Scotty

It's complicated because we're trying to compare police-reported crime stats to Stats Canada's juristat surveys. All we know with reasonable accuracy is that less than half of offenses classed as robberies are reported to police, and that the percentage reported to police has gone down in the last five years (see table 10). This is somewhat peripheral to the topic of prisons and prisoners, but I wonder if anyone else is concerned about a low and falling rate of reporting? What is that saying about people's confidence in the police and justice system? Or at least, in the complex system victims of crime must endure in order to make a report? I haven't seen any comments on this from the police bureaucracy, and I wonder if they care. After all, if a crime isn't reported, then it doesn't exist and they don't have to worry about it. Good bureaucrats would be quite satisfied with that. But how healthy is it for society?

The problem I have with this is they ONLY look out for Quebec's interests. There has always been a strong underlying assumption that all MPs represent their own areas, but that they're Canadians first, and look out for Canada's interests. The BQ betray that assumption, and aren't at all shy about admitting it.

You'd probably get a higher percentage of people who think Elvis is alive.

Then you could potentially have a dozen candidates in the debate. I don't want a dozen nobodies who have no hope whatsoever of even getting a seat getting in the way of a real discussion and debate between the real political leaders.

Based on her last performance, she added nothing to the debate She was rude, and shrill and annoying. And frankly, she diluted the debate. I don't think Gilles Duceppe should be allowed in the English debate either. He has nothing to contribute and no one is going to vote for him anyway. I don't want to waste my time with either of them. I also don't like the idea that you can have four or five people all pounding away at the PM, frankly. I think that's a bit one sided. I think any time anyone says anything about the Tories Harper should get a chance to reply to them. Likewise, if Harper says something about a given party or candidate, that candidate should be able to reply. Harper is not just one candidate among four - or five. When the others are all making accusations about him he ought to have more time to respond.

He's not an ozzie. I'm not sure what he was originally. I gather he immigrated to Canada at some point. He was a political science professor at Waterloo, and a "peace researcher" for the UN. He was recruited to run some sort of think tank for RIM's Jim Balsillie in conjunction with Waterloo, but got fired, apparently because Balsillie didn't think much of his political beliefs. Then he moved to Australia.

What's true? That extremely left leaning political science professors don't like Harper's mildly conservative government? This isn't a big surprise.

If you eliminate the separatists their 40% probably comes to over 50%

I think a lot of Canadians don't really grasp it. So it's good to have the possibilities clear from the start so you know what kind of government your vote might help precipitate.

Self–reported victimization data indicate that rates of robbery (including attempted robbery) have remained fairly stable between 2004 and 2009, though they have increased by 44% since 1999 (Table 6). This change is primarily due to an increase in the overall number of females reporting robbery. Females were more likely to report being the victim of a robbery in 2009 than they were ten years earlier, resulting in a rate similar to that for males. Though the GSS data indicate a rise in the rate of robbery over the 10-year period, police-reported data indicate a downward trend. Statistics Canada

Well, I think it stands to reason that if - and all criminologists and police agree on this - the majority of crime is perpetrated by repeat offenders, if we put those people in prison for longer, even indefinite sentences, then crime ought to go down. And it doesn't have to go down very much to make this an economically viable policy, even if we disregard the fact that the cost to victim amount provided by Justice Canada is low due to the underreporting of crime. Aside from economics - which, by the way, is the only argument I've heard the opposition use against this initiative, we have the morality. I think it's entirely moral to say to someone who has multiple repeat convictions, that they're going to pay an ever growing cost for that. I know people like to focus on the most extreme violent offenses, but go back to my burglary example. This is a breed of criminals who causes enormous cost to society in terms of the damages done, and in terms of the costs of security equipment used to dissuade them. Justice says $47 billion to victims. Now you take a guy arrested and convicted for 22 burglaries. He serves six months, comes out, and a year later is arrested for another 20 burglaries. He gets nine months this time, and is back out, and after a while is arrested again for multiple crimes. Is it really immoral to send this person up for say the next twenty years or more? I don't think so. Especially if we reform the prisons. I think, for example, that violent offenders of any type, or even violent prisoners, ought to be separated out from the rest of prisoners entirely.

The majority of rapes are not reported. The majority of assaults are not reported. The majority of robberies are not reported...

I would dispute that crime is going down. Police-reported crime is going down, but according to Statistics Canada, people are not reporting the majority of crimes to police, and the percentage that does report crime to police is declining.

How about just for the likes of Clifford Olsen, Paul Bernardo, and Russel Williams?

That's actually almost certainly a gross under estimate. It's based on recorded crime, but as we know, the majority of crime is never reported to the police.

Britain and parts of the US still retain and use sentences which require 'hard labour'.

Well, first, I don't care what Amnesty International thinks. Second, I'm not talking about starving people. I'm saying you slap them in a cell, and you give them no extras. You give them bland, but nutritious food, and virtually nothing else unless they work to help pay for it. If they want to worry about that in a world where people are jammed forty into a cell with no lights, no beds, and a hole in the corner for a toilet then forget them.

Cause they were just native savages.

The store cards, probably

Then we're not doing it properly. Because if those prisoners are working, and their daily wage rates are about $7, how is it we aren't making enough money off them to offset the cost of their incarceration? You know a factory in Canada that couldn't turn a big profit paying its workers $7 a day?

Oh I agree. I'd like a major reform of how we incarcerate people, too. I'd like to see it made more humane, and at the same time less expensive. That means prisoners have to work, just like the rest of us. But we should be able to make prisons more tolerable for long-term or permanent prisoners. Ie, we don't always have to keep men and women completely separate.

This strikes me as the sort of well-meaning but in the end, dumb policies the NDP are famous for. It would make it virtually impossible for poorer people to get credit, period. It wouldn't bother me, because I have excellent credit. It wouldn't help me either, since I don't keep anything on my card. I don't dispute the banks need some reigning in, but simply putting a low cap on rates is too simplistic. The banks will put their money where there is profits to be made. If poorer people default more, which is unquestionably true, and the banks can't charge higher rates, they simply won't give out credit cards to anyone but sure things. But again, poorer people need credit more than people like me. If my TV breaks, or my stove, or a microwave, or whatever, I can go buy another for cash. Poorer people don't often have much in the way of savings. They need to be able to buy something on time. You lower the profits for that and the credit will become much more difficult to get.

I'm not your answer machine, buddy.

I'm not going to dispute that the reserves are a huge challenge, and that crime involving aboriginals stems in no small part from the failed societies in which they are raised. But I don't think we can just throw up our hands and give up on protecting Canadian victims until we can solve the mess of the reserves. Because let's face it, the reserves pose a complex problem in no small measure due to a variety of shared jurisdictions but opposing interests. So the social problems are not about to be solved, probably in our generation. At the same time crime is a real issue, and recidivism shows that certain individuals are responsible for a very disproportionate share of it. So do we want those individuals bouncing and out of prisons, using expensive criminal justice system resources every time, hurting people every time, or do we want to lock them away to help keep the rest of us safe? Every time some two-bit burglar gets arrested and I read about it, it turns out the guy is charged with about twenty two separate burglaries. How many people found their lives interrupted by this, not to mention the damage to their residences, the insurance costs, the theft of property, the injuries? We put the little punk in prison, and he's out in another six months and doing it all again. How does that make sense?

The reserves are their own problem, it's true. But don't we divert natives into a separate 'healing' program now?