How About Some Truth on Spending?
| 6/23/2010 | Posted by Patti under Canadian Politics |
The Harper Conservatives have fancied themselves as ‘tough on crime’ by bringing a string of crime bills into the legislature and daring the Opposition to vote them down. The so called “Truth in Sentencing” bill passed in February was one of those bills.
The bill places stronger limits on when a judge can give credit for time served when passing sentence. The overall effect is to lengthen the amount of time which a convict will remain in custody, raising the average time in federal custody from 523 days to 722 days.
The overall effect will be more prisons will have to be built, more guards hired and the costs of providing shelter to those who have committed crimes will rise.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report yesterday providing estimates of the cost of that bill over the coming years. The numbers are far from pretty. As per usual with this government, the relevant governmental departments like Corrections Canada didn’t cooperate with the preparation of the report and the PBO was forced to work from known models.
Most of the time, despite the government doing their best to obstruct providing their PBO with the tools and data he needs for accuracy, Kevin Page has managed to come pretty close. His report needs to be heeded.
He’s projecting the cost of implementing this bill will be about $1billion per year for the next five years. Think of a G20/G8 summit every year for the next five. We’ll have just about as much to show for it.
In 2009-2010 the correctional system cost Canadians $4.4billion to operate, by 2016 that will be $9.5 billion per year. So, will Canadians be getting value for their dollar? Will the crime rate drop and Canadians will be safer in their homes?
Similar sentencing laws in the US which resulted in longer sentences have not shown to have an impact on the crime rates at all. They have however proved to be a financial disaster for many states as the additional burden of costs have landed on their shoulders. This bill will also result in rising costs for the provincial jail systems.
The bill will increase the average number of prisoners in federal custody from 13,000 to around 17,000 which means that about 4,000 new cells will have to be built. The projected cost is about $383 million per year over the next five years. The numbers grow at the provincial level, from 13,000 in custody to 26,000 with the new bill and the construction costs to go along with.
Canadians need to decide if we want to pour billions into an expanded correctional system when past experience in other jurisdictions indicates very little, if any return on the dollar. In times of steep deficits, like right now, we need a balance between the need to punish and when that punishment starts to take a toll on the rest of the population in terms of services not available due to the cost of our prison system.
That debate should have taken place in Parliament and before this bill was passed into law. The costs of implementing this bill should have been properly debated, not left to be estimated several months after it is too late to stop it.
While the Liberals may find themselves quick to point to the Conservatives and their drive to implement laws based more on ideology than sound principles, they need to remember, this is a minority government. The Conservatives can’t get away with this nonsense without the Opposition enabling them.
When the Opposition starts to worry less about triggering an election or what the Cons will label them as and more about taking principled stands, they might just find Canadians considering them as a viable alternative to the bad government we have now.
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