Making Sense of Chickens at Play

On 27 February 2008, the Senate passed Bill C-2: An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. This piece of legislation coupled with those passed in 2007 (see C-9, C-18, C-19) are the cornerstone of the Conservative Administration’s plan to “tackle crime”. Politicians and experts alike agree that the provisions contained within the laws will lead to lengthier sentences for individuals serving sentences for certain crimes, resulting in an increase in the Canadian prison population.

In the months to come, I suspect that there will be a few criminologists in Canada and elsewhere in the world who will publish articles attempting to explain recent developments in Canadian penal policy.

I predict that some will argue that recent developments in penality signal the arrival of a new punitiveness in Canada in which there is “new tolerance for brutalizing penal sanctions and prison conditions that some 30 years ago or so would surely have been quite unthinkable” (Pratt 2005: xi – The New Punitiveness), supported by penal populist politicians who play on public sentiments of fear of crime and put forth harsh sentencing measures for short-term political gain (Pratt 2005 – Penal Populism).

While the laws passed are intended to be more punitive and to garner public support for the Conservative agenda, those who will apply these cookie cutters to the Canadian example need to pay attention to the fact that concern for crime amongst citizens in this country is significantly lower today than in 1975 (crime: down 27% / youth crime: down 17%). Coupled with the government’s own opinion polls which suggest that most Canadians are not terribly concerned about crime, there is hardly the evidence to support either of these theories. Such data also debunks the arguments of those who will inevitably argue that Canada is ushering in the ‘culture of control’ (Garland, 2001), which has placed the crime problem as a central preoccupation of politicians and fearful citizens.

So, how do we explain the passage on the Tackling Violent Crime Act and other Conservative crime bills in the past two years?

All the theories above require the significant support from the public for “getting tough on crime”. Again, the minority Conservative Administration did not find that the majority of Canadians placed crime-control at the top of their concerns. In the end, even the Liberal Party who heavily criticized the Conservative crime-control agenda agreed to pass the majority of bills placed before them. This climate is not one of a new punitiveness, penal populism or a culture of control. Instead, I argue that recent developments signal that swaying public opinion has become less important to politicians, who prefer to engage in a game of chicken to sway the opinions of their fellow elites with the spectre of voter backlash that comes with being perceived as being “soft-on-crime”.

An optimist says:
Perhaps the public is not driven by a crime control agenda.

The pessimist says:
The politics of fear – the fear of losing future elections – has usurped the democratic process in Canada.