Violence Is Violence Whether On The Street Or In Prison

And you have to ask whether that is a coincidence...the people responsible for our prisons are the same people responsible for the criminal justice system on the streets.

Perilous prisons
Soft touch has failed, new report reveals
By Tom Brodbeck
April 22, 2007

Canada's prison population has become far more violent and the proportion of prisoners classified as maximum security has doubled over the past eight years, according to a Correctional Services Canada report recently tabled in Parliament.

CSC's Report on Plans and Priorities 2007-08 paints a grim picture of the country's 12,700 federal inmates, characterizing them as more violent than ever before, including a greater percentage of inmates serving time for homicide.

"In recent years, the offender population has been increasingly characterized by offenders with extensive histories of violence and violent crimes, previous youth and adult convictions, affiliations with gangs and organized crime," the report says.

Mental health, drugs

There are more inmates with mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions and sexually transmitted diseases, the report says.

From 1997 to 2005, the percentage of inmates with gang affiliation has jumped by one-third and the proportion of inmates serving time for homicide has increased 14%.

So while overall crime rates have not increased in Canada in recent years, those committing serious crimes are more violent, more dangerous and more high-risk than they were 10 years ago.

Despite that, federal inmates are being given shorter sentences, according to the report.

Which means more violent, dangerous offenders are back on the street sooner to commit more crimes.

Super.

"For a number of complex reasons, there has also been a trend towards shorter sentences and for CSC this has meant an increase of 62% in the proportion of male offender admissions serving a sentence of less than three years," the report says.

So the next time someone tells you the media or whoever is exaggerating Canada's crime problem, tell them to read this report.

What the report shows is that Canada's criminal justice system is failing miserably.

When we've got more violent, dangerous offenders in and out of the system than ever before, something's not working.

I know the soft-on-crime crowd like the federal Liberals -- who've spent the past few months gutting and blocking a number of bills designed to crack down on serious criminals -- insist we don't have a growing crime problem in Canada.

But this report tells a very different story.

Our federal prisons are seeing more repeat offenders -- nine out of 10 inmates now have previous convictions. And far more inmates are assessed as violent-prone and aggressive upon admission.

This is what years of leniency in our criminal justice system has brought us. More and more federal inmates have extensive criminal pasts, meaning more of them have been in and out of the court system.

Deter and denounce

They've been in and out of the courts because there's little to no deterrence or denunciation in sentencing anymore.

When the courts don't deter and denounce crimes, criminals graduate to more serious offences.

We see it all the time.

Young offenders get into trouble with the law, they get a slap on the wrist and they move on to more serious crimes.

For many, their behaviour is never corrected because our youth courts and the Youth Criminal Justice Act are obsessed with rehabilitation and reintegration at the expense of deterrence and denunciation.

So the kid criminals become adult criminals. And because adult criminals also face lax sentences in court, their behaviour isn't corrected either.

As a result, you get are more violent, dangerous and repeat offenders in our prisons.

It's not a pretty picture.

For more, visit Brodbeck's website Raise a Little Hell at winnipegsun.com.

Reach tom at 632-2742 or by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com.