter.

The answer was that the government was "very concerned about the increase in unreported crime that surveys clearly showed are happening, and that people aren't reporting at the rate they used to."

He continued by saying that yes, the crime had gone down, but largely due to government measures, such as specifically preventive programs designed for people, families and communities at risk. However he said it was important to realize that crime was much higher than it was 40 years ago.

A reporter asked him if higher rates of unreported crime meant that the official crime rate was a myth. Mr. Day declined to comment on that but suggested it was alarming that the rate of unreported crime was so high and that there were too many serious incidents of crime happening.

Another reporter said he was baffled, and asked "there is a statistic about unreported crimes?" He asked if they aren't reported, how can we have any idea of those crimes. He said, "You are just not making sense, or I may be just a dolt and I don't understand. Help me out on this one."

Mr. Day was calm. He wasn't insulted. He explained that when Canadians are asked the question about if a crime happens to them, do they report it to the police that an increasing number report that they don't.

The reporter was clearly astonished. "Is that like rape, assault or murder? Canadians are saying, 'Don't worry about it, it's OK.'" He asked if these are crimes for which people could be sent to prison.

Mr. Day was patient. He offered to send the reporter references, a technique I find always works to infuriate people.

It's clear the government has endeavoured for some while to "get tough on crime," a crowd-pleaser that never fails to raise the rabble on the right while making the left shift edgily for the exit.

From mandatory prison sentences for violent crime to reduced use of house arrest, the government has announced it's no softie.

If it takes doubling the cost of corrections, they're willing to spend our money.

The government has also announced tougher sentences for drugs, gambling and prostitution. There's nothing like sin when it comes time for another favourite party-game: shooting fish in a barrel. No politician is going to stand up in public and say it's ridiculous to criminalize exchanging sex for money.

Mr. Day's position has been unflinching as the wasps of scorn and ridicule swirl around him. Columnists have satirized being victims of unreported crime, as in "my bike was stolen and I didn't report it." And others have pointed out that the swins of drugs, gambling and prostitution are only crimes because the government's own laws have made them so.

Commentators on newspaper sites that have covered this story point out that in the past, Mr. Day has said he believes research shouldn't be done on homosexuals, that some domestic violence stem from simple insults, and that since the Earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs and humans walked around at the same time.

Now I don't know if he really said those things, but that's the sort of stuff that gets said when the party runs late.

Building prisons to house criminals whose crimes were unreported seems logical to me, if we can find them. But using tougher sentences and mandatory prison terms for sin crimes, that doesn't make sense. And neither does reducing time for credit served in crowded jails or attacking house arrest where people can keep their jobs and families together for crimes they're unlikely to repeat.

But that's the kind of party it was - loud, boisterous and a good excuse for random craziness.

Chris McCormick is a criminologist at St. Thomas University, and his column appears every two weeks