Time Immortal

Personally, I’m of the mind that if one is a “guest of the state,” one leaves one’s right to vote at the door. But in Canada, inmates still get to cast a vote in national elections, unfortunately. And here’s the kicker: Canadian inmates constitute a massive, Liberal-supporting voting bloc.

CTV’s Robert Fife discusses a voting block that the Liberals have in their pockets. Inmates in federal prisons are not just withholding their votes from the Conservatives, but strategically pooling their votes for Stephane Dion and the Liberals.

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Who’s tough on crime? I mean, how can the Liberals have any credibility on crime when the criminals want them to win?

Of course, the Liberal Party of Canada didn’t really have much credibility on crime to begin with. Kateland recalls what Dion said during a debate with Harper, and it’s reflective of his party’s generally lenient attitude toward crime.

During the leadership debate Stephane Dion accused Stephen Harper of not trusting justices to judge. Canada.com carries this exchange from the debate:

On Harper’s proposal to toughen sentences for teenagers, Dion said, “I trust judges and you don’t. This is the difference. It’s not that you’re tougher on crime it’s that you want to deprive judges to judge and you want politicians to decide things like for instance to send a child, 14-years-old, away for life.

I cannot speak for Stephen Harper but I can state vociferously for myself that I do not trust the criminal court justices to not only judge, but pass judgment and sentence which are proportional to gravity of the crime committed.

In her article, she’s talking specifically about the same thing I linked to earlier — the disgustingly lenient sentence given to a group of guys who used a cell phone to record and share a video of their gang-rape of a young girl. Certainly, on that basis, there’s a strong reason to completely distrust the judgement of Canadian “justices.” Were it the only example, it might be unreasonable to assume as much. But it’s not the only example, only the latest example.

Time and again, Canadian judges hand out pitifully small sentences to people who have committed the most depraved sort of crimes. Slaps on the wrist are handed down for all manner of evils, from rape to murder, from theft to deadly negligence and inebriation behind the wheel of a car. A sentence of 21 months for rape is not a punishment, and it’s not justice: it’s a joke. That boy shouldn’t even be in possession of his own genitals anymore, nor should any of his accomplices.

The age of the perpetrator doesn’t really matter — what matters is what was done. And there’s no reason to go easy on anyone. Stephane Dion might lament the fact that a Harper government would try and pass legislation that would mandate tougher sentences for Young Offenders, but let’s be realistic: whether you’re 14 or 44, you don’t deserve an easy break if you commit a crime. That’s doubly true of the “big” crimes, like rape or murder.

But not according to Stephane Dion, apparently. Which is in keeping with the general character of his party’s record in office concerning this issue, I suppose — more than not, it’s the fault of past Liberal governments that we have such a piss-poor criminal “justice” system in Canada these days.

So it’s not exactly hard to see why prisoners might tend to be ardent Liberal supporters.