OUR DEAF AND JAIL–HAPPY FEDERAL GOVT.
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 12 June 13, 2013
…In the face of the Tories multibillion-dollar prison expansion program, and Statistics Canada 2010 findings that Canada’s crime rate had dropped, Senator Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu said that “someone, somewhere, is manipulating the numbers.”
The decrease in crime was of such, Yvan Delorme, Montreal Police Chief (2005-2010), created a “commercial services” arm that rented out cops; manage their private hiring for parties, sporting events, traffic control during film shoots, motor escorts during parades, guards to businesses, and the like.
To further assail the reliability of the decreased crime statistics from StasCan, execute the Party’s agenda and serve up a “red herring,” Stockwell Day, the Treasury Board president voiced there was “an alarming increase in unreported crime.”
Are there crimes that go unreported? Certainly! But how can anyone “gusstimate” as to quantity when “unreported” implies unknown?… By Day’s logic, “unreported crime” justifies prison expansion.
Stockwell Day was never a bright political bulb, just a political opportunist. During his tenure as Opposition leader (Canadian Alliance Party) – in May 2001, Day condemned Canada for taking anti-Israel positions without public debate. And like a ventriloquist’s dummy, reiterated the #1 song on the playlist of the day (no pun intended): “Truth of the violence in the Middle East is distorted by television coverage.”
…On July 30, 2008 – when Day was the Public Safety Minister, he went on record saying that the government “Push for longer jail terms will not result in overcrowded prisons or ballooning corrections costs.”
It is impossible to have one without the other. Adding to the idiocy, Day also opined that longer sentences for drug and gun offences will be a deterrent — which has not been the American marketplace reality.
In October 2010, the federal government announced prison expansion in Ontario and Quebec to the tune of $155 million. Also, it will be spending $2 billion over the next five years to ensure the nation’s jails can handle the expected surge in inmates.
…We imprison to our peril. Incarcerated citizenry are eventually going to be freed. And society stands to pay for the extra wrath and scars imprisonment left on souls.