What does DTK need?

[danbrotherston]

I'm not as knowledgeable as I need to be in order to argue the percentage of responsibility between the government and the criminal justice system, but I am under the impression that it's not solely on the government. Law is a messy, imperfect system dealing with the complexities of humans. Combine that with sentencing and bail laws (rightly or wrongly) including considerations (an important word here) of circumstances, race, public safety, past convictions, etc., and the fact that new interpretations or considerations regarding old laws can occur at any time, and it seems easy for the large criminal justice system to get the balance incorrect. Perhaps their role in these issues are insignificant; I just don't know and am happy to be informed.


In the absence of proper rehabilitation, which we are nowhere close to, I think it's far more productive to consider sentencing, where applicable, as a tool for public safety that rehabilitation should have served rather than punishment for the individual convicted. In that perspective it's worth thinking about the fact that sentence length is an immediate tool against recidivism in that the convicted can't create new victims while incarcerated. Though I understand the concerns with that line of thinking, remember that rehabilitation is itself a tool against reducing crime and not the goal of the CJS itself.

And I'm just kind of spitballing thoughts there... Broadly speaking I agree with what you've said. There are far more tools at the disposal of government and society that have been left untouched. And an additional problem I didn't mention before, it seems our current funding or ability to staff the courts is so out of line with demand that we are throwing out cases because the backlog is so big.

Longer sentences does nothing to reduce recidivism, and instead plays a part in making it a little more likely.

https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs...ex-en.aspx

"An analysis of the studies according to the risk of the offender also did not show a deterrent effect. For both low risk and high risk offenders, increasing sentence length was associated with small increases in recidivism. Low risk offenders were slightly more likely to commit new offences than high risk offenders. This finding suggests some support to the theory that prison may serve as a "school for crime" for some offenders.

"Regardless of the type of analysis employed, no evidence for a crime deterrent function was found."

The problem is that the deterrence effect of punishment changes depending on the crime and the motivations for it.

Punishment has little effect on a persons crimes of passion or crimes of desperation (the types of crimes we're most often talking about here).

But they do have significant effect on crimes of convenience (which are the types of crimes that most people, like you and I) are almost exclusively contemplating committing. The most obvious example is traffic violations:

I don't care much j-walking, because the chances of punishment are low and the punishment is low. In the Netherlands, I actually take it a lot more seriously because the potential punishment I face is higher--it can affect my immigration status (although, I'd have to get a LOT of fines for it to make a real difference), and also because other contextual things are different--the law is less intentionally biased and oppressive against me because I am not in a car.

Unfortunately this reality predisposes people in our station in life to believing that sentencing can make a major difference in the types of crimes they're concerned about...