| The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, January 6, 2006, By Dan Gardner. ©The Ottawa Citizen. |
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Justice plan missing one detail -- the cost: Billions would be needed to put more people in jail and keep them there longer. When Stephen Harper released the Conservative party's justice platform yesterday, one detail conspicuously absent from the detailed 17-page handout that accompanied the release was the cost to implement the tougher sentences his party proposes. That's not surprising. Politicians often do not realize that laws putting more people in prison, or keeping them there longer, raise the prison population -- and that means higher costs. Precisely how much Mr. Harper's promises would cost is impossible to know. But thanks to federal government documents obtained by the Citizen through Access to Information, they can be roughly estimated. At a minimum, the Conservative platform will cost $5 billion over 10 years, but the bill could be $11.5 billion. It could even be much more than that. The federal cost-estimate was prepared by the staff of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness Canada during the last federal election. It took into account the four main justice proposals the Conservatives made in that campaign -- and all four of those proposals are back in the platform Mr. Harper announced yesterday. The first promise is to make it mandatory for criminals convicted of "select multiple violent or sexual offences" to serve their sentences consecutively, instead of concurrently as they now do. Depending on the circumstances, that could, for example, turn 10 years in prison into 40. The second idea is a variation on American "three strikes" laws. It would see an automatic presumption of dangerous-offender status given to anyone convicted "and sentenced to federal custody for three violent or sexual offences." Dangerous-offender status means the person is given an indeterminate sentence and will only be released when deemed to be safe. Most dangerous offenders are never released. The third proposal is to repeal the "faint hope clause," which
allows prisoners serving life sentences to apply for early parole
after serving at least 15 years.
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The fourth change deals with statutory release -- the policy that gives federal prisoners parole after serving two-thirds of their sentences unless it can be shown that they are too dangerous to be paroled. The Tories would abolish statutory release and replace it with "earned parole" -- which means it would be up to the prisoner to show why he should be paroled. To what extent these policies would boost prison populations -- and therefore drive up costs -- is impossible to gauge precisely. Much would depend on the details. To deal with that uncertainty, the federal government's analysis took three different looks at the problem with different assumptions about the details in each. In the first scenario, the analysis found the Conservative policies would require 12 new federal prisons to be built: three maximum-security facilities, six medium and two minimum. The total cost of building these prisons would be $1.155 billion dollars. The annual operating budget would be $400 million. The total cost over 10 years would be $5.155 billion. In the second scenario, 17 new prisons would have to built (four maximum, eight medium and three minimum). The cost of construction would be $1.57 billion and annual operating costs would be $540 million. Over 10 years, the federal government would pay a total of $6.97 billion. The last scenario would see 23 new prisons built (five maximum, 11 medium, and five minimum) at a cost of $2.035 billion. Operating costs would be $950 million a year. Total cost over 10 years: $11.535 billion. But in all likelihood, these totals seriously understate the costs of the promises Mr. Harper made yesterday because the government analysis did not include the cost of three new promises. First, Mr. Harper is calling for the existing four-year mandatory
minimum sentences for certain gun crimes to cover more crimes. He
also wants the sentences to be five and ten years. It's not known
what the costs of this change would be, though it would likely be
substantial.
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Mr. Harper would also introduce a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for anyone convicted of trafficking in large amounts of marijuana or any amount of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine or other hard drugs. This could flood the prisons. In 2004 alone, there were 11,634 charges of trafficking in hard drugs. There were another 10,470 charges of trafficking in marijuana (although it's impossible to know how many of those charges involved amounts big enough to qualify for the Conservatives' proposed mandatory minimum sentence). By comparison, the current population of the entire federal prison system is 12,587. The cost of implementing Mr. Harper's drug policy could easily be equal to or greater than the cost of the other policies combined. Lastly, the Conservative leader called for the abolition of conditional sentences -- which allow offenders to live at home if they obey curfews and other restrictions -- in cases involving certain violent or sexual crimes, weapons offences, major drug crimes, crimes committed against children or drunk driving causing serious harm. It's impossible to estimate the total cost of this change, but it is clear that it wouldn't be covered by the federal government. Conditional sentences are only given to offenders sentenced to less than two years. If they are taken away, those offenders would go not to federal prisons, but provincial jails which are, in many cases, already overflowing. The provinces may be surprised to discover that should Mr. Harper win the federal election and implement his ideas, they will have to dip into their treasuries and start building jails. Dan Gardner*'s column appears Wednesdays and Fridays. |
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Copyright © 2005 Dan Gardner |