Speech to St. Catharines City Council against getting "tough" on crime because it doesn't work

 

My speech against #StCatharines Council motion calling or getting tough on crime because it doesn't work.

"Hi mayor and councillors I am Saleh Waziruddin.

There’s a lot of misinformation about bail and that recently accused people were out on bail when they weren’t, unlike what some others have said here tonight. Bail reform would not have made any difference for the assault in Welland.

In Ontario last year just under half of all bail court cases were granted bail. People who are repeat offenders are generally not granted bail, though everyone has a Charter right to try for bail.

Almost 60% of all people charged were either found innocent or had charges withdrawn, things like that.

So this isn’t a catch and release problem. This is the opposite problem: guilty until proven innocent. And the government has a phrase for this: reverse onus, because it’s intentional. This is part of bail changes made two years ago that are keeping so many people in jail without bail who are never convicted.

And we can’t forget who this disproportionately affects. Black people are three times more likely to be denied bail according to Statistics Canada. For Indigenous people it’s five times more according to the Department of Justice. The Supreme Court of Canada has used these figures to show there’s a problem with bail, the opposite problem of what the motion talks about.

It gets worse. Human Rights Watch and the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls found that Indigenous women don’t report abuse because they’ll be arrested as well in “dual arrests,” and then they’ll be stuck in jail as they can’t get bail for being charged with violence when they are the victim.

The reason offender registries aren’t public is because of vigilante violence. We saw in rallies here open displays of a noose and calls for executions. This is being whipped up in part by at least one person who the CBC identified as someone openly in a white supremacist organization. The Niagara Police have had to talk to people about violating publication bans, so we already see they won’t stay within the law.

But it’s not just violence and mayhem against offenders. Local papers today had a letter from someone who has two of three names the same as one of the recently accused and is in fear of harm to himself and his business and, quote, “not to mention the emotional toll it takes on me and my family.” And that’s just from information in the news, even before making the registry wide open. But there is a way for the public to prevent crime without a public registry that I’ll go into in a bit.

There’s also misinformation about parole. Dr. Irwin Waller of the University of Ottawa did a study of over 400 men released from prison over two years and guess what he found? Those who were kept in prison for their full sentence were 56% more likely to re-offend than people let out early on parole. It sounds “tough” to not let people out early but has the opposite effect of what we want because parole comes with supports, monitoring, and restrictions. It’s one-sided to talk about those released on parole re-offending without looking at those *NOT* released on parole re-offending more. They are going to be released at some point.

Even if you lock *everyone* up for the rest of their life, which is ridiculous, it still doesn’t prevent the violence from happening in the first place. The uncle of the previous victim of the accused in Welland told CBC he had wanted a longer sentence but for treatment, not punishment. Why not get people the treatment before they commit crimes in the first place?

This *IS* political and ideological. “Tough” on crime measures are being pushed because they appeal to people’s fear and anger. But they don’t work. The science of how to reduce and prevent crime has been established for over 50 years – that’s longer than I’ve been alive, as old as the first Franco-Ontarion flag raising discussed earlier this meeting. It’s been shown to work in city after city. The US government has a whole website crimesolutions.gov with a list of what’s worked to reduce different types of crimes.

This happened because health officials were dealing with injuries from violence and thought of dealing with it the same way they deal with a disease. The answer isn’t crackdowns or public registries but early detection through community people trained to identify the early signs of violence and abuse (instead of a public registry) and then getting prevention. The Region recognized earlier that racism is a health issue. Crime and violence are best treated as public health and social issues too. The City should advocate for getting “smart” on crime because it works, not “tough” on crime because it sells, using debunked myths and misinformation.

Thank you."