Harper’s Crime Wars generate Crime

Its a tradition of bankrupt politicians to deflect by lashing out against crime, as if this problem was not better taken care off by reason than by impulse.
The US justice has started to retreat from an excessive penal code against young offenders because it damaged trust into police and courts and hurt public safety. Harper wants to make Canada the only G7 country without an effective youth court. There are almost no examples for such a policy in Western countries. One that I could find was the Third Reich which abandoned the youth court during WW2 in 1944.
The bedrock of justice history and 800 years of justice reform is that crime deterrence depends on equality in court and balanced dignity of the court. Contrary to hearsay the severity of sentences has nothing to do with crime deterrence. The crucial respect for the courts is tied to the independence of justice as third pillar of the representative system, keeping government and parliament honest. Its a watchdog function without which democracy cannot stand. A control function that Harper wants to get rid of by diminishing the courts with a radical new way of legislating the court’s sentences. He does this together with corrupting the rules to appoint judges in the novel way of political appointments. Every person in every walk and place of life knows, every woman, man and child knows that the adherence to rules depends on them being equal for everybody. An excessive penal code propels the well to do to negotiate their way out, strike deals, come up with expensive lawyers. Crime deterrence is diminished as a result of a growing inequality in court; its that simple. And its already a problem, since Jean Chretien's times Canada’s young offender legislation is one of the toughest in the world. Lack of legal aid and lack of access of low income people to justice in Canada had caught the attention of the UN. Aboriginal women, to a significant degree teenagers, are locked up 30 times as often as non aboriginal women. Aboriginal and black youth are locked up longer than other Canadians for identical offenses, the stats are obvious. Jail populations in Canada are growing but have some way to go to the seven fold per capita level of incarceration in the US, but also to a US style organized crime culture that is bred in the jails. Harper’s utilization of the vengeance motive represents a shameless exploitation of the suffering of crime victims and a cynical disrespect for the safety of Canadian homes and on Canadian streets.
The Prime Minister’s behaviour is in keeping with his ambition to become an international outlaw and a very lonesome heir of a Bush Doctrine without Bush. Highlights are the breaking of the child soldier convention, violation of the convention against torture by the way of covering up extraordinary rendition flights, accommodation of war crime activities by Afghan authorities, warlords and other war allies (Because of this in the fall of 2007, level headed Canadian officers outright resisted orders and stopped to hand over prisoners to Afghan allies), promotion of capital punishment for Canadians at the hands of the US justice. All of these are violations of government’s obligations that may be dealt with in due time under Canadian law.