(This column was published in the print edition of the North Shore News on May 28, 2003)
Canadian jails: criminals keep out
By Leo Knight
IT'S really hard to go to jail in this country these days.
Even harder in British Columbia.
That's not opinion, that is reality.
Since the federal Liberals introduced conditional sentencing, ostensibly for non-violent offenders only, the likelihood of a convicted criminal getting sentenced to meaningful prison time is remote.
Even for those with 40, 50 or more convictions.
ICBC is running a program titled Bait Car Program, which in theory, traps the would-be car thief inside the target vehicle while police surround the hapless thief. Well, sort of anyway. The Bait Car Program in the United States does, in fact, lock the suckers in the vehicles. Not here. Apparently we're afraid of what might happen if they had no way out.
It's so Canadian isn't it?
ICBC's advertising component of the Bait Car program has the catch phrase, "Steal a car, Go to jail." Uh-huh.
The reality is "Steal a car, and if you're not smart enough to run when you realize it's a bait car, get arrested, released on bail with conditions that won't be enforced, get a free lawyer who will arrange a plea bargain to ensure you see no meaningful consequence, do it all over again." But I guess that's not quite as catchy.
Currently, it costs ICBC about $50,000 a day to cover losses in simple thefts from auto. It also costs ICBC something in the neighbourhood of $100 million a year to cover losses in cases of total theft of vehicles. That works out to a little over $273,000 per day. Together, just in property crime involving motor vehicles, ICBC is paying out over $320,000 every day to cover losses caused by the same relatively small group of repeat offenders who, no matter how many offences they commit, simply will not go to jail.
It costs about $200 per day to house a criminal in jail. And for some reason we are closing jails like the Vancouver Pre-trial Centre to save money?
Perhaps this is little more than a business way of looking at this. Don't people get rehabilitated in prison? Isn't that the purpose? Ah, no.
There was a day when someone in prison had to earn his or her way out early. One did that by taking counselling and job training. There used to be such a thing where cons could get time off their sentence with so-called good behaviour. Well, that was then.
Now, statutory release means every prisoner automatically gets one-third off. Then, they can also apply for early release. This amounts to another one-third off simply because they didn't kill a guard or bugger the warden. But, that's not all. Every prisoner has the right to apply for day parole at the one-sixth mark of an imposed sentence.
In fact, there is currently a murder trial going on in the Fraser Valley where the Crown alleges the two accused career criminals accepted a contract from an organized crime figure in jail and they fulfilled the contract while on day parole.
Simple, yes? Accept a business deal in prison.
Out on day parole; whack some people, change your clothes, return to jail, quick shower, dinner and turn in for the night. It's a simple life really.
Is our system broken? More than you can possibly believe.
Edmonton police have established a squad of officers to do nothing more than capture early release offenders who have breached the conditions of their release. This is the only such police squad of its type in the country that I know of, at least.
How bad is the problem? According to Edmonton police two-thirds of all offenders in breach of their release conditions were on early release. They also say convicts will never have to serve their full sentence no matter how many times they breach their release conditions.
Ah, but it's worse. Det. Jack Stewart of the Parole Apprehension Unit explained in a media interview: "The bigger issue with respect to the stat releases is that every time you pick them up, their sentence is recalculated so that they will get out after two-thirds.
"So you start with someone who gets a six-year sentence, they get out after four years. If they breach with nine months left, they get out after six months."
In an interview with the Edmonton Sun, Stewart said, "In one calendar year I can recall a guy who breached four times.
"Every time they got released on stat release they breached within a day. We had to hunt them down and put them back in, they'd serve their two-thirds, they'd get out and they'd breach again, immediately."
It's a great country this, under the Liberal government of Jean Chretien.
You can do just about whatever you want, breaching the Criminal Code in a host of ways and never get your wings clipped.
But, if in the unlikely event you do, you'll never have to serve a full sentence.
And when you get released long before your sentence is due, you don't actually have to play by the rules laid out by the Liberal hacks given their seats on the parole board courtesy of Papa Jean. All the while, the rest of us keep paying higher insurance premiums to ICBC, higher private household carrier, higher interest rates on credit cards, more money to public utilities because of all the power stolen by the grow-ops and on it goes.
The people that do the anti-social activities rarely have to pay for their actions.
You and I, who follow the rules, are asked to buck up every day to pay the freight for the ramifications of their exploits. Seems fair, doesn't it? This is the real legacy of Jean Chretien.
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