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If
the primary function of prisons is to protect society
from those who have no respect for its laws, then Corrections
Canada is failing miserably.
An
internal Corrections Canada report on the performance
of its halfway houses revealed that more than one-third
of its convicts escaped in 2002/03, and at least 33% of
those committed new, violent crimes. Raising more doubts
about why the houses should exist at all is the evidence
that convicts from halfway houses re-offend at a higher
rate than those who re-entered society directly through
full parole.
Corrections
Canada may claim the numbers are a surprise, but the statistics
aren't needed to convince British Columbians of what they
already know: Convicts in halfway houses aren't just escaping
- they're making our homes and streets unsafe.
Over
the past decade, escapees from a halfway house in Vernon,
B.C., have committed at least two murders and possibly
three. The most recent incident was in August, when a
75-year-old man was brutally beaten to death in his home.
The prime suspect is an escaped convict whom the parole
board had termed a "high risk to violently offend."
The
report also comes as no surprise to the five Vancouver
women who were raped in August when a convicted sex offender
walked away from a halfway house in East Vancouver and
allegedly decided to go a 10-day rampage of assault.
British
Columbians are not the only Canadians to suffer the failures
of our corrections system.
In
September, an Edmonton pedophile escaped from his halfway
house. In Saskatchewan, a woman is suing the province
because her mother was stabbed 15 times and killed by
a youth who was living in a community home. Over the past
25 years, parolees have killed 58 Canadians.
The
term "halfway house" can be misleading. Convicts
with minor offenses often serve some of their sentence
in the community, so it's a common assumption these individuals
are the residents of halfway houses. But no such luck.
In reality, it’s the most-hardened criminals who
go to halfway houses because they can't be trusted on
parole and prison regimes have had no impact on their
behaviour. Hence, halfway houses are home to the most
difficult, resistant to change, non-reformed and violent
convicts.
Think
about this for a moment. Halfway houses that have minimal
security and exist in residential neighbourhoods contain
violent convicts who are most likely to re-offend. Doesn't
anyone in the corrections bureaucracy see a potential
problem with this plan?
Rather
than protecting British Columbians and other Canadians,
Corrections Canada seems more adept at protecting its
prisoners from the discomforts of punishment and reform,
hoping they will magically morph into model citizens once
they re-enter society. This policy of appeasement must
stem from some bizarre, unproven and forgotten theories
of rehabilitation. If not, then Corrections Canada is
apparently using our communities as laboratories to study
the unpredictable behaviours that arise from pampering
and freeing its most violent offenders.
More
worrying still is information obtained through Access
to Information legislation by a BC criminologist, Dr.
John Martin, indicating that the federal government is
considering a plan to reduce the number of inmates in
federal prisons by having half of them serve their sentences
in the community. One of every four prisoners now live
in halfway houses; four years ago, it was one in six.
At
this rate, it won't be long before jails are no longer
even necessary.
If
a prison regimes can't curb violent behaviour, then why
are we sending the system's "failures" to live
in the virtual freedom of a halfway house?
All
of this further diminishes the respect that Canadians
may still have for their laws. It also confirms what our
criminals and the international community already know:
Canada is notoriously soft on crime with the dire results
reflected in its 43% recidivism rate.
Once
we fail to adequately punish crime, there's a marked deterioration
of the entire community, as Vancouver has already witnessed
in its Downtown Eastside.
In
British Columbia, Corrections Canada has the worst kind
of credibility problem - it has none. The only way to
regain public trust is to serve notice that it will aggressively
punish crime and make public protection its first priority.
If Corrections Canada can't summon the moral will and
the conviction to perform these two essential functions,
then this institution should be declared utterly incapable
of dispensing justice and disbanded in favour of a governing
body that will
Susan
Martinuk is a Vancouver columnist; susanmartinuk@hotmail.com
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