Canada, a Consequence-Free Jurisdiction for Public Violence
"He was brought before a judge and released with conditions and the charges were later stayed."
Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee
"[There
is] over-incarceration of Indigenous and other marginalized people in
custody [relatable to increased criminality with its roots in societal
traumas brought by the Indian Residential School system]."
"It's
sad to see, but we still have a responsibility to ensure the public
safety of our communities, because 99 percent of the time the offender
is Indigenous and so is the victim."
Daren Montour, Chief of the Six Nations Police Service
Edmonton
Police are loathe to release the name of the man dubbed a 'suspect' -- a
man who acted as yet another perpetrator of 'stranger attacks'
occurring all over Canada -- who stabbed to death in broad daylight
outside a school, an Edmonton mother and her 11-year-old child. Their
assailant was a complete stranger. What the Edmonton Police did release
is that he had a long history of random violent encounters , including
some against children, and had only recently been released from prison.
The
spike in random violence is being attributed to a systemic failure of
Canadian bail policy, where chronic violent offenders are released from
custody, readily and too frequently, according to a near-unanimous
coalition of police and political leaders. The situation is seen as the
unintended consequence of a program set up to address the country's
'over-reliance' on incarceration as well as the 'over-representation' of
marginalized groups within the prison system.
Canada,
as it happens, had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the
democratic world. Under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau, this low rate of incarceration has dropped even lower,
reflecting progressive compassion for the perceived underdog, over
government responsibility to ensure that cities and towns and their
inhabitants anywhere and everywhere in Canada are safe and secure from
violence.
In
2015, when the Trudeau Government took office, statistics indicated
87.9 people jailed for evry100,000 Canadians. The last count in 2022
showed 66.8 for every 100,000, representing a 24 percent reduction. The
non-profit World Prison Brief in 2016 identified Canada with a lower
overall incarceration rate than Luxembourg, Spain and the U.K.; tied
roughly with Belgium and France.
Now
at the lower end of incarceration rates among G20 nations, in 2021
prison investigators issued a report in Australia concluding that
Canada's incarceration rate was over 50 percent lower than its own. In
comparing Canada to the rest of its hemispheric coevals, the disparity
becomes particularly pronounced. Major South and Central American
countries have an incarceration rate orders of magnitude higher than
Canada's.
Canada
ranked 164th in the world for incarceration rate, according to the
tally maintained by World Prison Brief, with 2020 data. A ranking that
has Canada with an incarceration rate of 85 per 100,000, in comparison
to 531 for the United States, and 174 for Mexico. The only countries
with lower prison populations are either European with exceptionally low
rates of crime, or African countries lacking resources to maintain
comprehensive criminal justice systems.
The-then Justice Minister in 2015 was tasked to explore "sentencing alternatives" and "bail reform" as well as "initiatives to reduce the rate of incarceration amongst Indigenous Canadians".
A project no doubt dear to the heart of the-then minister, herself an
Indigenous Canadian of high repute and accomplishment. In less than a
few months the Justice Ministry released consultation reports focusing
on Canada's "Over-reliance on incarceration".
Bill
C-75 included a "modernization" of the bail system, requiring judges to
consider a suspect's ethnic background when reaching judgement whether
to release them from remand. Bail hearings previously had for the most
part focused on flight risk and public safety. Following that, the
Department of Justice produced Bill C-5, proposing to drop mandatory
minimum sentences for a wide variety of firearms offences, openly
declaring the justice system to be shot through with "systemic racism".
Bill
C-75 is held by its critics to have yielded the consequence of
increasing urban disorder and criminality by removing the option of
police enforcing release conditions. Minister of Justice Murray Rankin
in British Columbia's government, one led by the New Democratic Party,
pointed out that the law had initiated a sharp rise of violent, repeat
offenders attacking strangers on the streets of British Columbia.
Canada,
it seems, has released so many non-Indigenous prisoners they have
failed to address core justifications in pursuing the Trudeau
government's prison reform in the first place: Indigenous
"over-representation".
Canada's
most recent statistics, according to the Correction Service of Canada,
of "custodial admissions identify as Indigenous, a slightly higher share
than in 2015, when the Justice Department first began studying the
problem of "over-representation of Indigenous people".
Labels: 'Stranger Attacks', ail, Canada, Justice System, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Violence
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