Retribution, Restoration, Rehabilitation

 

(I MAILED THIS LETTER VIA CANADA POST TO THE PRIME MINISTER ON JULY 21, 2023, I.E. TODAY)

Rosthern, SK.

July 21, 2023 

Right Honourable Justin Trudeau

Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

 

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau; 

If “let the punishment fit the crime,” or “an eye for an eye” were the foundational standard of criminal and civic justice in Canada, then Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka would have been stripped naked in the public square, raped by strangers in the presence of the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, and strangled. Such a result, most fortunately, can’t happen in Canada … at least not under sanction of the justice system. The death penalty was abolished long ago and currently, even criminals with a life sentence are beneficiaries of a policy that rewards progress in good behaviour with increments of increased freedom of movement. But our grasp of our justice underpinnings easily slide back to Judeo/Christian Old Testament principles and the “eye for eye” sensibility of Sharia law.

Prime Minister Trudeau, yesterday you emphasized a point that the sensitivities of the families of victims of crime are foremost considerations when justice is meted out. That may be emotionally true, but not a good academic description of how Canadian justice is administered. Criminal cases are not between the offender and the offended; they’re between The People and the offender (Queen vs. John Doe, People vs. Jane Doe). The absolutely-necessary support of the families of victims and the role of these families in the justice process must remain separate, or else we risk opening the door to a return to “eye for an eye” sensibility. The impulse for redressing violence with counter violence is a strong impulse among us humans.

Our justice system is by no means fail-proof. It takes public vigilance and informed dialogue to ensure that it remains a system that fits the people’s consensus of what justice is. As this consensus now stands, our justice systems is guided by three signposts: Retribution (punishment enough to convince the offender of the seriousness of his/her/their acts, and to serve as a deterrent to others), Restoration (returning conditions for all involved to a state as close as possible to what it was before the crime) and Rehabilitation (training and educating the offender to be a contributing, cooperating member of society). Implicit in the bars and razor wire of prisons, of course, is the assumption that the public must be protected from offenders lest they reoffend.

We could easily be drawn into debate about the degree of importance of any one of these goals. In the wake of the most horrendous crimes—those of Paul Bernardo in this case—retribution quickly rises to be the top priority, especially since there is no possible satisfactory restoration in the case of murder or other unlawful death, and Bernardo, having been diagnosed as psychopathic, seems far from being a candidate for rehabilitation. But whether he is housed in a maximum or medium security facility is not a judgment for the prime minister, the justice minister, the minister of public safety, the victims nor public opinion to make. We train police, lawyers, judges, prison wardens, etc., strenuously to make such decisions studiously, based on legislated principles and their training and dedication to the job. If their judgment is to be over-ridden by political or social opinion gathering, why train people to make them in the first place? Why not simply make Twitter or Facebook posts the sentencing, incarceration agents? Or why not just load all convicts onto ships to disgorge them in some island far away? (Please excuse the hyperbole; been listening to the Leader of the Opposition too much, I fear.)

For opposition parties who have found in the transfer of Bernardo a juicy propaganda windfall, I would suggest proceeding carefully. Although mistakes are made and legislation has had to be revisited and revised accordingly, the Canadian justice system is one of the best and fairest humanity in its long history has been able to devise. The transfer of Bernardo is not a sign of system failure, it’s evidence that it’s working. At least, it’s working if restoration and rehabilitation are still objectives of the pursuit of justice.

And to the governing Liberals, the legislation that rewards convicts with increasing liberty as their rehabilitation progresses is vital to the entire justice program. Even if Paul Bernardo should after this transfer prove that he is irredeemable in any socially acceptable way, the transfer back to maximum security is there to be exercised, isn’t it? If the restoration of the victims’ families is as important as you say it is, then help Canadians understand that the restoration effort is not helped by granting victims a determinant role in the justice plan for the perpetrator, but in the social supports to which all citizens are entitled.

I add just two personal anecdotes:

First: In 1981, my fifteen-year-old daughter accepted an ill-advised ride with a young man, a ride that ended in tragedy when the car rolled and both died. The driver was unlicensed to drive, the car unregistered. Had the driver lived, my daughter’s death might have resulted in criminal charges and a prison sentence. Saskatchewan Government Insurance sent us a cheque for $2,500, a restorative and well-meant  but bureaucratic gesture. We were told that this was common practice in such cases.

