As if dealing with Tim Hudak’s chain gangs in our communities won’t be enough in Ontario, us Ontarians and the rest of Canada will have to put up with a proposed bill, hysterically named Sebastien’s Law (Protecting the Public from Young Offenders) or Bill C-4, which seeks to amend in a most egregious way Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act.
First, I take issue with the name the Conservatives gave Bill C-4, Sebastien’s Law. It was named after Sebastien Lacasse, a 19 year old Quebecer that was killed at a house party after a savage beating. He was stabbed repeatedly, pepper sprayed and punched by a group of other young people led by a seventeen year old.
The seventeen year old pleaded guilty at the court hearing and received a life sentence as a result from Judge Ginette Maillet back in 2006.
I speculate that:
First, the reason the conservatives would name the bill after Lacasse could be to honor Sebastien and to gesture to the Canadian public that this kind of horrid violence among youth will never happen again, or at least be severely curbed once youth find out that they will receive adult sentences if they were ever to commit such crimes.
Second, another reason could be a reason of pure symbolism, hoping that naming the Bill after Sebastien will remind Canadians of the tragedy and thus gain more support for the Bill.
Regardless of the underlying motives, the Conservative approach is a “doomed to failure” approach. Really, tried and failed would be a better way of expressing my contempt for the doctrine of “harsher penalties equal more justice”.
I know no statistics on the issue of Youth Crime except that indeed youth violent offenses in Canada have increased by an overall 11% since 1999 but have been declining on a year to year basis since 2007. Violent offenses of course would refer to such things as homicide and rape and other crimes considered severe by the Canadian criminal justice system.
See Table 8, titled Police-reported youth Crime Severity Index, by province and territory, 2009. Or see a summary of the Police-reported Crime Statistics from Statistics Canada.
Also, if one examines Table 8 closely, one would notice it is replete with significant decreases in Youth non-violent crimes, in some provinces more than others, of say -20% in Newfoundland and Labrador, -10% in Alberta and -2% in Ontario, with an overall nationwide decrease of -2% from 2008 to 2009 in the Youth Crime Severity Index and -3% for the same year in the Youth Non-Violent Crime Severity Index.
Now going back to my tried and failed remark about a system that focuses on more punishment in hopes to deter crime, I think we need but look at countries with stricter punishments for crimes and compare their numbers with statistics from countries with lesser punishments and perhaps more focused on rehabilitation.
Finally, I would think that murderers and rapists, burglars and con artists alike don’t stop before committing a crime and say things like: “Oh those sentences sure look longer and worse than before. Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this.”
I think it is exactly the opposite, the harsher the penalties get, the more brazen and worthwhile some crimes appear to offenders. Stricter punishments, in my opinion, might as well add fuel to the motivation to commit a particular crime, rather than subtract from it.
