Race-based criminal sentencing is costing innocent lives

The piece below was written by Cory Morgan, a Senior Alberta Columnist and the Host the Cory Morgan Show for the Western Standard and Alberta Report based in the Calgary Headquarters. He previously served as Opinion Editor. He also regularly writes for the Epoch Times.

In this important op-ed, Morgan confronts head on the adverse effects of Canada’s race-based criminal sentencing guidelines, a wrong-headed but legally-entrenched policy that places the lives of all Canadians, especially those who are forced to interact with career criminals, in constant danger.

“If you do the crime, you do the time” is now “more honoured in the breach than the observance” (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 4), if you are an indigenous offender.

Although Morgan rightly observes that “Indigenous people are indeed very overrepresented in the prison system. The reason for that, though, is indigenous people are overrepresented when it comes to committing crimes,” he fails mention the following well known facts.

Most crimes, sometimes even serious ones like murder, especially when they occur among underclass indigenous denizens of urban ghettos or rural reserves, are never reported to the police because of as well founded fear of retribution; of those reported to the authorities, many are not properly investigated by our Keystone Cops; of those properly investigated, many result in no charges being laid; of charges laid, many are not prosecuted, especially in a time of growing crime aided and abetted by declining police resources; of those prosecuted, many do not result in a guilty verdict for the same reasons; of those resulting in a guilty verdict, may result in either no prison time or a light sentence, especially for indigenous people privileged by the Gladue Principle Morgan mentions in this important piece on the other side of the paywall.

What all this means is that indigenous offenders, both male and female, are actually under-represented in the incarcerated population.