Canada has lurched to the right in its criminal justice policies, which invites a number of unflattering comparisons to the United States. In Fearmonger: Stephen Harper’s Tough-on-Crime Agenda, Paula Mallea mounts a comprehensive attack on the Conservative government’s crime agenda dating back to 2006, including many proposals that appear destined to become law in 2012. (As of this writing, passage of Omnibus Crime Bill C-10 looked relatively assured.) While centred on recent events, the relevance of Mallea’s critique extends well into the future. The U.S. experience has been that enactment of tough-on-crime legislation does little to assuage the appetite for even more such laws—and justice minister Rob Nicholson has gone on record to say that Bill C-10 “is just the beginning of our efforts.”
Both the content of the Harper/Nicholson program and the rhetoric of the debate it...
Kevin R. Reitz is the James Annenberg La Vea Professor of Criminal Procedure at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is co-author, with Henry Ruth, of The Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response and serves as reporter for the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing project.
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