Conservative criminalization of poverty advocated in flyer

On Wednesday last week, I received a menacing-looking flyer from our local MP indicating that "Age is No Excuse" and reminding me the Conservative Government believes “no one is above the law”. The flyer says, “The Conservative Government supports tougher laws so young punks and thugs will learn to take responsibility for their serious crimes.”

In Saturday’s Toronto Star, in the last of an eight part series on Crime and Punishment, I read there is a consensus among Canadian experts on the front-end reforms needed for safer communities: reduce poverty and school drop-out rates; invest in comprehensive childhood development initiatives; make housing affordable; increase access to health care and rehabilitative programs; and reduce incarceration rates, partly through alternatives to jail, and (then) direct those savings to neighbourhoods with a high number of offenders.”

The Conservative Government of our MP wants Canadians to adopt an American-style justice system where one in a hundred adults are in prison, the highest incarceration rate in the world. The American system of incarceration has not reduced crime rates. Yet, in Canada, we learned from a study of police departments published last week that Canada has the lowest crime rates in over a decade. Criminalizing poverty hasn’t worked in the USA, why would I believe the Conservative Government has the answer when the experts are shouting loudly to do the exact opposite of what they are purporting as a solution?

Seems to me the Conservative Government is trying to sell a bill of goods that is not even of their own invention. Criminalizing the poor, the homeless, the poorly educated, the mentally ill, the unemployed and those addicted to drugs or alcohol is no sound way to solve the problems of our society.

Neither is raising the fear level of the population through menacing flyers (which taxpayers pay for). The experts say, “the new ‘tough on crime’ measure put it squarely in the pay-more-later camp.” We can pay now to solve our problems through solutions that get at the core of the issues or we can pay much more later by criminalizing them.

Seems to me the experts win the point. We can’t afford the Conservative Government’s approach.