Thursday, October 20, 2011

Soft on crime, short on sense

Jonathan Kay starts his column today with this nonsense:

The biggest problem for opponents of Bill C-10 ... is that criminals and prisoners have no political constituency.
I'm not exactly sure what he means by 'political constituency' but if he means political 'support' Kay is either being ridiculously naive or he's a brazen liar.  Criminals and prisoners have in their corner the entire political left, most of academia especially criminologists and sociologists and a large percentage of nitwit pundits like J. Kay.

Anyway, with that kind of a start you can be sure the rest of the column is a waste of your valuable time.  So let's skip to the end where Mr Kay closes his 'argument':
Stephen Harper and his cabinet ministers bristle when they are accused of inflicting an "ideological" agenda on Canada. So I put the question to them: In the absence of evidence or expertise to back up your policy, what other word would you offer me?
Well, we can be sure that they don't share Kay's ideology.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Ha-ha
The warmist JK drifts further left everyday. He'll inch himself past the line from red Tory to Liberal before the next election; just like Andrew Coyne.

Ted Betts said...

Well done.

Who needs facts and who needs to respond to facts when you just attack the messenger, eh? when you've got... well... a sense in your gut that lockin' 'em all up in jail and throwin' away the key is just the right thing to do, gosh darn it. It's got that truthiness ring to it.

You going to call Texas conservative Republicans lefties too?

Harper's approach to crime is dumb. Pure and simple. It will NOT reduce crime. It is NOT tough on crime. You could maybe get away with calling it tough on criminals but it is DEFINITELY dumb on crime.

Alain said...

So ensuring that criminals actually serve the sentence they receive is soft on crime and will not reduce crime according to Ted Betts. There appears to be a critical thinking lack.

hunter said...

I challenge Ted Betts to actually go to a prison and see the conditions, then see if he continues to spout off about the needed money to fix them.

I've been to one of the newer prisons, and it's over crowded and in need of programs for the inmates.

Lefties should get of their soap boxes and get into those prisons to help, but that would require work and commitment, something they are not know for, just ask the occupy crowd.

Cytotoxic said...

Except Harper's idiotic bill doesn't address crime, it tragets drug-related pseudo-crimes, which will increase crime. This post is pathetic by the way no counter-argument at all. Just 'anti-elitist' huffing and puffing.

JR said...

Another 'fact' Kay presents is in this quote from a criminologist (aka bleeding heart ideologue):

"Eighty percent of my students [would be] criminals under [Bill C-10]. About 10-20% of them would be liable for a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for simply passing a tablet of ecstasy at a party."

Proposed mandatory minimums are for trafficking. I guess "simply passing" is a criminologist's euphemism for "trafficking". And the professor supposes 10 to 20 percent of his students are drug traffickers?

Thanks for the points in the comments by Alex, Hunter and Alain.

One more thing - the matter of revolving door "justice" that cops, not to mention victims of repeat offenders, complain bitterly about. How many crime stories do we read about that mention the suspect is "known to police" and that the alleged perp has record of offenses numbering in multiples of ten. Mandatory minimums for those criminals would definitely reduce crime.

If Jonathan Kay wants the facts in the Tory government's case he should get off his lazy, ideological ass, look them up and report them. But he doesn't want the facts.