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The New Canada
- Thread starter Glaucus
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So true.
I went to a presentation from an SFU law professor on this subject and the whole ideological bent of the bill is wrong headed. It's a moralizing approach that not just doesn't work but makes things worse. The number one way of fighting crime is catching crooks. Locking them up for more than a couple of years does no great good. Crooks always think they are smart enough to get away with stuff else they wouldn't be crooks. If they felt that they were likely to get caught they wouldn't behave the way they do. Unfortunately, the fact is that they tend to get away with stuff a lot and so they learn that getting caught is not going to happen to them. This encourages their bad behaviour. Right now it is the problem on Wall St. People who should be going to jail are proving that nothing will happen to them and their behaviour will only get more destructive in the future. Deterrence is in the certainty of punishment, not the severity.
But more than that, likelihood of criminal behaviour diminishes with age and social integration. As you become more established in your community and gain inter-dependencies which benefit you, you are less likely to act against your community. Fairness and opportunity also discourage crime. If there is a legal way to meet your needs then it is adopted. If there is no legal recourse then illegal activity becomes a reasonable alternative or sometimes a necessity. Egalitarian societies (with flatter wealth distribution profiles) have less crime.
Harper knows that he is driving Canada towards a more US style of wealth distribution and, just like in the US where his policies are driven from, he realizes that this will require far more prisons to warehouse the desperate and with which to threaten the almost desperate. Unfortunately, since the rich, who this sort of system benefits by controlling the poor, aren't going to be paying the taxes to support the system, the poor will end up having to pay for their own enslavement - as usual.
I went to a presentation from an SFU law professor on this subject and the whole ideological bent of the bill is wrong headed. It's a moralizing approach that not just doesn't work but makes things worse. The number one way of fighting crime is catching crooks. Locking them up for more than a couple of years does no great good. Crooks always think they are smart enough to get away with stuff else they wouldn't be crooks. If they felt that they were likely to get caught they wouldn't behave the way they do. Unfortunately, the fact is that they tend to get away with stuff a lot and so they learn that getting caught is not going to happen to them. This encourages their bad behaviour. Right now it is the problem on Wall St. People who should be going to jail are proving that nothing will happen to them and their behaviour will only get more destructive in the future. Deterrence is in the certainty of punishment, not the severity.
But more than that, likelihood of criminal behaviour diminishes with age and social integration. As you become more established in your community and gain inter-dependencies which benefit you, you are less likely to act against your community. Fairness and opportunity also discourage crime. If there is a legal way to meet your needs then it is adopted. If there is no legal recourse then illegal activity becomes a reasonable alternative or sometimes a necessity. Egalitarian societies (with flatter wealth distribution profiles) have less crime.
Harper knows that he is driving Canada towards a more US style of wealth distribution and, just like in the US where his policies are driven from, he realizes that this will require far more prisons to warehouse the desperate and with which to threaten the almost desperate. Unfortunately, since the rich, who this sort of system benefits by controlling the poor, aren't going to be paying the taxes to support the system, the poor will end up having to pay for their own enslavement - as usual.
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@Glaucus
Have you seen the Avaaz petition on this?
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_harpers_cruel_crime_bill/
Have you seen the Avaaz petition on this?
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_harpers_cruel_crime_bill/
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Ya, I'm on their mailing list. It's a nice try but this isn't gonna be like the Copyright bill where they felt the pressure from thousands on people on that Facebook group. Now they know they can get away with anything, especially in the first few years as people will forget about it all by 2015. Yep, that's how long it will be before we have a chance of dethroning Harper. Depressing isn't it?
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I've signed the petition but I'm going to have to start going after my provincial politicians myself. My Federal MP is already against it - she'd vote with her party against it. My old riding is opposition so they'd vote against. I need to find people in Conservative ridings who would go to their MPs. Wants the small farming communities find out how much they will have to pay to lock up people to keep the townies neighbourhoods clean ...
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Well, my new MP is a former aid to Anita Neville, who stabbed her in the back and ran as a Conservative and to my surprise actually won. I expect no backbone from her - she'll do what ever Harper asks from her. Bitch.
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Luckily for you, you have someone to write to and phone. It's best if it's hand written on paper. Make sure you get a reply. And get some friends to pile on too. If she has no backbone maybe she can be bent the other way.