To judge from letters to the editor and television interviews of the general public, many Canadians get instantly hot under the collar about our Criminal Justice System, usually about some sentence which appears too lenient or about a violent crime committed by someone on parole.
In many cases, these reactions come from the gut, unfiltered by those parts of our anatomy responsible for an adequate understanding of some pertinent facts, like the details of the trial or of the parole process. I suspect that one could make a good case that no part of our society provokes more strong, sincerely felt, ill-informed opinions than our justice system.
The main political result of this situation is obvious enough: politicians begin to pander successfully to public opinion with slogans promising longer sentences, reduced leniency, and harsher conditions in the prisons, even though there is enough evidence to suggest that such measures are generally not all that effective at reducing serious criminal offences. Some of them, in fact, are demonstrably counterproductive.
Some useful attempts are being made to address this ignorance. Here in British Columbia, judges are being officially encouraged to talk more about certain cases than traditional discretion permitted. Citizens Advisory Committees (volunteer organizations of interested citizens who work with Corrections Canada) continue to work at disseminating basic general knowledge about the criminal justice system. Important reports are widely available online. Here are a few examples:
And new television programs, like The Verdict, are promoting better informed in-depth discussions about pertinent issues and cases.
Increasing public awareness is a welcome trend, because, ironically enough, certain features of our justice system are the most unjust element in Canadian society. With one eye on our southern neighbours, we Canadians pride ourselves on our greater commitment to equality, especially in medical care and education, a commitment that, for some reason, does not extend to the courts and the prisons. One of the best example of this is our attitude towards legal counsel for the accused, our principle that one gets only what one is willing and able to pay for. Those that can afford the cost get Eddie Greenspan, and those who have no money get a lawyer appointed by the system. Given the antagonistic model of a trial, the inequity in the resources available for combating the ample powers of the Crown is evident. To compound the matter, we often stand by while governments with cost-cutting on their minds further eviscerate the funds available for an already inadequate legal aid budget.
Leaving that issue aside, any basic consideration of the policies of our courts and prisons might well start with this question: How do we expect our criminal justice system to cope with offenders? Prima facie, it seems we want at least two things: punishment and rehabilitation. We want criminals to pay for their crimes, and we’d like them at the end of their sentences to re-enter society and offend no more. It’s clear we want both, because even if we had some way of guaranteeing a perfect and quick rehabilitation (or at least of satisfying ourselves that the criminal was highly unlikely ever to commit a similar offence again), most citizens would still want some time served, a period commensurate (to some extent, anyway) with the severity of the crime.
There’s a difficulty here, of course, because time served in prison is not, in itself, the best form of rehabilitation. A prison environment can, under certain conditions, simply guarantee that at the end of the sentence society is far more likely to be receiving back a confirmed criminal, perhaps one even more skilled and determined to commit crimes than he was at the start of his sentence or, if not that, someone even less capable of coping on his own than earlier (which often amounts to much the same thing).
We all acknowledge that crimes often (even generally) originate from acute social problems (addiction, poverty, abuse, mental health, and so on) and that a significant feature of punishment for crimes must include attempts to address these issues, so that rehabilitation is more than a vague hope. At the same time, we stand by while funding for such programs within the prisons becomes increasingly inadequate, perhaps because many of us are not fully persuaded that these programs are worth the money.
From time to time, there’s an additional problem: citizens can resent programs of rehabilitation inside prison walls which seem to mitigate the severity they demand of punishment. Why should those convicted of homicide, say, receive a free education (up to and including a university degree) inside, while the relatives of victims (like widows of slain police officers) have to cope more or less on their own? I recall the well-known incident of the golf courses built and funded by inmates on prison grounds of BC penal institutions. Although these facilities had served successfully to educate prisoners and qualify them for employment when they were released, the public was outraged that such an apparent luxury was available to those being punished. So, for all their success, these programs were terminated, and the facilities closed.
Such public responses have led to the present arrangements whereby we have shifted many of our attempts to rehabilitate away from the prisons to those periods between full incarceration and full freedom, that is, to parole, half-way houses, and so on, where the criminal justice system can still provide significant control over and support for an offender beyond the walls in order to guide his re-entry into society and, in the process, educate him better. Hence, criminals who meet certain criteria leave the prisons considerably earlier than the full term of their sentences (in some cases after serving one third of their time) under threat of having to return to jail should they violate the terms of their supervised release.
This situation has been working successfully for a significant number of prisoners, who do reintegrate into society without re-offending. The short but pertinent John Howard report Presumptive Gradual Release makes clear that our various forms of supervised release before the full term of the sentence are far more effective at reducing recidivism than an unsupervised release after the offender has served his full sentence. It would be useful if those who like to vent their critical views of existing procedures would digest what this document, among others, has to say.
But, of course, there is a recidivism rate, too, and this prompts all sorts of public ire, a reaction that skews our perspectives. It’s easy enough to understand that response, especially where a violent crime is involved. But if we abandon or severely curtail the present system, what are we to put in its place? To argue, as some do, that we should have longer sentences and that an offender should serve his full time in prison, without demanding significantly improved (and expensive) rehabilitation programs inside, is to propose that we commit ourselves to guaranteeing enormous increases in our prison population, prison budgets, and rates of recidivism, without any significant social benefit.
The truth is that our fondest hopes for our criminal justice system are hopelessly utopian. We want the criminals caught, punished, and rehabilitated at bargain rates. And, in spite of the tens of thousands of volunteers who take an interest in helping prisoners, most of us, it would seem, prefer not to get involved (for example, by having a half-way house in our neighbourhood or encouraging the employment of ex-felons in our businesses or even taking the time to ascertain the facts). And we certainly don’t want any mistakes.
But there are always going to be mistakes. We are surely long past the days when we believed that we were soon going to discover some risk-free way of calculating human behaviour. These mistakes include not merely cases of prisoners released under supervision re-offending but also those occasions where we have to deal with disastrous miscarriages of justice (as in the case of Dr Charles Smith, Steven Truscott, and for many people, Robert Latimer, among many others). There is no guarantee that such mistakes will not occur, no matter what changes we make in this or that part of the system.
The best we can hope for is to reduce these mistakes as much as we can, and, given the political nature of the issues, that will happen only if an informed and active general population will bring to our Criminal Justice System the same level of informed and active concern they display in dealing with, say, medicare or public education. Looking over what the John Howard Society or the Citizens Advisory Committees or the Elizabeth Fry Societies have to offer by way of an introduction to the realities of our Criminal Justice System is a good place to start.
Ian Johnston is a writer and translator; his work can be seen on his website.