OTTAWA, ON (February 29, 2023): ‘Tough on Crime’ clichés are easy to spout off, especially in moments of cultural anxiety about rising crime; deeply considered, balanced and empirically based criminal justice policy is much harder to come by.
In a new paper, Conservative criminal justice policy: new directions and alternatives, Troy Riddell and Dennis Baker deliver just that. Riddell and Baker make the case for a credible, principled, ‘small-C’ conservative approach to criminal justice in Canada.
The paper is structured as a series of proposals addressing the stages of criminal justice administration: police investigation, pre-trial and bail, the trial and sentencing.
The authors present a range of specific policy proposals for each stage including:
- Amending the bail provisions of the Criminal Code to better facilitate holding repeat and violent offenders, while still honouring the principle of innocence until proven guilty.
- Passing a codified set of police powers and associated Codes of Practice (similar to the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) rules in England and Wales).
- Enacting sentencing guidelines to help better structure judicial discretion.
Riddell and Baker are attentive to the real-world evidence that harsher sentences don’t necessarily improve deterrence or increase public safety but they also don’t lose sight of punishment as a legitimate goal of the criminal justice system or the need to prioritize the well-being of victims and the community.
“We have proposed a number of policy innovations that recognize the human dignity of not only the offender, but of victims and members of the communities as well… We believe that such a conservative agenda for criminal justice could be smart, effective, and in-line with a majority of reasonable people in the community,” conclude Riddell and Baker.
To learn more, read the full paper here:
***
Troy Riddell is Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Guelph.
Dennis Baker is Associate Professor of Political Science and former Director of the Criminal Justice and Public Policy/Criminology and Criminal Justice Policy Programs at the University of Guelph.
For further information, media are invited to contact:
Skander Belouizdad
Communications Officer
613-482-8327 x111
skander.belouizdad@macdonaldlaurier.ca
