Better Solution for Criminal Justice

The problem:

Recidivism is a problem with the courts serving as a revolving door for young offenders. The police often have not completed the paperwork and the offender is back on the streets.

Viewing criminals as victims needing nurture and healing from their past creates victims of innocent Canadians on whom the criminals prey.

CHP Canada’s criminal justice policy focuses on restitution and public safety.

Non violent criminals should be working to earn money to support their families and pay restitution to their victims.

Dangerous offenders—violent and sexual criminals, those who use guns in the commission of their crimes, and pedlars of drugs and child pornography—should be kept behind bars until we are convinced they are no longer a threat to public safety.

Capital Punishment should be a consideration for dangerous offenders who have committed heinous crimes.

Young Offenders that commit murder, rape, assault, armed robbery, etc. should all be raised to adult court—although there should be special rehabilitation facilities for these young offenders

The CHP’s Better Solution:

Restitution and Public Safety

The CHP’s criminal justice policy focuses on restitution and public safety. Up to two-thirds of our prison spaces are occupied by non-violent criminals; these people should not be in jail. Instead they should be working to earn money to support their families and pay restitution to their victims. Restitution has a profoundly rehabilitative effect on offenders. Truly dangerous offenders—violent and sexual criminals, those who use guns in the commission of their crimes, and pedlars of drugs and child pornography—should be kept behind bars until we are convinced they are no longer a threat to public safety.

Revise the Young Offenders Act

The Young Offenders’ Act needs serious revision. One of those revisions would be to name offenders who commit ‘adult’ crimes—i.e., serious offences, including violent and sexual offences. Murder, rape, assault, armed robbery, etc. should all be raised to adult court—although there should be special rehabilitation facilities for these young offenders.

As with all violent offenders, we reject concurrent sentencing and the bargaining away of mandatory sentences for weapons offences.

The Young Offenders’ Act has created a situation in which adult criminals exploit juveniles to acts as their “cat’s-paws”, because the juveniles will receive sentences irrelevant to the offences. 

However, we do not agree that young offenders should “do adult time” in adult prisons; that would merely educate them to be more clever criminals. We urgently need a youth reformatory system that re-trains young offenders and rehabilitates them. They must also be made to pay restitution to their victims, which has been shown to have strong rehabilitative effect, because this brings them face-to-face with the real consequences of their actions.

No Votes for Prison Inmates

The court decision which ruled that prison inmates should be allowed to vote was a logical absurdity that amply illustrates why the CHP wants to make an election issue of the urgent need to restrain the judiciary and make the courts accountable for the constitutionality of their decisions.

Elections are held to choose the people to whom we delegate the citizens’ power of enacting and enforcing laws. Those we elect must have respect for the law. Therefore the people who elect them must also have respect for the law.

Convicted law-breakers, until they have been rehabilitated, have demonstrated that they lack respect for the law—and therefore they have no right to participate in making the laws that they refuse to obey.

Sentencing must be made more meaningful: no “double time” credit for time awaiting trial, no “volume discounts” for multiple offences, and no early release for violent and sexual criminals. Convicted felons should not be allowed to vote until their terms have been completed.

PLATFORM

• Justice & Defending Your Rights
  • Criminal Justice and Young Offenders Act
  • Self Defence