Have you ever heard of Bernard Kerik? I hadn't until a few weeks ago when I was watching a morning show and he was being interview by Matt Lauer. Kerik was once the New York City Police Commissioner and he was appointed as George Bush's homeland security advisor in 2004. His career was "interrupted" when he was convicted of tax evasion in 2009 and sent to prison for four years. His Wikipedia entry describes a man who was heroic and who had received many accolades over his long career. The site also tells the story of the embattled years in which he found himself on the other side of the legal system. I must admit that it made me sad.
I was drawn to the interview because Kerik was not making excuses or railing against the system on his own behalf. He was, in fact, making a plea for others he had met in the system: he wanted to challenge the policy of mandatory minimum sentences. He was persuasive. He used a nickel to demonstrate the amount and weight of cocaine that would be required to put a man behind bars for ten years. He said, "I was with men sentenced to ten years in prison for five grams of cocaine. That's insane. That's insane." He argued that, "Anybody that thinks that you can take these young black men out of Baltimore and D.C., give them a ten-year sentence for five grams of cocaine, and then believe that they're going to return to society a better person ten years from now, when you give them no life improvement skills, when you give them no real rehabilitation... [t]hat is not benefiting society." Kerik's perspective was interesting of course because he himself had once believed that he was right to incarcerate these men (there were women too but Kerik only shared prison time with men).
I was a bit shocked to hear him say that he was not aware of the stories of these prisoners. Kerik actually ran a number of prisons. From his own blog he writes, "For nearly six years I managed the New York City jail system, including Rikers Island - once called the most violent system in the nation - and was responsible for overseeing 13,000 uniformed and civilian staff as well as 133,000 annual inmate admissions. I also commanded the NYPD at 55,000 strong, with an annual budget of $3.2 billion...." I don't know about you but I am surprised that he didn't spend any substantial time in these institutions. One would think that the Police Commissioner might have a sense of the lives and the circumstances of the people who he had been put behind bars for extended periods of time - particularly for first, often non-violent, offences.
Kerik's comments came from his own personal journey through the system and they were timely as the United States has started to reconsider mandatory minimum policies. In fact, as CNN reported, The United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced: "The Justice Department will no longer pursue mandatory minimum sentences for certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders." Holder was clear however that the United State would remain "tough on crime."
I raise all of this because Canada is now in its own debate about mandatory sentences. There has been a recent sparing match between Stephen Harper and other members of the Conservative Cabinet with Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. The Conservatives have distinguished themselves from other parties in Canada by arguing that they will be "tough on crime." It is a very popular policy approach. It feels good and it is right to say that individuals should be held accountable for their actions. The Liberal approach also accepts that it is right for an individual to be held accountable for their actions. Where the parties differ is in their assumptions about who should decide what "appropriate accountability" looks like. Trudeau is making the claim that judges are best suited to make this decision as they have the facts of the case. The Conservatives are saying that to deter individuals they must know what the consequences will be and, most importantly, that the consequences will be severe.
Whatever side you fall on, the politics of safety and security are complex and they deserve careful thought and research as Kerik's lived experience should teach us.
