Pubdate: Mon, 21 Mar 2005
Source: Observer, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2005 Carlyle Observer
Contact:  http://www.carlyleobserver.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2915
Author: Ben Tabin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

CANADIAN LEGAL SYSTEM

Now that the flags have again been raised to the top of the flagpole and 
the RCMP members struggle to return to normal duty, the rest of Canada is 
trying to come up with some answers.

The thing is, there are always more questions to try to answer. If there 
was a simple cut and dried reply to a simple question, it would be so much 
easier. But for every question there is always another why to be added on.

Much of the finger pointing is at the Canadian justice system that is far 
too lenient and far too easy to get around. For the right price a good 
lawyer can be bought and freedom is yours, if you are guilty or not. The 
Canadian legal system if full of holes, loop holes and these can be 
translated into freedom or into court cases being put off for years and 
years. We are so wary or afraid of being classified as harsh or uncaring 
that our legal system goes to the other extreme.

We, as a legal country, often declare the guilty as innocent and the 
violent repeat offenders as cured and release them into the general 
population, on their own to do as they please.

So often, what they please, is to re-offend and usually quite quickly after 
their release from a secure institution.

So many people seem to quickly grant parole to those who are put away and 
also seem to be afraid to put them away in the first place. Is Canada so 
free of criminals or are they just out walking the streets among the rest 
of the population.

We, in Canada, want to be so liberal and so uninhibited that we tend to 
forget that some things will not make our country safer. We know the pot 
growing done on the farm where the four Mounties were shot was not the 
direct cause of the murders, but it could possibly be connected. If the 
shooter has been sampling his product too much, who knows what effect it 
had on him.

For our country to legalize the sale and use of pot will not do our people 
any good. For all the control it would give, supposedly, it will cause a 
lot more headaches.

Like most crimes the law officers try to apprehend the criminal only to 
have the court system let them go. It gets frustrating, I am sure, for the 
police to come up against dead ends in so many cases. The lawyers and 
judges just seem to undo what the police try to shut down.

It is no longer that the law is the law because it is such a grey area that 
no one seems to understand it.
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MAP posted-by: Beth