StarEditorial: Cleaning up this mandatory sentencing mess is Parliament’s job. Ideally, that means repealing the rest of the mandatory sentences.
Mandatory minimum sentences have “resulted in longer and more complex trials, including an increase in successful Charter challenges and a decrease in guilty pleas, which has compounded the impact for victims, who are more often required to testify. They have failed to deter crime.”to repeal some mandatory minimum sentences, outlined just a few of the problems with such sentences.
However, those 20 sentences represent only a fraction of the mandatory sentences on the books. Indeed, mandatory sentences have proven uncommonly popular in recent years: When the Criminal Code was enacted in 1892, it contained just six mandatory sentences.Then the floodgates opened. Prompted by politicians desperate to prove they were tough on crime, especially those in the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the number of such sentences skyrocketed to 134 by 2021.
However, the statistics should convince Parliament that it can’t just hand this matter to the courts, as it so often does with controversial issues. While many charter challenges are successful, some aren’t — not because mandatory sentences are effective and cost-effectIve policy choices, but simply because some do comport with the Constitution.
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