(This column was published in the North Shore News on Feb. 19, 2003)
Canadian sentences add up to nothing
By Leo Knight
Anger at the justice system is running at an all-time high thanks to cases like the street-racing killers getting grounded and the Air India mass murderer getting a five-year sentence for slaughtering 329 innocent people.
It seems the majority of the slumbering masses are slowly awakening and noticing a foul odour emanating from our courts.
And when the wind blows just right, that stench is fetid indeed.
The sentencing of Inderjit Singh Reyat to a mere five years following an agreement resulting in a guilty plea to a single count of manslaughter in what was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history, is patently offensive.
At first blush after hearing the news, I shrugged, assuming the plea agreement was contingent on Reyat testifying against his two co-accused.
Especially after he lost three attempts to have damning evidence against him tossed out in pre-trial motions.
But the media scrums afterward told the awful truth.
There was no such agreement.
Crown will still be scrambling to successfully prosecute the remaining two individuals alleged to be the masterminds of the horrific bombing attack that brought down an Air India plane off the coast of Ireland.
Any way the numbers are massaged or manipulated it still turns out to be just over five days in jail per victim.
And that's only if you ignore the parole aspect of the sentence.
With an automatic one-third off until the system is required to give him parole, which works out to just 3.71 days per dead victim.
But wait, what if the bomb maker is a good boy in jail? Well, he's actually eligible for parole at the one-third mark.
That's just 1.88 days in jail per murdered Air India passenger.
Oh, but hang on a moment, our oh-so-generous corrections system actually allows for prisoners to get day parole at the one-sixth point in the sentence.
So in real terms, Reyat will likely be walking around on the streets of our fair city after serving less than one day in jail for every man, woman and child killed by the bomb he made and whose blood stains his hands for eternity.
But all this really shows what a joke the system is as a whole.
Not only will the courts play lapdog to the hand- wringers, but after they have meted out their so-called sentences, then the corrections service steps in to make it as easy as possible while awaiting the parole board to do their level best to release the offenders just as soon as physically possible.
Edmonton police released details last week saying two-thirds of all convicts wanted in their city for violating parole were let out early.
But, they said, if that's not enough, of the ones they arrest, none will ever serve the full term of their original sentence.
None.
To understand how bad the problem is, let's look at a case from Ottawa last week.
A career criminal out on parole with robbery convictions stretching back to the 1970s was arrested in connection with a string of bank heists from Ottawa to St.
Catharines.
He was paroled in 2001. The parole board said at the hearing that his criminal history showed a comfort with violence, he had an "admitted fascination with weapons" and a "deeply entrenched set of criminal values." Yet he was released.
True to form, he then began committing bank robberies which police have now got him charged.
I wish this were an isolated incident, but it's not. In point of fact, it's more the norm.
Unfortunately, as the police perform their Sisyphean task keeping the court dockets full, the reality of the justice system is that there are minimal consequences for crimes committed against society from being minor in nature to being as heinous as killing 329 men, women and children.
Such is the reality of justice as it is practiced today and foisted upon us by our federal politicians.
And nothing will change until the self-aggrandizing lot inhabiting the government benches begin to see their failure to act will start to cost them votes.
It is, you see, the only thing that appears to motivate them.
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