…would at least be somewhat credible had they ever called for building more prisons when crime was going up.
Canada’s approach to dealing with this crime explosion was summed up by then Liberal solicitor-general [ME: AND FRENCHMAN] Jean-Pierre Goyer in 1971.
Complaining about the high cost of incarcerating criminals, Goyer told Parliament: “The present situation results from the fact that (the) protection of society has received more emphasis than the rehabilitation of inmates. Consequently, we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of offenders, rather than the protection of society.”
And that’s what our governments — Liberal and Progressive Conservative — did, while crime rose for two more decades.(…)
It’s true crime rates — crimes per 100,000 people reported to police, thus accounting for population growth — started falling slowly in the early 1990s. (…)
However, crime rates have never returned to the far lower levels of the early 1960s. Today’s crime rate is 131% higher than in 1962, the first year of comparable record-keeping. Violent crime is up 316%.
Unreported crime, which StatsCan estimates by comparing police-reported crime stats to self-reported crime by a representative sample of Canadians, has increased 16% in the past decade alone. Today, fewer than one in three crimes (31%) is reported to police.
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Jeepers! I wonder why?
