Harsh sentences are better at wasting money than reducing crime

Post #263

750 words; 3 minutes to read.

By Tyler King, doctoral student, and Anthony Doob, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto.  We appreciate the collaboration with the Centre on this and future posts.

La version française suit par la bénévole Rachel Cauver

Do “tougher judges” reduce crime?  Would crime be reduced if judges were tougher on offenders by giving harsher sentences? Many of those running for office in the current election would like you to believe that, if you elect them, they will reduce crime just by ratcheting up the amount of punishment that offenders get.

The only problem is that the substantial body of research on the topic does not support that strategy’

Whoever wins the election on 28 April will have important issues to deal with in addition to the most salient question right now: how to tame the Orange Beast.

But an issue that doesn’t go away is how best to control crime.   The Conservatives, for example, have promised to bring in mandatory life sentences for certain drug crimes as their solution to the very real problem of deaths from illicit drugs.

Harsher sentences aren’t logical

If you start thinking about this, you might question whether it would work.  People trafficking in relatively large amounts of serious drugs like fentanyl  now get long penitentiary sentences.  The Supreme Court of Canada, for example, approved a “starting point” of 9 years in penitentiary for wholesale fentanyl trafficking. The majority of the Court approved sentences of 9 and 11 years for the two accused whose appeal they heard.

To say that a life sentence would be a more effective deterrent than this is to suggest that there are people who (a) traffic in fentanyl, and (b) expect to get caught and convicted, and (c) know that they would be sentenced to at least 9 years in penitentiary, and (d) would still commit the offence if they knew that they would be sentenced to at least  9 years, but would not do it if they thought they would get a life sentence.  It doesn’t seem likely that such people exist.

The evidence does not support them.

But we don’t need to depend on logic. We can look at the facts. There are numerous studies that demonstrate that long sentences don’t accomplish much.  One of our favourites is a study carried out in the Washington, D.C., where felony cases involving those apprehended for distributing drugs were randomly assigned to judges who varied enormously in how harsh their sentences were.  Some drug dealers lucked out and got sentenced by judges who incarcerated only 23% of the drug offenders appearing before them.  Others were not so lucky and got sentenced by judges who were much harsher – ranging up to 65% getting prison sentences. Those “tough on offenders” judges who imprisoned most drug dealers also gave much longer prison sentences. [A summary of this study is available here].

So there you have an almost perfect experiment on the effects of harsh sentences: drug dealers essentially being in a random control trial of being sentenced by harsh vs. lenient judges.   The results did not support the notion that harsh sentences deter future drug crime (in this case within 4 years of being sentenced).  If anything, those who got the “tough on offenders” judges were more likely to reoffend.

Prison is very expensive

But there are other things to think about.  When we – Canadian taxpayers – spend money on imprisonment, it means we aren’t spending it on something else.  That “something else” could be health care, education, housing, or reducing taxes – or even an effective approach to reducing crime.

In Canada, we spend on average, $150,505 keeping each prisoner in one of our federal penitentiaries.

Putting these two sets of facts together – (1) that crime is not reduced, and may be increased, by putting certain types of offenders in prison,  and (2) that reducing our current penitentiary population by 7 people (from about 12,328 to 12,321) would save us over a million dollars, it seems that an intelligent criminal justice system would be more selective in how it uses imprisonment.

Perhaps we need to ask those who want our vote the following question: “No matter what happens with Trump & Tariffs, we need to make our justice system more effective.   Are you interested in reducing crime or are you committed to finding a way to impose harsher sentences on offenders even if it just costs money and doesn’t make us safer?”

La version française

L’article remet en cause l’idée répandue selon laquelle des peines plus sévères permettent de réduire la criminalité, une position souvent défendue par les candidats politiques. Il soutient que cette approche punitive manque de fondements scientifiques et ne produit pas l’effet dissuasif attendu. Malgré l’existence de sanctions lourdes — comme la peine minimale de neuf ans fixée par la Cour suprême du Canada pour certain trafic de drogue — les recherches montrent que la sévérité des peines n’a pas d’impact significatif sur la récidive. Une étude menée à Washington, D.C., où des trafiquants ont été jugés par des magistrats aux niveaux de sévérité variables, n’a révélé aucune baisse notable de la récidive chez ceux ayant reçu les peines les plus strictes. Au contraire, ces derniers ont affiché un taux de récidive légèrement plus élevé après quatre ans. L’article souligne également le coût élevé de l’incarcération au Canada, qui dépasse 150 000 $ par détenu et par an. Ces données indiquent que les politiques répressives mobilisent des ressources considérables, au détriment de solutions potentiellement plus efficaces telles que la santé, l’éducation ou la prévention. L’article plaide ainsi pour une justice pénale fondée sur des données probantes et une gestion budgétaire plus responsable.

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