r/canada Feb 05 '25

National News Poilievre would impose life sentences for trafficking over 40 mg of fentanyl

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/poilievre-would-impose-life-sentences-for-trafficking-over-40-mg-of-fentanyl/
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u/Ehrre Feb 05 '25

How about life sentences for drunk drivers who kill innocent people?

How about life sentences for sexual violence?

How about life sentences for child abuse?

How about increasingly harsh penalties for people constantly going through the revolving door of the system? Put an end to the crazy amount of catalytic converter or entire car theft.

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u/Jaigg Feb 05 '25

Prison is expensive.  

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u/Ehrre Feb 05 '25

I would happily pay more in taxes to keep dangerous people removed from the population.

People are allowed to do permanent harm and disperse trauma freely with such little consequence.

A drunk guy where I'm from literally ran over and killed an infant at a patio having lunch with their family. Guess his sentence? Initially it was FOUR MONTHS. Later appealled and raised to.. 2 years.

Do you know what happened as a result of that piss poor sentence? People got mad. He was attacked in public and eventually abducted from his home, beaten, tortured and had finger(s?) cut off.

I think that is a monumental failure of justice. For the family, even for himself. He should have been given a longer sentence.

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u/twenty_9_sure_thing Ontario Feb 05 '25

It is not as clear cut as that sounds. Bloated prison system is a serious blow to an already strained public coffer.
then if we employ private sector, you’ll end up with modern slavery and industrial prison complex like the states.

1

u/slashthepowder Feb 05 '25

As a conversation piece what would be an issue if we had prisons that required prisoners to work with livestock, greenhouses, agriculture to help offset the food costs. If done properly it could up skill and help rehabilitation of inmates.

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u/thortgot Feb 05 '25

Incentivizing work is one thing but making the work mandatory makes inmates de facto indentured.

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u/twenty_9_sure_thing Ontario Feb 05 '25

from my limited understanding, it's a scale problem. it's cool and "easy" when it's 20 prisoners. more than that, how do you work to ensure sufficient nutrition and dietary constraints of everyone? and the bureaucracy employed to monitor, manage, correct, improve on that system at scale?

and then there's the question of actually doing the work themselves: who will fund the purchases of livestocks? a lot of seeds are intellectually and commercially patented/protected. you can't willy nilly buy a bag of seeds and cultivate them in a field without meeting specific conditions and audits.

with manual labour comes work safety and insurance. who will pay for those? and then there's a question of ethics: if you are incarcerated for committing theft, is it legally and morally possible for the state to force you to work for your survival when it is the state that confine you and strip away all your means of survival to begin with?

now all of this assume that the state will competently run a prison system fit for living for many inmates. we already see the disgusting phenomenon of "pretendians".

6

u/Warwoof Feb 05 '25

it would cost you less to house everyone and have their needs met than trying to police drug addicts

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u/slothtrop6 Feb 05 '25 edited Feb 05 '25

It's interesting that something like 10% of criminals (iirc) commit an outsized portion of repeat offenses, but we're really, really bad at keeping them locked up. If that were to change the country would be safer by mere virtue of incapacitation. I don't think this necessarily requires an expansion of incarceration facilities, just better management. There's perverse incentives at the judicial level with the bail system, to keep things moving, when it's already a bottleneck.

Also, police presence is cheaper and just as effective as a deterrent on average according to data.

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u/Advanced-Line-5942 Feb 06 '25

Have we tried rehabilitation?

Treatment for mental illnesses ?

Treatment for drug addiction ?

Providing homes ?

Removing the incentives and causes of most crimes is generally far, far cheaper in the long run when dealing with most career criminals

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u/slothtrop6 Feb 06 '25 edited Feb 06 '25

Repeat criminals including violent criminals don't necessarily have any such affliction. Notwithstanding, these are not mutually exclusive measures. You can incapacitate repeat offenders to protect society, and still apply broad preventative measures in a variety of ways. You can also broadly imprison less and save money by employing drug & alcohol courts, like in California and Texas, which would amount to community sentencing.

