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Letters to the Editor (Live) |
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Fighting crime worth the cost: Toews
The Truth in Sentencing Act was passed to ensure that convicted offenders serve a sentence that reflects the severity of their crimes.
Part of keeping our communities safe is keeping dangerous criminals behind bars, not releasing them into our streets early.
As victims’ organizations across the country have repeatedly told us, releasing criminals onto our streets early has a much higher cost than keeping them behind bars. This is why the provinces and police supported our efforts to end double and even triple credit for time served, efforts Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals tried to block.
We want to keep offenders, particularly dangerous repeat offenders, off the streets and we are
prepared to pay the cost in order to do that.
Our approach will require us to expand existing prisons and replace old facilities, many of which were outdated and due for replacement anyway. This is a small price to pay to ensure dangerous criminals don’t create new victims or terrorize previous ones.
The Correctional Service of Canada, the people who will actually be implementing the measures, has determined the cost to be $2 billion over five years. We have no reason to believe their figures aren’t accurate. We disagree with the opposition’s view that dangerous criminals should be released onto our streets early just to save a buck.
It does cost money to deal with serious criminals (see “Doing the math on 2-for-1,” Law Times, July 5). But failing to do so comes with significant costs as well, and not just in dollar terms.
The impact on victims includes the value of damaged or stolen property, pain and suffering, loss of income and productivity, and health services. Statistics from the Department of Justice indicate that, in 2003, 67 per cent of the estimated $70-billion overall cost of crime in Canada was borne by victims.
The Canadian government will continue to stand up for the rights of victims over those of criminals.
Vic Toews,
Minister of public safety, Ottawa
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