Kamloops & District Elizabeth Fry Society Conference, the Kamloops Daily News Perspective

The Elizabeth Fry Annual Conference last week covered a range of topics relating to women and the justice system.  Women are one of the fastest growing demographics of homeless people.  It is not a coincidence that women's numbers in jails are rising as well.

"Tough on crime’ tougher on women, support group says"
May 7th 2011, By ROBERT KOOPMANS Daily News Staff Reporter

While it is not a crime to be poor, Canada’s “tough on crime” agenda is increasingly criminalizing poverty, the national executive director of Canada’s Elizabeth Fry Societies said Friday.

As a result, women are being jailed at a rate faster than any other group, Kim Pate told a group of abut 60 women at a one-day Elizabeth Fry conference in Kamloops.

Pate told the crowd Canada’s move to jail more people through the use of legal devices like mandatory minimum sentences stems from long-developing social and economic agendas.

Cuts to programs made decades ago set in motion a deterioration of the social safety net that has pushed many marginalized individuals, especially women, into conflict with the law. “(Canadians) no longer presume that everybody is (entitled) to be housed, clothed, fed and educated. Increasingly we have moved to the notion some people deserve assistance and some people don’t,” Pate said.

Social assistance used to be a springboard out of poverty, Pate said — now it is more like a trap.

To make the situation worse, “tough on crime” laws have simplistic appeal to many in the public, even though in practice they do not achieve the results politicians state they will.

“Unless you ignore what is actually happening, unless you pretend the research does not exist, unless you close your eyes and ears, it’s hard to imagine how you could see the tough on crime agenda being effective,” Pate said.

In large part, many in the U.S. are rebelling at the cost of imprisonment, preferring “ books to bars,” Pate said — a reference to a California student movement that challenged the government to provide more resources for education than for jails. “If this model was working, the U.S. would be the safest place in the world to live,” she said. “All across the U.S. they are retreating from mandatory minimum sentences, and from longer sentences in jail.”

Pate urged the room to demand the Canadian government be accountable and transparent and provide a true assessment of the costs of “get tough” laws.

“What will it cost generations to come? How many hospitals or schools will close while we are on the trajectory toward more imprisonment?” she asked.