Legislation tabled in parliament Tuesday will set Canada on a slippery slope to Americanization of the justice system and have no impact on crime rates, a criminology professor says.
Dubbed the reverse-onus bill, the proposal introduced by Attorney-General Vic Toews will amend the Criminal Code's dangerous-offenders section and extend the maximum duration of peace bonds.
While the Conservative government said the bill would protect Canadians from dangerous offenders, Dr. Michael Boudreau, assistant professor of criminology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, said it was just another instance of crime's being used for political gain.
“In reality, crime rates keep going down,” Dr. Boudreau said. “This (bill) is not really looking at the main issues. All they're doing is putting more people in prison.”
More people will become "dangerous” under this definition, he said, making it appear that there is a crime problem that could then engender a climate of fear in Canadian communities.
In the end, he said, imposing harsher penalties does nothing actually to reduce crime.
“Better education, better programs in prison: That's what reduces crime,” he said.
Mr. Toews said the bill would act as a deterrent and reduce repeated, dangerous crime.
“What this bill does is change the law that the Supreme Court put into place in about 1996, which had put a very heavy onus on the Crown, which was never the intent of the legislation. It now will simply say that it will be up to the judge to determine whether or not it's in the public interest to impose that dangerous offender designation after the first conviction,” Mr. Toews said.
“This is the kind of legislation we need in order to prevent multiple child molesters and other serious offenders from re-offending in other jurisdictions across Canada.”
It is currently up to the Crown to ask that a criminal be deemed a dangerous offender. This bill would change that, so a person who is convicted of a third violent or sexual offence would have to prove why they should not be listed as a dangerous offender who would receive an indefinite jail sentence with a minimum seven years before being eligible for parole.
Liberal justice critic Sue Barnes raised concerns that the proposed changes could cause a backlog within the penal system and face a valid constitutional challenge.
“We have a dangerous-offenders piece of legislation currently in the Criminal Code that has passed the constitutional muster of the Supreme Court. This gives us the ability to have right now 350 dangerous offenders in our prison system,” Ms. Barnes told CBC News.
“Now every single offence is going to be that more important, if you're putting them up one after the other as in this situation. Three of a certain level will get you into a reverse onus situation where you have to prove that in future you won't re-offend as opposed to the state doing it.”
She said that the Opposition caucus would study the legislation and that, while the party has some concerns, “there could be inside of this legislation some areas that we could find supportable.”
NDP justice critic Joe Comartin was skeptical, calling the bill “a bit of an overkill” and saying he has serious doubts that it could stand up to constitutional scrutiny.
“This is political posturing,” said Mr. Comartin, predicting that the bill has little chance of passing the Commons before next spring, when another federal election is widely expected.
The Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness quickly came out in support of the move, saying the legislation is “another step in the right direction.”
“The current high-risk-offender legislation is a significant and unjustifiable detriment to the efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation and violence,” said John Muise, a retired police officer who is director of public safety at the centre.
Legal experts, however, have been casting doubt on the bill since the government announced the planned changes last week.
Professor Irvin Waller, director of the University of Toronto's Institute for the Prevention of Crime and author of Less Law, More Order, said that while it was clear that changes were needed, Canada should be very wary of any legislation that resembles the three-strikes laws in the United States.
“They incarcerate very large numbers of people who are not that dangerous,” he said of such laws. “All the evidence says if you want to reduce rates of violence, you need to tackle the risk factors of people, particularly young, violent men.”
University of Alberta criminal law professor Sanjeev Anand said the best approach to changing dangerous-offender listings would be to give the provinces more money so local prosecutors had the staff and time to pursue such complex matters.
“He (Prime Minister Steven Harper) should be helping the provinces fund the justice systems much better, and they should be appointing more judges. What really protects the public is good crime-prevention programs and more police on the street,” Dr. Anand said.
