A revision to the Police Record Checks Reform Act in the province of Ontario, Canada has thrust the province’s prospects in the field of legal form in the direction from punitive to rehabilitative.
As around 4 million Canadians have criminal records, this reduces prospects of employment, licensing, education, travel, access to children, immigration and sponsorship, among other things. For hundreds of thousands of Canadians this results in a revolving door in the criminal justice system, as they resort to criminality once again to make ends meet or out of spite for the system and for their struggles.
While Canada is several steps ahead of the US in terms of criminal justice system reform, it still lags behind many countries around the world despite having access to a wide ranging repertoire of empirical research and resources regarding more effective criminal justice system reform.
Ontario’s courts alone process around 500,000 criminal charges per year, and with the current system that number is set to gradually increase as the population increases. Police marketing through TV shows and movies, lawyer ads, criminal record fear mongering and crime woo add weight to a system that lobbies the general public and government agencies responsible for allocating it’s budget to maintain it’s own existence, employing hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
In the US, a staggering 70 million to 100 million Americans have criminal records, which costs the US economy $87 billion in lost GDP every year. It additionally costs $182 billion per year to maintain the criminal justice system in the US. To put into perspective, this means that 1 in 2 children have a parent who has a criminal record, inhibiting their ability to provide for their family.
The new revision allows for Canadians who have summary convictions on their records, typically meaning a plea of guilt was entered, to not have their information disclosed 5 years after the conviction, with the exception of certain fields such as teaching, law enforcement, securities and child care.
In Canada, these costs are lower, at around $15 billion per year as of data pertaining to 2008. A comparison of internal problems that could be solved by allocating $15 billion a year to them instead of the criminal justice system:
- 30,000 Canadians are homeless on any given day, with around 200,000 Canadians being homeless per year. $15 billion could supply 30,000 Canadians with homes worth $500,000 each, the average price value in most large Canadian city suburbs. If we were to relocate them to rural areas within commuting distance of these cities, and reduce the construction price per house at $250,000 each, this would provide permanent housing for 60,000 homeless Canadians.
- 5 million Canadians live in poverty, meaning they make less than $20,000 per year as individuals or less than $45,000 per year as a family with two children. By providing a basic income supplement capped at $35,000 per year on an individual basis, poverty could be eliminated for 420,000 Canadians per year. For 4 person families, this would mean 187,500 families.
- At $100 million per building, with 350 units per building, $15 billion can build 150 residential high rises that equate to around 52,000 units. Since the cost to build a condo unit is around $150,000 per unit, this is double the price of a condominium tower. This means a state of the art facility with many amenities such as a gym, grocery store, swimming pool, theater, multi-purpose classroom, medical clinic, pharmacy and others. 52,000 units, if only one person would to live inside of each, would be the size of North Bay or Welland, Ontario. If it was to house 4 people instead, it would be the size of Burlington, Ontario. That’s equivalent to a new mid sized city every year! In 20 years, this is 20 new cities with a total population of 4 million people!
- If we were to assume a small business or commercial property listed for an average of $500,000 in Toronto, this would mean $15 billion per year could be used to buy 30,000 commercial properties per year. This would allow many Canadians access to running a small business, that are capable to do so but do not have the capital to acquire a small business.
- At a valuation of $32.5 billion, the 138 km long 407 highway is a standard of comparison for how this money can be re-invested in infrastructure development. With $15 billion per year, a new 407 sized highway can be built somewhere in Canada. That’s an additional 1380 km of highways in a 20 year period. 138 kilometers is the distance from Stoney Creek, Ontario to Oshawa, Ontario, the entirety of the uninterrupted urbanized stretch of the Greater Toronto Area along the lake before hitting rural stretches of land or wilderness. A light transit line costs $100 million per km. This means that $15 billion per year can build 150 kilometers of light transit railways every year. New York’s Subway system has an annual ridership of over 1.7 billion, with around 1350 km of subway lines.
- The cost to build an elementary school in Ontario is around $30 million. This would mean that an additional 500 elementary schools can be built in Canada every year. Over the course of 10 years, that’s 5000 elementary schools!
- The cost to build a hospital can range anywhere from $1 billion to $3 billion or more in Canada, depending on the size of the hospital. If we were to average construction costs around $2 billion, this means we could build a minimum of 7 new hospitals per year. Over a 10 year period that’s 70 large hospitals!
Some countries such as Hong Kong, do not allow criminal records to be disclosed to the public, including employers. In Chile, a criminal record can be destroyed by voluntarily checking up in a police station and providing a signature after 2 years for first offenses, and after 5 years for subsequent offenses. In Croatia, criminal record information can only be provided to courts and state attorneys regarding a criminal investigation or prosecution, and cannot be released to the general public, and can only be released to an individual demanding his own criminal record if it’s in the interest of defending his or her own rights in another country. In Germany, even though any member of the public can request access to another person’s criminal record by providing personal identification and purpose for their request, only 6.3 million people have criminal records, meaning that per capita Germany punishes 3x less of it’s citizens than Canada.