Had the driver lived and been pilloried, or had the government sent me a cheque for two million dollars, that would have only added to the grief I still bear some forty years later.

(My daughter had very loosely-jointed fingers; I can still feel her hand in mine.)

I mourn both deaths.

Second: I spent the better part of a day at the Healing Lodge on the Beardy’s Okemasis First Nation a few years ago. It’s a pre-release, minimum security facility that forms part of an offender rehabilitation process. There are no fences, but few “escapes,” and residents must shop and cook for their “house” and are able to spend some days in a guest house with family at intervals. If we abandon the principle of incremental loosening of restraint as rewards for progress, aren’t we then abandoning the principle of rehabilitation with it?

I wish you and your governing colleagues a good and restful summer hiatus,

Sincerely,

George G. Epp, citizen, voter, happy-to-be Canadian.

gg.epp41@gmail.com

Box 148, Rosthern, SK; S0K 3R0

 

You give that thing back, or else!

Lake of the Woods country

Western Newfoundland country

Note: Most of you are readers, so you might be interested in a new blog I've started. See the note in the right-hand column.
With Bruno Klassen's permission, I'm publishing his letter to me in response to the last blog -- as my first "guest blogger." (Others are welcome to submit, of course). Bruno has gone from retail grocer in Rosthern to other pursuits in the last decade or so and his comments are recollections of incidents of "petty crime" in his store. Restitution is often a sore point and largely unresolved. Levitical law said that if a man killed another man's son, he was obliged to give his own son to that man in restitution. But let's let Bruno tell us about more modern times from his perspective.
ge
---
A topic [crime and punishment] was quite important to met at one time. One of the objects of sentencing that seems to be ignored is restitution. After twenty five years of trying to nab a very skilled, known thief, I finally did catch him and for all my trouble, he paid a $50 fine and I got nothing. I apprehended a thief that had stolen a dress from me, the dress was taken as evidence, returned to me two years later, and there was no restitution.
    I'm not an advocate of imprisonment, but I am an advocate of dealing with crime. I recall making an effort to help a disadvantaged shoplifter and when I mentioned this to the police, they advised that this not be put in the report because the courts frowned on the perpetrator and victim dealing with each other. (Italics mine, ge.)
   I used to try to be "redemptive" by not charging shoplifters, but it became apparent that in many cases the only way to make people face up to their problem was to charge them. There are people whom I did not have charged, and regret it to this day because they have never faced up to their issues.
  Two things did work well. One was offering a shoplifter the chance to make restitution. The first case [I recall] was a known thief, and when given the chance to make restitution brought in $1000. (The lawyer said it was not blackmail, but compensation for stolen goods!?) Our relationship was maintained, and he continued to shop - but hopefully not lift!
   The other was a lifter who was known to have stolen at several businesses and I caught her at our store. I decided to have her charged so she would have to face up to her problems. She had a "sentencing circle" arranged at which her family, the other businesses, her pastor and several friends attended. It was good for all involved.
   I recall a man who stole cookies from the store and was finally turned in by his wife: "I don't care if you put him in jail, I want it stopped!" We caught him and when I asked how long he had lived in town, he said 8 years. We calculated that to be about 2400 business days so he would have stolen 2400 cookies over the years. To his shock this came to several hundred dollars, but I loved his first line of defense, "Some stormy days I couldn't come in!"
 
Bruno

Jails, Gaols and Healing Lodges

Sky, sea, land - nature's lesson in harmony

Harmony in small things

A visit to the Willow Cree Healing Lodge on the Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation got me thinking again about the three legs of sentencing: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence. Typically, these are given as the three primary goals of punishment for crime.

·        Retribution: “You do the crime, you’ll do the time.” “An eye for an eye . . . “

·        Rehabilitation: “We’ll make a better, law-abiding person of you.”

·        Deterrence: “We’re making an example of you so others won’t make the same mistakes.”

Of course, we use other terms as well.

·        Penitentiary is one whose root—penitent—Oxford defines as “feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong.” Ostensibly, this could align with rehabilitation, particularly under the Christian concept that penitence must precede rebirth.

·        Then there’s jail, or gaol, whose origin is given by Oxford as “Middle English: based on L. cavea (see cage); the word came into Engl. in two forms, jaiole from OFr. and gayole from Anglo-Norman Fr. gaole (surviving in the spelling gaol).” If you drive Highway 1 to Winnipeg from Regina, you’ll pass a sign that points to “Headingly Gaol.” The word is related to cage; an interesting association very much in line with retribution.

·        Correctional Facility is a euphemism, a term that softens impact, like “passing away” serves as a euphemism for “dying.” The term also serves to emphasize the rehabilitation goal of incarceration.There's a mile of semantic difference, though, between correction and healing.

·        Prison conjures images of cages, like jail or gaol.

·        There is any number of pejoratives, some harking back to the Wild, Wild West, Like hoosegow. Slammer, Big House and a host of others spring to mind.

·        And then there’s Healing Lodge, a term that diverges radically from the traditional and the typical, and leads us to see the rehabilitation goal most emphatically.

I find the interplay between cultural practices and values and the words we use to talk about them fascinating. What major change in cultural values would have to take place before we would begin calling the Prince Albert Penitentiary the Prince Albert Healing Lodge?

As I understand it, the concept of the healing lodge emanates from the First Nations value of harmony among all aspects of being. Defined in one study, “healing is ultimately about the reparation of damaged and disordered social relations. The individual, through outwardly and self-destructive behaviours, has become disconnected from family, friends, community, and even his or her heritage. The reason for undertaking healing is often found in the clients’ desire to make amends and to be accepted back into the web of relationships. Healing, then, speaks to a form of Aboriginal sociality that reduces the degree of self-indulgence and self-pity and frames one’s problems and the solutions in broader, collective terms.” (http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/aboriginal-healing-in-canada.pdf)

               Victims of crime can hardly be faulted if, in their bitterness, they can only visualize justice as served if the perpetrator is made to feel suffering to a similar degree that they are suffering. But surely the goal for a national justice system can’t be focused just on making sure retribution happens. Prevention, rehabilitation and reintegration have been undervalued and I would hope that all the efforts made by those who work at restorative justice will eventually produce a vibrant cultural value affecting how our justice system sets goals.

               May all our gaols finally have healing lodges attached.

              

Crime, Punishment and the "Occupy Movement"

 Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true . . .

 John Cabot - Cape Bonavista

 I must go down to the sea today . . .

During the 1860s, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky worked on and published material that would later be collected into the novel called Crime and Punishment.  By today’s standards, it’s a flawed novel that would have to be heavily edited to become publishable; speeches that go on for page after page, for instance, along with the tendency to wander off into plot tangents and to give near-irrelevancies as much weight as the crucial.

               Rereading it this week, however, I was impressed by the parallels in its dominant motifs to events of the present. Simplified, Crime and Punishment revolves around the central theme of the nature and boundaries of human morality.  Its central characters fall into three categories: evil reprobates (Luzhin), the morally upright (Razumikhin) and, thirdly, the key characters who by choice or necessity, are caught between the two poles (Raskalnikov, Sonya, Dounia).

Central to this latter group, of course, is Raskalnikov, who as a student contemplated the nature of crime, and tentatively concluded that laws relating to moral actions are applied only to “ordinary” people, while a layer of “extraordinary” people are exempt. In conjunction with this “theory,” he postulated in an essay he wrote that morality is relative, i.e. that to murder can be justified by the good it achieves.

There existed a number of protest movements in Russia in the mid to late 1800s, including a Utopian Socialist movement (that undoubtedly became the germ of Soviet socialism),  anarchist gangs and nihilist groups to name a few. All were expressions of discontent with the state of affairs in the country, a country of extreme wealth alongside abject poverty, of the “poor man’s nihilism”—drunkenness.

The “Occupy” movement as we are witnessing it is a protest against the state of affairs in North America today. Unfocussed and ad hoc as it may be, politicians and corporations may well ignore or dismiss it at their peril. The rage felt by many as a result of economic collapse and the resulting loss of jobs, foreclosures, etc. hasn’t found clear goals yet, but the anger is not gone just because the tents are.

Although they may not have discovered it yet, participants in the Occupy movement are protesting a morality that condones crimes in the “extraordinary” while punishing the “ordinary,” and perpetrates the notion that the end justifies the means, even when the means requires that thousands will die in phony wars, that millions will be reduced to poverty because the “extraordinary” have been greedy beyond what countries’ economies will bear.  They’re protesting the fact that the “ordinary” must pay for the immoral acts of the “extraordinary.” They’re protesting that a petty thief can be thrown in jail while Bush and Cheney and the oil barons are excused.

Canada is preparing itself for the onslaught by building more jails to house the rebelling “ordinary.” 

We are led by an extraordinary prime minister; his foresight is amazing.

It’s, in part, what Crime and Punishment is about.

There really is nothing new under the sun.

Crime and Punishment

 Erst muss Ordnung sein

Speaking of Bark . . .

I’m sure that the set of motive/opportunity circumstances for pretty much every crime is unique, so it’s somewhat foolish to talk about crime as if it were one thing. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskalnikov—a student who has had to quit lessons because he has no money—lives in a garret and while feverishly ill, is tortured by the injustice of his situation and resentful of the old woman who holds all his former valuables in pawn. In this condition, he first dreams about and then premeditates her brutal murder and robbery, which he then carries out methodically.

               Except for one thing. The old woman’s daughter walks in on his crime and he sees no way out but to crack open her skull with his axe. So confused, guilty and agitated is he by this time that he botches the robbery in his attempt to flee and ends up with little except his guilt to take home with him.

               That, in short, is the anatomy of one crime, albeit fictitious.

               I see no authentic way to equate Raskalnikov’s crime to those of Clifford Olsen, Robert Pickton . . .  or Osama Bin Laden, for that matter, except that all four knew that the consequences for their crimes—if apprehended—would be enormous. None of the above, it seems, were deterred either by the prospect of a life of remorse and guilt or the possibility that they might well be executed or imprisoned-for-life for what they had done.

               Slowly but surely, Canada is allowing the Harper government to pull us back to medieval concepts of crime and punishment, namely, if thirty lashes won’t deter criminals from committing crimes, then let’s see how they like sixty lashes! I can only assume that both Stephen Harper and Vic Toews are aware that the crime bill they’re championing will be both futile and expensive. The obvious conclusion is that they have also discovered that 39% of the population is enough to win a majority and that with law and order, jet fighter and economy-before-environment policies, they can be assured of 39% of the vote, no problem.

               If there is a key to solving problems of crime, terrorism and environmental degradation, it is surely in the area of prevention, not retribution.

               Mind you, prevention wouldn’t be cheap either. For instance, we know that a combination of poverty-amidst-wealth alongside exclusion breeds high crime rates, relatively speaking. Raskalnikov’s crime was hatched in the futility of poverty without prospects. Bullying in schools is symptomatic of the competitive and exploitative, them-and-us  environment in which our children are raised. Tackling realities like those makes building pipelines to Texas child’s play. It won’t be cheap.

               An imaginative approach to poverty in Canada is way overdue; it’s time to take down the “Stop Bullying” placards and put up the “Prevent Bullying” signs; it’s time for a serious, communal rethinking of our child rearing, community institution and educational objectives.  

               Every crime involves a unique set of circumstances and it’s likely that degenerates like Olsen and Pickton will appear again, a new, sterner crime bill or better preventative programs notwithstanding.  But heaven help us if we don’t even give prevention a good try.

It’s time for informed, sincere leadership. I’m guessing that 100% of the population could rally behind it.

                  

The Oldest Profession

Lichen

After writing about punishment as a means of discipline in my last post, an issue practically designed for illustration purposes has dramatically popped up in the news: prostitution—the ubiquitous deviance of the ages. In short, “Ontario's Superior Court of Justice ruled Tuesday the Criminal Code provisions relating to prostitution contribute to the danger faced by sex-trade workers.” What it means is that the laws against running a brothel, against offering or requesting sexual favours for pay have been found to be unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.


