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Enforcement, not sensitivity training

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Wednesday, the federal government convened a summit in Toronto on the city's growing gun violence. They need not have bothered. By all accounts, the closed-door gathering was a waste of time. Representatives from all three levels of government attended, along with over 100 community representatives. And while nearly all participants seemed to agree on a solution, they agreed on a useless one -- more money to attack the so-called "root causes" of crime. Instead of beefing up neighbourhood policing, deporting repeat offenders who are not citizens and stiff sentencing for crimes committed with guns, most participants advocated employment training for at-risk youth, drop-out prevention programs, increased recreational opportunities in poorer neighbourhoods and cultural sensitivity training for police and judges.

Such attempts at soft justice have been tried elsewhere and have universally failed. They defy logic. Training a young man for a job that pays $10 an hour is unlikely to dissuade him from joining a drug gang in which he can make several thousands of dollars a week. Nor, for some, is the routine of school or work ever likely to compare with the thrill of outrunning the law. The one deterrent that can work is the expectation of getting caught and going to prison for a long time.

Throughout the 1980s, American cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta and others pioneered the discourage-them-with-kindness approaches discussed this week in Toronto. In those cities still trying them, such as Chicago, Washington and Detroit, crime continues unabated. But in cities that ceased to use their police officers as social workers in uniforms -- New York, Boston, Cleveland and so on -- and started using them effectively to catch the bad guys, crime has dropped precipitously, in some cases by as much as 60% from its high point in the early 1990s. The keys are not more community counsellors and extra hours on basketball courts, but more police on the streets who are instructed to be equally intolerant of minor and major infractions. The theory is simple: Most perpetrators of major crimes also commit dozens of minor ones. Fingerprint and identify them for jumping the turnstile on the subway or smashing bottles in a public park and they will have a record that can be used to track them down when they mug, rob, assault or murder.

Another practical solution is to immediately send packing any non-citizen found guilty of committing a violent crime in Canada. By at least one police estimate, nearly half of Toronto's 41 gun murders this year have been committed by foreigners residing in Canada, some with outstanding deportation orders against them.

Among federal, provincial and municipal representatives at the crime meeting, only Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant seemed to have even a clue of what is needed. Although he would not be specific, he at least did not openly embrace the root-causes madness and he did promise more prevention and enforcement measures shortly.

Perhaps the most disappointing participant, though, was Irwin Cotler, the federal Justice Minister. Mr. Cotler insisted the federal gun control program was working and would work even better if just given more time to register all the guns and gun owners in Canada. This seems the ultimate proof of Albert Einstein's contention that insanity consists of "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." For 10 years now, Ottawa has, at a cost of nearly $2 billion, tried to lower crime by maintaining a universal gun and gun-owner registry. It has not made Canada safer in any way. If criminals will not obey laws against murder, robbery, drug trafficking or sexual assault, what ever made the federal government believe they would abide by rules requiring them to declare the guns they own to Ottawa's bureaucrats?

The federal government could spend another decade and another $2 billion for its vaunted registry and not prevent or even solve a single gun crime anywhere in the country.

There are plenty of tough laws already on the books in Canada against the criminal use of a firearm. If participants at Wednesday's crime meeting really want to do something about Toronto's spike in violent crime, they could urge judges and Crown prosecutors not to bargain away such charges in return for guilty pleas on the crimes the guns were used for. And they could also tell Ottawa to dismantle its gun registry and use the savings to fund more police and tougher law enforcement.