Offenders need consequences and rehabilitation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2009 (6360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a lot of cynicism that surrounds Canada’s correctional system, leading some to the excessive conclusion that any prison strategy is doomed to failure. A failure because prison’s a school for criminals, a gang-recruiting ground and because people emerge worse than when they enter. A failure because it doesn’t correct.

The allegations are colourful, tempting and become the ammunition for the many critics who are resolute that even some of the more violent criminals would be better managed in the community than behind bars. While such overtures are sincere, they are born of experience that is less than well rounded.

Before concluding the discussion it would be helpful if prison critics looked into the eyes of Nancy Laforte-Flett, the mother of 13-year-old Beeper Spence, who was killed by a gang-banger’s shotgun blast. One of the killers, Fabian Torres, spent little time in jail, but while being "managed" in the community was able to rejoin the gang and embark on a reign of terror that included a violent home invasion that victimized both children and adults.

These helpful people need to look into the eyes of a pretty, young girl who years later still can’t look at a grilled cheese sandwich, a one-time favourite. Home from school, that’s what she was fixing for lunch when a fake meter man got into the house and assaulted her. He’s still at large.

There are the many faces of seniors who are terrified to leave their homes with the barred windows and double locks, prisoners themselves.

These eyes and faces are mostly unfamiliar to prison critics and those with more than a passing interest in crime, like the drafters of federal crime policy. Few people can taste violent crime’s bitter flavour when the victim is never more than a faceless point on some graph.

Justice has become gentler and less sure of late, almost make-believe. The sentences are shorter despite the increasing intensity of violence, especially gang violence, evidenced in part by the growing trend of gangsters wearing body armour. Still, the voices that advocate anything but jail get louder, clinging to a notion that they have some exclusive right to the moral high ground.

David Asper, chairman of the National Post, lawyer and a legitimate champion of the wrongfully convicted, doesn’t see it quite that way.

Asper spoke last week to a radio audience on the issue of prisons and corrections. This is part of what he said:

"I’m not one of those softie types that wants to excuse crime because of the underlying circumstances that can make people turn to criminal behaviour. What I am saying, however, is that society has to spend more time and money changing the way the corrections system functions. Rather than largely warehousing these convicted offenders, our jails should focus on intensive behaviour modification and support programs. If this means a different style of prison, perhaps smaller institutions spread over a wider area of the province, then so be it."

In short, the correctional system should do everything possible to focus on custodial rehabilitation while protecting the rest of society.

That’s something many cops and police unions, including the Winnipeg Police Association, support. Winnipeg’s association president, Mike Sutherland says, "rehabilitation can be conducted in conjunction with custody, the two are not, as some in Winnipeg seem to believe, mutually exclusive."

The lack of rehabilitation in our jails is not entirely the fault of the corrections system. Current judicial policy puts a cramp in most rehabilitative hope with sentences that are already short and bastardized further by the standard two-for-one time-in-custody (or remand) credit games. When they are included in the sentencing equation even a five-year sentence can become time served.

Rehabilitation is labour intensive and time consuming. Offenders in remand have little (usually zero) access to programs or activities that address anger, addiction, dysfunction and other rehabilitative concerns — something the John Howard Society and the Saskatchewan Ombudsman noted years ago. That said, many are released — time served — before a first attempt at correcting deviant behaviour can even be initiated.

Drafters of future policy need to recognize that victims are real people. Offenders who resort to violence require stiff and sure consequences that include concentrated efforts at rehabilitation in an atmosphere that guarantees public safety.

That isn’t happening. And it’s not acceptable.

 

Robert Marshall is a security consultant and former Winnipeg police officer.

rm112800@hotmail.com