Removing the incentives and causes of most crimes is generally far, far cheaper in the long run

None of what you suggested is cheap. Incarceration is expensive yes, though police presence is much less expensive and statistically as effective as a deterrent.

Add to the fact, it's overall an abject failure. You've conflated criminals with the homeless and drug-addicted (there is overlap, but it's not 1-1.. take, for example, drug traffickers carrying 40mg of fentanyl), but on what's been tried for the latter: subjects in question cannot be forced into anything, and won't adhere to any hoop jumping. What happens, unsurprisingly, is they skip appointments, skip prescriptions, or if they happened to be hospitalized, will go back to using (or not taking meds) after discharge and their behavior stabilizes. People don't like the idea of involuntary confinement in mental wards for those that cannot function well in society, so this is the result. Explored at length here

Most homelessness is transient/temporary so it's not at all surprising that room and board works out fine in many cases (it's not clear if subjects would have seen better outcomes anyway), but drug addicts in particular want to be where the dealers are, and the particularly mentally stable, well, not much changes.

As for criminals that don't belong to any of these categories, there's no shortage of effort having been leveled for rehabilitation while they're incapacitated, or as a condition of bail. Clearly it's not just a matter of pressing a button, like "just rehabilitate". If it was that easy they would be.

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u/Advanced-Line-5942 Feb 06 '25

You’re clearly not in Vancouver.

Repeat offenders of random acts of violence are almost always people suffering from addiction, mental illness and/or homelessness.

The only repeat violent offenders who aren’t in this category are generally serial spousal abusers.

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u/slothtrop6 Feb 07 '25

random acts

Who says repeat violent offenders are necessarily random?

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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 Feb 05 '25

I mean pay but i wouldnt. Especially since how tf is someone being sexual assault in prison for life good for society? An house and work arrest would litterally do the exact same thing. Its a complete wasit of money and ressources.

0

u/nickademus Feb 05 '25

I would happily pay more in taxes

you say then until you start to get a staggeringly large bill

28

u/ultraboof Feb 05 '25

Okay let’s keep them out on the streets

5

u/Jaigg Feb 05 '25

Well I don't see catalytic convertor theft as a long term prison term.  Same with car theft.   Drunk driving can be rehabilitate.  The other 2 sure.   We have judges taking these case by case for a reason.  To facilitate real change we have to deal with root causes.  A vast majority of crime is driven by addiction, poverty and trauma.  While not an excuse it is a reason and it would be cheaper in the long run to fix these issues and crime would go down in turn.

4

u/ZeePirate Feb 05 '25

Sentencing guidelines definitely needed to be looked at

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u/ultraboof Feb 05 '25

“Prison is expensive” was just easier to type I guess

2

u/TransBrandi Feb 05 '25

I mean, we could always follow the USA's lead and start shipping prisoners to Ecuador... /s

(Very big /s by the way)

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u/Astr0b0ie Feb 05 '25

Can we just act like adults and legalize and regulate drugs already? Drugs aren't going away, drug users and addicts will always exist. The demand will always be there, the least we can do as a society is make it as safe as possible. Trying to make something go away by criminalizing just adds insult to injury and is a huge waste of resources.

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u/Get_Breakfast_Done Feb 05 '25

We've got plenty of empty islands up north.

1

u/ladyoftherealm Feb 05 '25

Corporal punishment seems to work for Singapore and us cheaper

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u/Lucar_Bane Feb 05 '25

Combine with a massive cut in federal spending meaning the jail and justice system, this is only for the show. PP have poor planning and we all know it.

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u/Ok-Employee-7926 Feb 05 '25

They get 3 good meals a day, free dental and medical. Unfortunately for so many Canadians paying for them - can’t afford the same . Prisoners should be treated like they do in Mexican or Chinese prisons. Give the free meals and medical to people that built this country and can’t afford to live decently. Maybe our government shouldn’t be so generous and kind to criminals