Harper Index: Mandatory minimum sentences proposed while US states repeal them

[tuvor]

Liberals cave, so Canada will face the kind of swollen prison populations that have forced states into crisis, with some contemplating mass releases.

by Ish Theilheimer

A HarperIndex.ca update, March 5, 2009: Today the Liberal Caucus expressed support for the Harper Conservatives' drug crime bill, which includes the kind of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes now being discarded in the USA, as this story indicates. Liberal Justice Critic Dominic LeBlanc did not respond this week to repeated requests from HarperIndex.ca for an interview on this subject.

OTTAWA, March 4, 2009, HarperIndex.ca: Last week justice minister Rob Nicholson re-introduced legislation calling for mandatory minimum prison sentences for gang-related and drug crimes.

Bill C- 15 was introduced on a Friday, often the day governments do things for which they don't want a lot of publicity. Mandatory minimum sentences may fall into that category because they are becoming unpopular in the USA, the only nation where they have been used extensively.

"A number of states are repealing those for two reasons," NDP justice critic Joe Comartin told HarperIndex.ca in an interview. "One, they don't work. The amount of drug consumption and drug crime has continued on, and all the violence attendant to it. But secondly, they've put so many people into jail that the states are not able to afford the jails anymore. We've got states in the United States that are spending more on incarcerating people than they're spending on the public education systems."

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http://www.harperindex.ca/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=00194

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. "spending more on incarcerating people than they're spending on the public education systems"

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Well THAT explains a lot

Bush (s)elected twice

hmmmmm