The path to a Canadian prison industrial complex

Tories to pull Canada further down the path of irrelevancy in human rights.
Damn am I ever feeling sour right now. Dunno why. Just am. And then I read this Toronto Star article on the Tories pledging to end '2-for-1' sentencing guide, and I just became very bitter too. Go ahead and bite me. You won't like the taste.

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You know what? I'm going to say this up front, so that everyone can hear what I'm saying loud and clear.
There ain't a dog-damned thing wrong with Canada's laws! We've got all the major crimes covered. We've got prisons to hold people convicted of crimes. We have parole and programs designed to help prisoners transition from prison-life back into normal society. The problems we do have with our justice system are actually institutional rather than societal. Institutional racism: 24% Canada's prisoners are First Nations despite First Nations being 4% of Canada's population (2005/2006). Also, that there aren't enough prison programs to help prisoners transition back into society. And also that the RCMP is off its effing rocker, and is need of serious reform and demilitarization.
And into this step the Conservatives, as though they're here to save the day! You know what, Harper? You're going to screw all of Canada over just to score some cheap political points with your base, and to help your rich friends become very much richer by introducing into Canada the foundation of what is commonly referred to as the prison industrial complex. People say you're a smart man, Harper, and I will admit you do have some smarts, as I know that you probably know this: what you're doing will completely and radically change Canada's prisons. It's just that you don't care. Even if what you're doing will deform Canada's prison system for the worse, you don't care: it's all in the pursuit of power and dollars, so that makes it all okay because you know you and your friends will never see the inside of a prison.
You know, Harper, over the past two decades, crime has actually been steadily decreasing. We don't have an out of control crime rate. Incarcerations tend to fit the crime, because judges can usually use both precedent and their own common sense to decide on a convicted person's criminal fate.
If we wanted to reduce the crime rate even more than what it currently is....
Correction, if you wanted to reduce the crime rate even more than what it currently is (considering that I do want to reduce the crime rate, but I am uncertain that you do), then you'd, in parallel to the institutional reforms I hinted at above, also do some reforms outside of the prisons in society itself. Ex.: welfare, as in make it far easier to access SA and EI; also, increase the funds for people on either to compensate for inflation over the past twenty years. Ex: health care, as in help people get the help they need when they're ill - much pressure would be relieved if people could just in to see a doctor at a moment's notice. Ex: minimum wage, as in the cost of living has gone through the roof, and wages have never increased in my lifetime, which again would be a relief to the working poor removing a huge burden from their lives - a concerted national effort to get wages raised would have to start somewhere - might as well be at the federal level. Ex.: legalization of drugs, and further funding for health care (again) to have doctors be able to treat addiction as it really is (a disease rather than a crime, which is again, deinstitutionalizing of a behavior that's actually damaging our society which you on the other hand are promoting. Ex.: poverty, as in ending it - aggressively tackling the issues surrounding poverty: homelessness, health care, addiction, which just goes to show all of our societal problems are closely interconnected when you really think about it, and solutions are never actually easy unlike what you tell your base.
But you're Stephan Harper. A man who must believe everyone in the world views the world exactly as he does, which is people are naturally individualistic (also called selfish), and self-sufficient (although you're the son of an oil company accountant). (Never mind that if people were as selfish as Harper seems to believe, then society couldn't possibly exist as it does. There would simply be no peaceful countries if all people were as selfish as Harper believes.)

 

Crossposted at Troy's Scribbles