Showing posts with label criminal justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criminal justice. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Vic Toews Strikes Again

Apparently dissatisfied with the way society currently holds criminals to account, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has decided that its high time to make them literally pay for their crimes.

In a move that will save $10 million per annum and leave more for Bev Oda's special travel requirements, The Star reports that prisoners will now have to pay up to 30% of their income toward room and board, leaving them less for the frills they often purchase inside, such as cough medicine and aspirin.

Given that the top earners make the princely sum of $6.90 a day, this latest move is sure to teach them, as their incarceration clearly has not, that crime does not pay.

Friday, January 20, 2012

More Joy in Heaven

The above title, taken from both The Bible and the title of a Morley Callaghan novel, suggests the possibility of redemption. There was a report in yesterday's Star amply demonstrating that potential.

When 37-year-old Maxwell Beech was facing sentencing for gun and drug-related charges seven years ago, he expected the worst. The veteran of youth court offences was assuming he would be receiving a sentence of at least four years when the Judge, Hugh Atwood, did something he hadn't anticipated.

“I could see you're a changed man,” Beech remembers the judge told him. He repeats this phrase like a badge of honour.

Atwood sentenced Beech to serve just 90 days on weekends, reporting to Metro West detention centre on Fridays and released Monday mornings, to go home, and raise his son.

“This man gave me another shot. Another opportunity at life,” Beech said.


On Tuesday, Beech returned to Judge Atwood's court to thank him for his mercy, something that set him on a corrective life course, resulting in his now running his own business installing blinds and home security systems.

I mention this not because I do not believe in harsh sentencing for serious and violent offenses (I do), but because a followup story in today's Star discusses how the discretion used by Judge Atwood in Beech's case will no longer be an option because Bill C10, expected to pass into law in Canada by the end of March, will make second chances a thing of the past. Instead, the bill’s mandatory minimum sentences will make sure that people like Maxwell Beech go to jail.

Bill C10, one may recall, is being enacted at a time of sharply declining rates of crime, something the ideologically-drive Harper government seems to think is irrelevant.

The article serves to remind us that to acknowledge the humanity in others, as did Judge Atwell, is also to experience it within ourselves.