Quote:
Originally Posted by Huntingwhale
Some people just can't be rehabilitated. Every year you read stories about some child molester or paedophile who gets released and then a couple months later he's arrested on the exact same charge. Or the guy who has 20+ drunk driving offences. Or the manipulative psychopath who beats every woman he dates. Spending more money on rehab for those guys isn't going to do anything except waste money on conditions that cannot be fixed.
TBH I'm surprised so many people are against this. While some clarification is needed, this is long overdue. Someone who commits murder, is convicted, only to be out on parole 12 years later and commits murder again, that's a travesty and failure of the justice system. The child molester who raped a bunch of kids, only to be let out early for ''good behaviour'' and is then arrested a couple months later committing the same act? That's a failure and travesty as well. Those people can't be rehabilitated no matter how much resources you toss at them. But every once in a while one of them makes parole and commits those acts again and the public outcry is the same; how did this guy get out and why? Even once is too many. That needs to be stopped. I hope this gets passed. For way to long our justice system has been too lax on criminals like this.
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Sure, but if they were getting parole after 12 years, that would have been a second-degree murder under current laws. Are you suggesting that second-degree murders should be increased to life-sentences with no chance of parole? And if so, what would be the implications for the cost facing our prison system, by making prison terms that typically last between 10-20 years stretch out for 30 or 40 years?
Or perhaps you were using 12 years flippantly and aren't actually referring to second-degree murders; instead you think that first-degree murderers are likely to reoffend after 25 years of incarceration? I'd be very curious to know how often in Canadian history someone has between sentenced to 1st degree murder, served a 25 year term (as they would now with the faint-hope clause repealed), and re-committed.
Now, sex crimes are different IMO, because right now the terms are shorter and it seems like there's a higher likelyhood of reoffending. Are there sex offenders who should never see the light of day again? Probably, and there should likely be stiffer parole eligibilities to something like aggravated sexual assault; in my opinion a parole eligibility for aggravated sexual assault that starts at 7 years is too lenient. I'd have no problem with a government starting a debate about what appropriate terms for parole eligibility are for sexual offenses.
Besides, the justice system already has the 'dangerous offender' tag where they can keep a person in prison beyond the length of their prison term. The current government has made it far easier for prosecutors to obtain dangerous offender tags. They've also eliminated the faint hope clause. So in less than 10 years, we've gone from first-degree murderers having the faint-hope clause (potential for parole after 15 years), to no chance of parole for 25 years, plus an increased likelihood of being kept indefinitely. How about we take time to evaluate those changes and see how they work both as a deterrent and in eliminating reoffenders, before stacking more seemingly redundant measures on top of it?
Here's the big problem with the trade-off in the cut to funding that Tinordi linked to: most likely, any new legislation will be grandfathered in, ie. people in prison currently on life sentences will not have theirs extended to life without parole, so it's going to take at least 15 years before we get any improvement in public safety as a result (if such a policy actually improved public safety, which is questionable). Meanwhile, they're defunding a policy that's going to immediately decrease public safety. If the hope is that the loss of these sorts of programs will be offset by harsher sentencing, there's going to be a decade-long gap between when the one is discontinued and when the other makes any difference to the number of potential reoffenders on the streets.