Justice shouldn’t have a price tag

When judges punish people who have been convicted of crimes, they’re aware that they’re sending a message to the wider community as well as to the individual criminal.

What kind of message, I wonder, was Justice Craig Parry sending when he let a student at Wilfrid Laurier University avoid jail, after that student had assaulted a police officer, broken into people’s apartments while they slept, forged letters lying about his volunteer work, stolen property, had illegal drugs on him — and the list goes on.

Under another judge, perhaps it would have prompted a jail sentence, if only to illustrate the severity of the crimes.

But it’s clear from Parry’s comments that part of the reason 20-year-old Duncan Coulson was given favourable treatment is that his mother and father coughed up $65,000 for him to go to an upscale detox centre in the United States.

This happened after he blew chance after chance to redeem himself. Finally, in October, he was sent to an addiction treatment at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation centre in Minnesota.

He was in there for four and a half months and came out sober just before he was sentenced.

Because of his stay at the treatment centre, Parry kept him out of jail

“Surely redemption acts as a countervailing force,” Parry said.

“The more you redeem yourself, the less of a need to denounce your earlier conduct.”

This decision reeks of a system in which justice is cushier if you’re rich. What if Coulson had come from a poor family who couldn’t afford private treatment?

Court was told that Coulson went to a private high school where he was an elite athlete. He then enrolled at Laurier and had anxiety, so he turned to alcohol and drugs. He got addicted, which he said fuelled his bad behaviour.

I’ll just point out that plenty of students who go away to university feel anxiety about whether they will make it. Somehow, they manage to cope without exhibiting such extraordinary anti-social acts.

It started more than 15 months ago when Coulson punched the police officer while he was drunk at a party. He had marijuana and pills on him, too.

Three months later, while drunk and bleeding after a fight, he broke into apartments on King Street North as residents were asleep and stole their possessions.

On March 20 last year, Coulson was arrested and released on a promise to follow a curfew. He broke the rule.

In September he was offered a break: If he took counselling and did 40 hours of community service, the charges would be dropped. But he forged a letter from Habitat for Humanity claiming he did 29 hours of service. He had done only one and a half.

Finally, the stream of second chances stopped and he was admitted to the rehab centre.

Parry said if he hadn’t gone to rehab, he’d be going to jail. The judge called Coulson’s time in Minnesota “four and a half months of self-imposed custody.” I’m not buying it.

At $481 a day, the centre in Minnesota is beautiful. It’s nothing like jail in Ontario.

Coulson was put on probation and has to do community service. But he’s not being asked to make restitution to the officer he punched, or the people whose security he breached and possessions he stole.

Parry sent a message, all right. There are two kinds of justice: One for rich people, one for poor people.