Harper's Prison Plan Headed in Bad Direction | Cannabis Culture Magazine

Harper's Prison Plan Headed in Bad Direction | Cannabis Culture Magazine

It should be obvious to everyone now that what Stephen Harper has planned is a U.S.-style, for-profit prison system.

This policy has been wildly successful in the U.S.: increased crime and violence, the largest prison population in the history of mankind, huge debt, and a handful of wealthy jailers getting even wealthier on the taxpayers' dime. This is what Harper wants for Canada.

He has already changed the laws to make anything involving marijuana a "serious" crime, making it harder for your kid to make bail or get plea bargains. He is about to pass S-10, which will impose mandatory jail time for growing one pot plant in a rented unit, and six months jail for making pot brownies! That is aimed at your kid, obviously, and not the Hell's Angels.

All evidence shows that this policy will increase crime, further subsidize the 98% of gangsters who will never be caught, further contaminate the products being sold to your kids, and sink us into decades of debt, to be paid off by -- you guessed it -- your kids!

It will also saddle tens of thousands of Canadians -- mostly men, mostly between the ages of 18 and 40, our future work force -- with criminal records that will hinder their ability to travel and find employment and secure housing. He will also use this inevitable increase in crime as justification for future erosions of civil rights and liberties, and future expansions of police powers and budgets. All this at a time when crime is at a 33-year low. Harper isn't trying to protect Canadians, he is trying to hobble us. He is trying to get Canada into the U.S.-dominated Inmate-Manufacturing Industry, using your kids as raw materials. Serves you right for electing him.

Russell Barth

Nepean, Ont.