Statistics speak volumes and are repeatedly quoted: in 2007, the crime rate in Canada sank to its lowest level in more than 30 years. Furthermore, a number of studies have led to the emergence of a broad consensus around a number of issues: in the area of criminal justice, prevention is more effective and less costly than repression. Gradual release is an essential component of the community reintegration process. The effectiveness of the harm reduction model is no longer in doubt. Needle-exchange programs in prison reduce the risk of infections and the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, and other diseases. Such programs exist in Belarus and Iran, but not here?
Despite everything, the legislative agenda of recent years has tended to head in the opposite direction: repression, a move toward harsher sentences, a questioning of statutory release, the building of infrastructure and massive investments in static security are henceforth touted as a panacea for crime and as a sure token of public safety.
The prevailing position of recent years pertaining to drugs was guided exclusively by ideological considerations and constitutes an excellent reflection of the approach used in the fight against crime. Thus, of the $120 M invested to rid penitentiaries of drugs, not one penny was spent on prevention or looking into the causes of drug addiction. Instead, these amounts went for more detector dogs, security intelligence officers, smoke detectors, X-ray machines, and frisk searches of institutional visitors in order to, among other things, “ensure that children are not used in the trafficking of illegal substances”. According to the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), seven in ten inmates have a substance-abuse problem; will these measures be of any great help to them? The latest report of the Correctional Investigator points out that, since 1998, CSC has spent significantly more time and money on efforts to prevent drugs from entering its institutions, and that institutional random testing “has shown that drug use declined by less than 1 percentage point between 1998/99 and 2006/07”. Perhaps were there too few dogs.
Earlier this year, the Prime Minister announced that Drugs: Know the Facts, Cut your Risks, a book ordered by the previous government and intended to inform young people about drugs, would not leave the warehouse where 500,000 printed copies are gathering dust. Why? Because the tone of the book was not considered proper, particularly because it alluded to the fact that drugs might produce a pleasurable sensation. The federal Minister of Health had previously questioned the ethics of those who endorse intravenous drug use in supervised injection sites and followed the above announcement by stating that Canadians were entitled to an unambiguous message about drugs in order to protect their children. As if that were not enough, the Conservatives clearly expressed their position in a brochure that was distributed across the country, in which it is stated that drug addicts and dealers have not placed near children and families; that they should be in detox or prison. That same document outlines three measures intended to solve this problem, among these, keeping drug addicts in detox centres and chasing them from our streets.
Recently, An Act to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was introduced as part of the National anti-drug Strategy. The bill went through the first reading stage before the election was called and subsequently died on the Order Paper as a result. Among other things, it provided for minimum prison sentences for serious drug-related offences, as well as for increased maximum sentences. Concomitantly, the United States, who pioneered minimum sentences and massive imprisonment, are coming to realize that these measures are ineffective, even counterproductive, and that their astronomical social costs are compounded by material costs adding up to several million dollars. Will our government be able to afford to support to its ambitions?
The measures implemented as part of the National anti-drug strategy provide a clear illustration: criminal justice is increasingly moving toward a Manichaean view of the word, in which things are either good or evil. Purely subjective (and costly) points of view defy all logic and override the dedicated work of researchers and the experience of practitioners. Repression is gradually replacing prevention, which gives rise to more and more demagoguery.
At the same time, no effort is spared to convince the public that there exist simple solutions to complex problems. Not to say simplistic…
