Policy & Positions Manual
Policy Priority Area - Crime and Public Safety (Federal)
Increased Sentences for Prolific Offenders (2009)
Prolific offenders do not receive escalating sentences and in many cases receive reduced sentences as the number of offences increases. The Canadian justice system is plagued with repeat offenders who take an inordinate amount of both enforcement and legal resources. A reduction in the number of appearances by repeat offenders would greatly reduce the crime rate and burden on our justice system. The Federal Government should enact legislation that requires the number of repeat offences to be given greater weight in determining sentences.
Issues of crime and public safety are a significant concern for the business community and for British Columbian citizens in general. A recent report titled, Concern for Leniency: An Examination of Sentencing Patterns in British Columbia from Doob and Webster, showed that a greater percentage of British Columbians are concerned with lenient sentencing practices in their province than are citizens in other provinces (74% compared to 69%).
Though the same report shows that sentencing practices in BC are not lighter than in other provinces across Canada in the aggregate, its findings highlight specific challenges in BC. While 41% of convicted drug offenders in BC are incarcerated, compared to 39% in Canada, only 50% of those receive sentences of more than 3 months (Canadian average excluding BC is 71%) and only 20% get more than 6 month sentences (compared to the Canadian average of 58% excluding BC). The report also does not examine the question as to whether repeat offenders receive increasing sentences.
While the Doob and Webster study is encouraging in the aggregate, it is in stark contrast to studies from city police forces on specific problematic populations of chronic offenders, and does not examine the great increase in violent and gang crime.
In addition, the business community continues to call for the use of crime victimization counts as a more accurate measure of the occurrence of crime, particularly property crime. It is the position of the business community that many incidents of criminal actively do not get reported to police and therefore counted in the statistics, which in turn skews the official crime statistics in a downward direction.
A recent Vancouver Police Department study seems to support the second position. The study indicates that for the majority of chronic property offenders, custody sentences decrease after approximately their thirtieth conviction, averaging just 25 days per conviction. The report shows that offenders themselves indicate they can victimize up to 4,000 individuals or businesses per year, most often in support of their drug addiction. Due to very short sentences, the offenders are back on the street in short order, still in the grips of their addiction, and simply continue on with committing crimes to access resources to fund their habit.
Persons who engage in repeat offences such as for property crime should be dealt with more seriously by the law. While a light sentence may be reflective of the particular incident in front of the courts, it does not reflect the ongoing harm to the community at large and the volume of property affected. It does not in any way cause the offender to stop their behaviour upon release as the sentence length does not allow adequate time for drug treatment with the goal of withdrawal and changed behaviour.
In the long run, it is the community who suffers the harms of repeat offenders while offenders themselves are relatively unaffected.
THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS
That the Federal Government amend the Criminal Code to support and encourage the judiciary to issue increased sentences for prolific offenders that better reflect their criminal history and the collective harm they have done and continue to do to the community, including by the imposition of consecutive sentences.
