The revenge motive for prisons

Recreational cannabis is now legal in Canada. Whoopee. I’m already sick of listening to the endless pros and cons about what cannabis will do to the fabric of our society.

Cave dwellers probably had the same debates about how fermented grape juice would change history, if and when anyone got around to writing it.

Instead, let’s talk about recreational killing.

That’s what I said -- recreational killing.

In hindsight, that seems to be the only adequate description for the actions of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homulka, 26 years ago. The two of them abducted, drugged, tortured, repeatedly raped, and murdered four girls, one of them Karla’s own sister. They did it for fun. Bernardo was convicted for the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, in 1995. The other two deaths remain unpunished.

Bernardo was also implicated in 18 rapes (listed on Wikipedia); he admitted to ten more while in prison.

In a psychiatric assessment, Bernardo scored 35/40 on a psychopathic checklist -about as high as one can go. Homulka scored 5/40.

On Wednesday, this last week, Bernardo applied for parole. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment, with no chance of parole for 25 years. (In exchange for testifying against Bernardo, Homulka got only 12 years. She has been free since 2005.)

Bernardo’s 25 years expired earlier this year; he had to be granted a parole hearing. Parole was turned down. Which resolves one of the three reasons for incarcerating convicted criminals. Removing them, to get them off our streets, out of our society. We no longer need to fear them.

But, it doesn’t resolve what I see as the other two reasons for locking people up — revenge and rehabilitation. Forget about prison as deterrence; we know it doesn’t work.

Rehabilitation should be a nobrainer. By any standard, a reformed person actively earning a living in society is better than a criminal behind bars. At the very least, it saves around $100,000 per inmate, per year.

Put another way, Bernardo has already cost Canadians around $2.5 million.

Our prisons have not done a good job of rehabilitation. Indeed, from my perspective, they have been a school for hardened criminals, housing amateur crooks with professionals. Which is where the second problem comes up — revenge.

In another recent news story, another convicted killer was moved from a maximum security prison into a lower security one. And thousands of Canadians objected. Especially the Conservative opposition in Ottawa, who demanded that the federal government overrule Correctional Service Canada.

Terri-Lynne McClintic committed another of those unthinkable crimes. In 2009, she collaborated in kidnapping, raping, killing, and disposing of the body of eight-year-old Victoria Stafford. She pled guilty, and like Bernardo was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Then, last month, after serving less than ten years of her sentence, McClintic was transferred to an aboriginal healing lodge

Tim Schroeder is pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Kelowna. This column appears in Okanagan Weekend. in Saskatchewan.

The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge in Saskatchewan is a minimum/medium security institution run by Correctional Service Canada for indigenous women prisoners. There’s no barbed wire, no fences. Inmates live in units containing a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette and living room. They can have their families with them.

As Tori’s father, Rodney Stafford, fumed, “She’s living it up better than a third of Canadians.”

The Lodge’s purpose is to help rehabilitate offenders, so that they can develop “a personal life plan” defining what each offender needs for rehabilitation, the federal correctional system notes. “Programs help offenders build the strength they need to make essential changes in their lives.”

But, the outrage over McClintic’s transfer reveals that a large part of our prison program is still revenge. Or punishment, if you prefer a more impartial-sounding word. The feeling that McClintic -- and Bernardo -haven’t fully paid the price for their crimes.

They made us suffer; they should equally suffer.

Proponents of revenge typically cite the biblical mantra: “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” They fail to recognize -- or may have never heard -- that the biblical code actually restricted revenge. For the loss of a tooth, only a tooth -- not the annihilation of an entire family or a tribe, as was often the standard until then.

Canada has wisely overruled the Bible’s prescription of the death penalty for deliberate murder. Executions cannot be undone if we find later we made a mistake. We also don’t demand the death penalty for striking or cursing one’s parents. But we still seem to hunger for revenge. Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca