Taking a stand against Bill S-10

There's a movement in the US, something like Republicans for less jail time, includes Newt Gringrich. These guys have figured out that long mandatory sentences, in and of themselves don't work and just cost the country a fortune. The US is reversing course on this, just as we're steaming full speed ahead.

I'm all for longer sentences, but I want the emphasis to be on rehabilitation while they're in. And, not necessarily longer time spent in prison if they can fly right. But longer parole periods so they're carefully watched on the outside and go back in if they fuck up. And more emphasis on restitution - you can come out, and we'll help you find a job and everything, but you've gotta pay back for some of the damage they caused.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Doctor ... story.html

So does this not open the door for a minimum 6 months if you're convicted a second time for simple possession? You just the Roundheads will try...

I'd like to see banishment brought back as an alternative legal remedy. Give criminals (especially criminals from foreign countries) the choice of hard labour in prison or a plane ticket to back whence they came with a lifetime prohibition against returning to Canada (or the USA).

This bill is chock full of bizarre scenarios, like forcing the courts to give an 18 month sentence to anyone who might bake some pot brownies for a cancer patient who is too sick to do it themselves. Or being near a place frequented by children, with no explanation of how to interpret that.

It's a bad bill designed to give the appearance of being tough-on-crime without actually being tough-on-crime.

I agree. Simple pot possession charges should probably be dealt best with the same approach we have with liquor. However, it's pretty silly to say that having kids near "sales" areas would represent lengthier jail sentences when I can think of many instances of LCBO stores "near" areas where kids frequent.

(For those deprived of a life in Ontario, LCBOs are the provincial liquor stores).

Hell, you can get drunk at your kid's birthday party at most non fastfood restaurants. I'm not advocating selling pot in front of kids, I'm merely pointing out what I think is some rather un-noticed hypocrisy.

I agree that jail should be for those who pose a threat to others and/or for those where all other judicial remedies have failed. As in those who constantly commit the same crime and haven't responded to probation, curfews, e-tagging etc.

On the flip side, any act of violence deserves custodial sentences, anything above actual bodily harm, sexual assaults, crimes of violence/sex against children etc.

Jailing people for drug possession is silly.

Well, you can bet your last dollar that they aren't doing it because of any sudden burst of social enlightenment or because they've suddenly noticed that their War On Drugs has been a 40-year-long tyrannical failure. They're only doing it as a response to state budget woes. If this were still the Bush era with the money taps in all the red states running wide open there wouldn't have ever been a minor ripple in the 'jail all the fuckers' attitude shared by these social conservative and born-again deficit hawk pricks.

Boo on Harper for pushing this in Canada though. This is one bill I certainly hope fails before the next election cycle comes around.

- I agree with him, that is one of the headlines of all criminal law systems. But, there is another one - "Upbringing of the person that made crime". And using the criminal law theory called "nemesis theory of punishment" - that law has no sence, we lose one of the main criminal law points. Yes, it is expensive to feed someone in prison. But, if someone sells drugs, I hope everyone knows that it makes good money. Having during a year 200$ per day - to spend 2 years in prison or pay a fine (The court is making fine in according to the middle income of a person and his or her property, and of cource that guy wasn't writing about his "business" in paragraph "income" paying taxes) is nothing in compare with money that he gets. And I don't think that Mr. Neil Boyd has enought strength to say The question of putting people in jail should have to do with whether they represent a threat to the public, whether they're violentto parents, whos child died from drugs.

How many people die from marijuana? Zero.

How many people die from marijuana? Zero.
2 my close people. Marijuana is not only one drug.

How many people die from marijuana? Zero.
2 my close people. Marijuana is not only one drug.

The bill we are discussing proposes mandatory minimum jail sentences for growing marijuana, and for baking food containing marijuana.

Please explain how your two friends died from marijuana use.

How many people die from marijuana? Zero.

Maybe somebody died from excessive eating post weed intake?