| The role of parole >>
The new provincial parole law is too soft for by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR A revamping
of provincial parole rules hasn’t satisfied the tough-on-crime
lobby that had fought for serious change following a series of The new
law is based on a 400-page report written last year containing 73 recommendations
written up by Université du Québec à Montréal
professor Claude Corbo, and was partially inspired by a series of splashy
tales of parole violators gone bad. In one of the latest, and perhaps
the best known, of those incidents, Conrad Brossard, 54, allegedly raped
and murdered Cecile Clement, 55, while visiting a Trois-Rivières
old-age home on May 8. Brossard, who had been in prison almost constantly
since 1966 for charges ranging from murder to rape, had been granted
parole in spite of a report citing “major difficulties in adapting
and managing… aggressive impulses.” According to Quebec Parole Commission lawyer Pierre Gagnon, 93 per cent of parolees do not commit crimes while on parole. And only 48 per cent of all applications for release from provincial institutions are granted. “We have a great preoccupation with these issues, but there’s no crystal ball with human beings. We know that even one parolee that goes out and murders somebody is too many,” says Gagnon, who describes the new law as having “tightened up” the parole system. Recent events haven’t been kind to the federal parole system that deals with inmates serving sentences of two years or more. One internal audit by Correctional Services Canada made public this month stated that only six of 66 parole offices nationwide met minimum supervision requirements. Yet others believe that parole, warts and all, remains the lesser of two evils. “The purpose of parole isn’t that it’s a no risk strategy. It’s just that in the long term it’s a better risk than doing nothing, because doing nothing is high risk,” says Graham Stewart, executive director of the John Howard Society, a prisoner advocacy group. “The best way to reintegrate an inmate into society is gradually, and you can only do that within their sentence because when the sentence is over, it’s over. If you keep the prisoner in until the end of their sentence, then you haven’t done anything to prepare them for their reintegration,” he says. “We know that a gradual release program will produce more good results than being released cold turkey. It’s horrible when these events take place, but it’s naïve to think this would never happen if they didn’t have parole.” : |
parole
disasters in which parolees have killed innocent victims. One who feels
her input was overlooked in the drawing of Bill 89, passed by the National
Assembly this month, is Theresa-Anne Kramer, president of Mothers Against
Drunk Driving (MADD) Montreal chapter. She appeared in front of a commission
fighting for, among other things, the abolition of early parole eligibility
for violent offenders. The group also wants authorities to notify victims
when their aggressors are returned to the community, and calls for the
installation of a program in which aggressors are told the details of
the impact of their deeds on the victim’s family.