(Pour connaître les horribles détails de cette loi rétrograde, lisez notre rapport ici)
Hello Mr. Benskin,
I am writing to tell you that while I am happy to see that your party is opposing the conservative's crime bill (C-10), I am somewhat dissappointed by your discourse on the subject. I know the question of sexual crimes against children is politically sensitive, but I find that it is counter-productive for your party to affirme that you are "for tougher sentences" for these crimes. Nobody is for crime against children, the question, of course, is do tougher sentences do anything to prevent these crimes? No scientific study shows that this is the case. Your party recognizes that tougher sentences against drug traffickers do not work to eliminate this social problem. Why tougher sentences for one kind of crime and not for another? Either tougher sentences work or they don't. If they work, as you seem to imply in the case of crime against children, we should logically apply them to all sorts of crime that we want to eliminate. If they don't work, as the vast majority of criminologists sustain, there is no reason to apply them to particular categories of crime.
In my opinion, healthy public debate would be better served if your party, like the Quebec bar association and even the Quebec government, opposed simply all increased sentences across the board. The studies we do we have in fact show that prison time increases the risk of recividism. Following that logic, tougher sentences for sexual offenders make our society less secure. The vast resources that it takes to incarcerate these offenders would be much better spent on programs carefully designed to prevent these terrible crimes, and rehabilitate the offenders likely to commit them.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter
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