Pubdate: Wed, 10 Oct 2007
Source: North Island Gazette (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 North Island Gazette
Contact:  http://www.northislandgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2783
Author: Tom Fletcher

THIS IS YOUR CRIME PROBLEM ON DRUGS

Williams Lake has done a good job of highlighting the problem of 
"prolific offenders" in recent weeks.Instead of playing down its 
becoming B.C.'s crime capital, Williams Lake Mayor Scott Nelson used 
police statistics to tackle the problem head-on.

He says numbers are driven by a handful of hardcore repeat offenders 
who, especially in a small town, can generate a crime wave by 
themselves. The same story could be told in communities around the 
province, and it's usually about what people will do to get drugs.

In Williams Lake, they're demanding that repeat offenders be kept in 
custody until sentenced, so they can't rack up new crimes while 
awaiting trial. While that's an appealing idea, B.C. Solicitor 
General John Les says it has a major flaw.

Career criminals (and their lawyers) will maximize time "in remand" 
awaiting trial, especially if the case against them is a slam dunk. 
In a time-honoured (and naive) tradition, judges kindly give them 
two-for-one credit for time served while they are still technically innocent.

Holding suspects creates another problem for the B.C. correctional 
system, which runs addiction programs for inmates.

"The reality is they spend more time there in remand than actually 
sentenced, and when they're there on remand, there's not much we can 
do with them, because there's the whole presumption of innocence 
thing," Les said. "You can't impose anything on them. And then when 
they're sentenced, typically they don't spend a whole lot of time 
there anyway."

Another popular notion is that the threat of harsh sentences will 
deter the impulsive property crime that plagues communities. But does 
it really?

One sobering study done in 1992 examined the most direct of 
consequences, delivered by Irish Republican Army enforcers to 
juvenile car thieves in Northern Ireland, which was shooting the 
thief in the leg with a handgun. Did this reduce the number of car thefts? No.

Other studies suggest that 80 per cent of car thieves believe they 
will never be caught.

For those desperate for drugs, fear of consequences seems an even 
more remote notion. That's why today authorities are looking toward 
the community court or "drug court" model for solutions.

Les has high hopes for B.C.'s community court pilot project, due to 
open next spring in Vancouver. Its goal is to deal with offenders 
quickly, giving them one shot at serving a sentence in a treatment 
program before going into the regular system.

Les says the big city is the logical place to start, since it has the 
most treatment programs available, but smaller towns can benefit too, 
and Williams Lake has already begun talks with police and community agencies.

Last week the federal government launched its latest anti-drug 
strategy, amid much squawking in the big-city media about a 
U.S.-style war on drugs, and the allegedly urgent need for more 
defeatist pest-holes along the lines of Vancouver's unsafe injection site.

About half of the Stephen Harper government's $64 million anti-drug 
strategy is supposed to be directed to treatment programs. Given the 
Conservatives' ideological rigidity, that probably means 
abstinence-based programs, which by happy coincidence are the only 
ones that actually work.

How will repeat offenders be made to stick to programs, and how will 
the public be kept safe? Les says he'll have more to say on that in a 
few weeks.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom