Pt. 4 - How to Solve the Justice System

Ivy Saves the World in Five Steps - a how-to series on the world's big, scary problems, and what I would do to fix them, if I had any power whatsoever and were a motivated individual

Pt. 4 - How to Solve the Justice System

This issue is related to solving crime - in most ways, directly. Sending people to prison is meant to prevent crime, I think…or is it? It takes certain individuals out of communities, which may be good in some cases and bad in others, and it puts them in jail cells, and it costs a lot of money. That I know for sure.

Most of the people in the prison population are there for punitive reasons. They are expected to learn their lessons and then rejoin society, becoming upstanding citizens who contribute to their communities and make the world a better place. That doesn’t happen too often. Like policing, we’re basing our current system on tradition more than efficacy, and throwing a lot of money in without great results.

Which isn’t to say that prisons aren’t the best solution in many cases - maybe they are. Or maybe educational and capacity building programs are more effective in the long run, since they could teach career criminals social and empathetic skills they lack, and lead to profitable careers in understaffed professions. Maybe community-based halfway houses are more effective for some criminals. For individuals heavily involved in crime from an early age, maybe probation is better served in a new community, where they can be encouraged to make a fresh start (a strategy used by some drug treatment agencies in combating relapse). Or maybe increased funding in social services for marginalized population can curb the crime rate enough to close a few prisons - who knows? We certainly don’t, but it would be nice if we invested the effort to find out.

There is a second type of criminal in Canada’s justice system today - the type who are not meant to be rehabilitated. Because of danger to the public, some people are living out the rest of their years behind bars, which is our best current solution for dangerous offenders. It’s an ethical compromise between public safety and the death penalty and, while costly, the current system does keep some dangerous individuals off the street without compromising human rights too badly.

The rationale is that, when you commit certain crimes repeatedly, you forfeit your right to live within a society. Society’s exist when each member agrees to play nice - dangerous offenders cannot be trusted to do that. As such, we place them in the only other space we have - prisons - where we feed and clothe them and eventually they die.

Australia is no longer a viable solution, but I do wonder if there is a better place to put criminals who cannot be loosed upon the greater society and are otherwise functional adults. Canada is a big place.

Consider this: optional, intentional, isolated communities which are largely self sufficient (can produce food and supplies to feed all members), where certain types of dangerous offenders are free to live under minimal supervision, but are otherwise isolated from society. It sounds fairly vague and potentially wrought with human rights violations, so we’d have to be careful…the process would need to be optional, and closely supervised, and done in a way which ensured the protection of all human beings, societal members or no. But, theoretically, a group of fifty pedophiles could live in relative freedom on farmland in Northern Alberta, be active participants in town hall meetings, having some monitored communication with the outside world, be supervised remotely by satellite imagery or local cameras, and accessible only by helicopter. Members could always request a return to traditional prisons, but the option of living away from a certain vulnerable population (in this case, children), in a self regulated society of like-minded individuals, might be incredibly appealing to certain offenders, and a far less costly solution than fifty years in an institution. There could be several such micro communities, where individuals facing life sentences could go about their business and be directly responsible to only each other, where authorities could intervene in cases of emergency, and the greater world would be kept safe at minimal cost…to me, it sounds like an ideal solution, and a little like Shangri La, if instead of monks there were rapists, and…never mind.

In my final reform of the justice system, criminals need to be responsible for costs related to their own trials. This isn’t meant to punish spouses or other family members, who would have to be protected (through dividing shared assets, or other such measures). It’s simply a matter of accountability - big trials cost big money. That money should come from the convicted individual’s assets, when the fund exist, as part of the reparation for the crime itself. It just makes sense. Individuals working within a prison setting could earn funds which could alleviate court debts, or any debts, for that matter - parole might be conditional on working a thousand hours to pay off court related costs (and literal debt to society). This also provides added incentives to pleading guilty, which cuts both costs and court time significantly, and might lead to a more efficient legal system, who knows.

Certainly, it might have saved the City of Vancouver some time and money in convicting serial killer Robert Pickton, who murdered a great many women on his pig farm, confessed to police, and then pleaded not-guilty, despite a farm full of damning evidence and several witnesses. The trial was lengthy and costs were in the millions when he was finally sent to jail for life - after which his brother and sister complained to the press, noting that they hadn’t been allowed to use the pig farm (which they partially owned) while police had been digging around all the body parts. …What?? If you held Pickton even partially accountable for the cost of his conviction, the sister and brother would have been bought out years ago, and the Farm in Question/Mass Gravesite of Murdered Women would be owned by the crown and could be used for a memorial, or municipal dump, or anything other than a continued producer of domestic meat products…it’s as gross as it is distasteful on so many levels, and another good reason for me not to eat pork.