WHY IS CANADA COPYING BRITAIN'S FAILURE?

Britain is a horror story. Violent crime rates there are the highest in the western world, and getting worse. There is no potential for improvement in sight.

Canadian governments have been copying British ideas for dealing with violent crime for the last 50 years. In Britain, those ideas have resulted in national catastrophe--Britain is now a country where the victims are helpless and the police are ineffective. The courts, prosecutors, and government seem to be on the side of the violent criminal rather than on the side of the victims.

Britain outlawed the possession of every privately owned handgun in 1995--and now has more handgun crime than ever before. British laws have disarmed British victims--and have been a total failure at disarming British criminals.

David Fraser was a British probation officer for over 25 years, so he got a first-hand look at how the justice system was dealing with criminals. He had personally supervised many, many criminals out on parole. He was horrified at how little success he had in changing their criminal behaviour. At first, he probably thought it was his fault--but he learned that it was much the same for all British probation officers.

Eventually, he was disillusioned enough to spend two years writing A Land Fit for Criminals . He submitted it to 60 publishers, and they all rejected it as "not fitting their list." Given that constantly-rising violent crime rates were a very hot topic, that was an amazing position for them to take. In fact, one suspects that those who rejected it were just not willing to challenge the entire British justice system by pointing out that it was not working. "The Emperor has no clothes!" is not a message that can be delivered by cowards.

The stepson of the sixty-first publisher had just been murdered in the street, stabbed by a 20-year-old Jamaican immigrant drug dealer with a serious criminal record. The Jamaican had been allowed to stay in Britain because he was "an unemployed painter and decorator" and a "victim of race prejudice." (In spite of those difficulties, he was driving a sports car valued at $45,000.)

Fraser's book says that only half of British crime is actually reported to the police, and that British police refuse to record about half the crime that is reported to them. The police also commonly refuse to investigate the crime that they record, and refuse to arrest criminals even when they know them and have overwhelming evidence. That is apparently because Crown prosecutors commonly refuse to prosecute, and when they do prosecute, the sentence is almost always trivial. Also, a police officer must fill out 19 forms for each arrest. There is little motivation left for British police officers to even try to do their duty.

In the year 2000, the Home Office reprimanded the West Midlands Police Force for bringing too many arrested criminals into court. The Home Office constantly recommends issuing "cautions"--police warnings that next time the criminal might be prosecuted. Officially, only minor crimes are supposed to be dealt with by issuing a caution. In 2000, cautions were the only "punishment" imposed for 600 robberies, 4,300 car thefts, 6,600 burglaries, 13,400 offences against public order, 35,400 cases of violence against the person, and 67,600 cases of other kinds of theft. In simple terms, 127,900 offenders were "cautioned"--but not punished. Isn't that a splendid way to deter criminals from committing more crimes?

Between 1999 and 2002, a total of 323 prisoners (including 22 murderers) walked away from Leyhill, a British open prison--an average of more than two a week! That was a state secret until a courageous British M.P. stood up and demanded the figures in Parliament. He got them, and the media got a story.

The "liberal" British newspapers have refused to review or discuss A Land Fit for Criminals. Britain has become a land where dissent and the truth are no longer worthy of public airing, a land with an almost totalitarian uniformity in what may be said and what must be suppressed "for the good of the country."

Appalling, isn't it? And our Canada is heading right down the same road--into the swamp!

Britain has been the victim of an unholy alliance between bureaucrats and politicians. They have been dedicated to keeping prison costs to a minimum. Aided by liberal-minded intellectuals who see crime as a natural and understandable response to social injustice, they have made the criminal justice system into a system that features dangerous leniency, lack of deterrence, and terrible side effects.

Fraser gives many examples that are not just isolated cases of "failures of the system." Taken together, they paint a picture of a defective system that refuses to admit that it is defective, and a failure that is devastating Britain and the British people.

Take Anthony Rice. He had been raping women since at least 1972, and had been convicted of raping 15 of them. In 1982, he was convicted of raping a woman while holding a knife to her throat. In 1987, out of prison on 'home leave," he raped another woman, pushing her into a garden, again at the point of a knife, then raping her for an hour. They gave him a life sentence for that one. He was transferred to an open prison in 2002, and then given the status of "low-risk parolee" two years later--so his "life sentence" was finished in 25 years. He was then housed in a hostel in a small village (the villagers were assured that there were no violent criminals living in the hostel). Five months later, he raped and murdered Naomi Bryant. The judge sentenced him (again!) to, "life" imprisonment, with no possibility of parole for 25 years--so he is likely to be released again, especially if his sentence is again reduced.

In 2006, these figures were made public: 1,023 prisoners of foreign origin were released from prison in the period 1999 to 2006--without being deported. They included 5 killers, 7 kidnappers, 9 rapists, 39 other sex offenders, 4 arsonists, 41 burglars, 52 thieves, 93 robbers, and 204 drug offenders. The Home Office, responsible for both prisons and immigration, admits that it has no idea where they are today, and that most of them will probably not be found again until and unless they are caught for another offence.

Between 1999 and 2002, a total of 323 prisoners (including 22 murderers) escaped from Leyhill open prison just by walking away. That's over two per week! The figures were a state secret. Only when an M.P. demanded them in Parliament was it possible to get them out for publication. And that is wrong.

Fraser reported that bureaucrats and liberal intellectuals have worked sweetly hand-in-hand to ensure that law-abiding victims would be left as defenceless as possible against the predations of violent criminals. Methods included hampering and starving the police of resources, devising punishments that do not punish, hindering prosecution, constantly reducing sentences, easy parole, and severe gun control laws. Their methods of gaining public support included reporting that criminals who were treated lightly were less likely to reoffend than were those given severe sentences. Ha! That only meant that the worst criminals (who got those long sentences) were more likely to reoffend. As Mark Twain remarked, there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Severe gun control laws have made it impossible for British victims to resist the armed criminals--who have simply ignored the gun control laws. Handgun availability for criminals has not been reduced, but handgun availability for victims has been completely destroyed. Fraser also reported that despairing police forces were becoming more and more ineffective.

Does all of this sound quite familiar? It should. Canada's bureaucrats and liberal intellectuals have been copying the British mess for over a generation.

Are you fed up with our steeply rising violent crime rates? The do something about it. Join the National Firearms Association, and help us stop the rot before it gets any worse. Write a personal letter to each of: Stephen Harper, PM; Vic Toews, Minister of Justice; and Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, at House of Commons, OTTAWA ON, K1A 0A6. Tell them to stop copying the Brits!!

You can get a copy of A land Fit for Criminals from Amazon.com for about $41 including shipping and handling.