You Want to Get Tough on Crime?

Here's crime you should get tough on:

Melamine laced products remaining on store shelves.

I remember watching a program, eons ago, where Health Canada/CFIA officials were entering grocery stores to make sure that ready-to-eat food was being kept hot enough. Where it wasn't, store personnel were made to throw it out. The officials came back a day later and found the temperature had been turned back down.

If your ethics are that bad - if you're risking your customers' lives by leaving melamine products on the shelves or serving stale food, you ought to be shut down. I should not have to worry, in a modern, developed country, that recalled food is still sitting on shelves waiting to poison me.

You want to get tough on crime, Mr. Harper? Get tough on that. Pass a law that seriously punishes unethical businessmen. Shut down those stores for a week. Fine them enough that the CFIA or Health Canada or whoever handles these things can go through every product in the store with a fine tooth comb and clean them out. Make it embarrassing. Make it a public humiliation as an effective deterrent to the next guy who tries.

That's a tough-on-crime bill I could get behind.

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Oh, Twenty Five years, well then ...

Do you remember when you were 14 years old? If you were male, you probably remember all that energy you had and how quickly you could become angry. If you were female, you probably felt a bit differently. But I'm not female, so I can't be sure.

Now remember getting angry at somebody, maybe getting in a fight.

Remember how much you were thinking, "Hey, if I really hurt this guy, I could go to jail for 10 years. I guess I'll just stop right now."

Because 14 year old boys are very pragmatic about these things.

So, we can safely conclude that Stephen Harper's idea of lengthening the maximum criminal sentence of a 14 year old from 10 to 25 years will surely to put an end to such violence.

Right. Totally reasonable. Except in Quebec where it will only apply to kids 16 years and older. Apparently our children here every else in Canada are beyond help, whereas Quebec's children are more sophisticated.

Sigh.

How stupidly reactionary do the Conservatives have to be? Longer sentences simply don't deter youth crime. Criminals, especially children, don't expect to get caught. What does it matter what the punishment is?

The answer, if anyone cares to listen, is to find out what could possibly drive a child to commit murder and find out how to stop that. We don't want giant prisons full of maladjusted people. We want very small prisons and a functional society.

The Conservative Party. Wrong. Just plain wrong. Somebody pass me a Listeria sandwich.

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The Real Crime Wave

I remember receiving my first constituent report from the Hon. Minister of Defence Gordon O'Connor. There was a whole bunch of scare mongering and other nonsense about crime without any mention of the fact that crime rates were going down. Bereft of real platform issues beyond letting rich people get richer and having a bigger military with which to play, they were forced to invent problems. At the end of the newsletter was a questionnaire: Are you afraid of crime? Do you want your government to take action on crime? etc. etc.

I said, "No. I'm not afraid of crime. The crime rate is going down. Now stop with the fear mongering and find something real to do with your time."

But I think I was wrong. Crime and crime rates are going up. The following graphs demonstrate this very well.

As you can see here, and according to this report from CTV Toronto, there's a recent increase in the number of people not paying for their gasoline. I've always been told to worry about immigrant youths, but I guess it's the wealthy people with large vehicles who are the problem.


Then we have this problem, where the Government of Canada was illegally ordering prisoners detained by Canadian soldiers to be handed over to a regime in Afghanistan that is well known for its use of torture. This is a pretty serious crime wave and we really ought to start getting tough with the people ordering these crimes. No use going after the soldiers. I'm sure my MP, Gordon O'Connor, being so concerned about crime, will want to find the guy who gave the orders and lied about how well monitored the prisoners were. That guy should probably go to jail. (Of course, I had to make up all of the numbers in this graph as Al Qaeda could break in to your kitchen and steal all of your cookies if they knew how many people Canada had detained. All we know is that about 200 of them escaped a few weeks ago.)


Then there's this problem. There's been a 100% rise in the number of Canadian juveniles (child soldiers) captured by foreign powers and tortured by them. Worse, Canada is complicit in this as our government has not protested this mistreatment. This is out of control. Someone has to step in with some mandatory minimum sentencing for whomever is failing to protest this horror.


And lastly, because a reader thankfully mentioned it, I should bring this up. While Taser related deaths did decrease temporarily in 2006, we can see that they're on the rise again in Canada. While not technically, legally speaking a crime, these are still very worrying.


Well, it's all there in black and white (and blue). The Conservatives are right. Crime is out of control in this country and it's time somebody started getting tough on it. I think enforcement is the key, at least in the short term, and then perhaps some civic education for those who are likely to be working in areas where these crimes could happen in the future.

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Conservatives predictable on Crime Stats

Sometimes you don't even have to construct a straw man. Your opponents just naturally make themselves in to one. The "God Hates Fags" people probably top that list, but our local Conservatives also hit the mark the odd time.

Stats Canada released the latest crime rates. Sure enough, there's less and less chance of being a crime victim every year for the last couple decades. No cause for alarm. Things are going well, right?

Of course not. As predictable as can be, the Conservatives - being short on real platform ideas - will go right on telling us about the horrible crime waves going on right now! Of course they're going to find every story they can and say, "Look! Scary Crime! Ignore those statistics!"

Look, here's a crime. Let's pretend per capita doesn't matter. Oh, look, two more crimes!

The crime rate is down. That means there's less chance of you involuntarily being involved in a crime. That's a good thing. Stop trying to frighten people with anecdotal evidence. It's really juvenile.

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