Under the spreading chestnut tree...

[deakat]

Treasury Board President Stockwell Day says the government will go ahead with its plan to spend billions for new prisons, suggesting statistics that show crime is declining in Canada are not accurate. This entry was originally posted at http://deakat.dreamwidth.org/36331.html, where there are now

Comments

[seanchaidh]

"Suggesting statistics that show crime..."? They're IGNORING those stats.

[deakat]

As one of the comments on the article noted, apparently the statistics that show crime is declining are not to be trusted, but the statistics that show crime is under-reported are a completely different matter, and must not be ignored! Argh.

[bunsen_h]

This is a government that doesn't have a lot of respect for statistics in general. :-(

Somewhere around here, well-buried, I've got a beautiful quotation from a couple of the big names in physical chemistry, in one of their big papers in a prestigious journal. The gist of it is that they think that the experimental data are probably accurate, but where those data disagree with their model, their model is more correct than the data which contradict it. Not a lot of people can get away with that kind of assertion.

[bunsen_h]

Ah, here we go.

We have therefore decided to use a few adamantane values which do not affect much the outcome of the parameterization in fitting the force field. And these values are probably experimentally accurate. However, the values which we cannot fit we do not think are experimentally accurate, and unless convincing evidence is presented to the contrary, we will continue to believe that the force field here gives results more accurate than those experimental results which are in conflict with them.

-- N.L. Allinger, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 99, 8127 (1977)

[canuckotter]

The Cons are trying to do away with the 3-for-1 and 2-for-1 pretrial credit. The problem is that there's not enough space in the penal system, so people in pretrial custody are subjected to inhumane conditions, which is why the credit exists in the first place. The whole "statistics are underreporting crime" bullshit is just the Con way of covering up the fact that their stance of eliminating the pretrial credit is costing Canadians big bucks

[dewline]

Which, given the conditions of those holding jails, could amount to really meaning "We're being cruel to suspects awaiting trial and we don't want to apologize for it!" if they're not very careful about how they manage this.

[deakat]

They could probably speed up trial times and reduce crime faster than they could build the prisons, if they would just invest in improving the judicial system and working on the social issues that contribute to crime. Never happen with this government, though.