“Well, I never! What message are we sending to the pimps, johns and hookers of this world?” That’s been the most immediate reaction around the country, alongside the jubilation of what are called “sex-trade workers.” If the ruling passes appeals and becomes law in Ontario, it will wipe out a whole class of what are now criminal offenses and provide some relief for both the police and the courts. Other effects are not known for certain, but one can imagine something similar to the red light district of Amsterdam where prostitutes sit in shop windows in varying degrees of dishabille, selling their services to passersby just like retailers display and sell motorcycles or toasters. No doubt, others are picturing soliciting hookers on every corner and traffic jams of men trying to get at them.

I don’t need to repeat the litany of harms that currently surround the sex trade on the streets and backrooms of our cities. You know them all, from Robert Pickton, to Hell’s Angels, to human smuggling, drug addiction and disease. The right question is probably, “What can be done to end these cycles of greed, exploitation and misery?” The right answer, unfortunately, is not as obvious, although we have plenty of people around who would grasp quickly for a “throw the book at ‘em . . . lock ‘em up and throw away the key” solution. In the age-old fight against prostitution, even a cursory review of our cultural history tells us that punishment regimens have failed.

There are plenty of harmful practices among us, heaven knows, besides prostitution. Smoking, drinking, gambling and overeating come to mind for starters. Thing is, we haven’t criminalized these but have used other means to make them reasonably tolerable. Alcohol production and sale, for instance, was criminalized in Canada and the USA from 1920-1933. “After several years, prohibition became a failure in North America and elsewhere, as bootlegging (rum-running) became widespread and organized crime took control of the distribution of alcohol.” Smoking has been fought as a health issue as opposed to a criminal issue, and clearly, progress has been made to curb this unhealthy habit. As regards overeating and poor eating—often resulting in huge costs to healthcare systems—we have gone only as far as the provision of public information and labeling mandates, and have left the choices up to the individual.

There are more options than criminalization that could be considered in the case of prostitution. It’s clear that whatever we do must make the sale and purchase of sex unattractive to organized crime. Hell’s Angels are not interested in selling underwear, but if we made the wearing of thongs a criminal offense, you can rest assured that organized crime would be selling them, most likely for five hundred dollars a pop, and they’d be shooting each other over thong-peddling turf.

How the application of more original curbs on deviance would work out in the case of prostitution in Canada is unclear. But it’s surely worthy of exploration.

Think about this. Let’s imagine, for a moment, a big-box store of “sin” in the middle of Saskatoon. Here practitioners are trained and registered to provide sexual services in all their manifestations. Here, nurses give heroin injections and retailers sell marijuana at prices set by the marketplace. In the country, farmers grow poppies and marijuana alongside wheat and oats until surpluses drive the prices down, when they probably go back to peas and barley.

The individual chooses whether or not to shop in this “sin” store, just as he does when looking for entertainment: ball game, movie or night club? All participants in the trade are qualified and evaluated, just like architects, teachers and plumbers are.

There’d still be laws to be obeyed, of course. Operating as a sex practitioner without a license would be a punishable crime, just like a charlatan practicing medicine is subject to penalties. Trading in sex or drugs without licensing and inspection would similarly remain a crime. The main advantageous effect of decriminalization would be that the prices would fall since supply could easily be made to exceed demand and the incentives to organized crime would vanish. An added advantage would be that sex workers would have to be fit, disease-free, subject to inspection.

One of the saddest aspects of the current sex industry is the exploitation of women, girls, men, boys, even children by greedy, ruthless “entrepreneurs.” We have a chance at reversing these abominations only if our models of correction change. Crassly put, if a person becomes addicted to heroin and its price is high, selling his or her body to feed the addiction is inevitable. If he/she can get a fix for $12.00 in a clinic, let’s say, a job at the local MacDonald’s might be just the ticket, and professionals would have access to the addict along with a possibility of influencing him or her with a health-based, psychological or spiritual rehabilitation.

But the Harper government will appeal the court ruling. They’re not likely to seize this moment as an opportunity for creativity and broad discussion. Conservatives have trouble thinking outside the box on this issue, especially when garnering votes in the next election is the uppermost consideration.

Too bad.



http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/09/28/prostitution-law028.html#ixzz111klOyPc


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition