Moncton mountie murderer Justin Bourque’s sentence to 75 years in prison without parole was good news to many Canadians Friday, but St. Thomas University criminology professor Karla O’Regan said the legal community is concerned by the “vengeance-based” sentence.
Borque, 24, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder of RCMP officers in August.
The sentence handed down by Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice David Smith is the longest in Canadian history.
“In terms of my own feelings of what Justin Bourque deserved, it’s not disappointing,” O’Regan said. “In terms of what it means for crime-control policy, to have a judge issue a 75 year sentence and call it proportional is troubling.”
O’Regan voiced similar concerns on CBC New Brunswick at 6, days before the sentencing. She said the response from the public was mostly negative.
Twitter user Steven Shannahan tweeted a response to the online version of the story:
“Yeah, and what of it?” the user posted. “Sometimes a little vengeance is required to set the tone for society. Canada’s laws are weak anyway.”
Tweeter Win Keirstead posted to the same discussion, “Don’t think we are quite ready to forgive and forget!”
While Bourque can’t harm anyone outside prison until he is 99 years old, O’Regan said the precedent set by the sentence is dangerous.
“What we’ve seen are a series of policy decisions and legislative reform that have put more people in prison for longer,” she said. “The hard part, as a criminologist, is you know that doesn’t work.”
A 1999 Public Safety Canada research summary found that among 50 studies looking at over 300,000 offenders, none found imprisonment to reduce recidivism, and longer sentences increased recidivism.
“It isn’t that some studies have shown this. It’s every study that’s been done,” O’Regan said.
In recent years, the Canadian justice system has attacked crime with increased punishment. The Safe Streets And Communities Act of 2012, formerly Bill C-10, amended the criminal code to require mandatory minimum penalties on a number of sexual offenses involving children and drug offenses, doubled ineligibility periods and quadrupled costs to apply for a pardon.
O’Regan said the changes appear to be an attempt to give the public what it wants as opposed to what it needs.
“Is [the government ignoring research] because they don’t know about it? That seems highly unlikely,” she said. “Is it that they don’t want to know about it? I think that’s more likely.”
The sentence is the second to make use of amendments to the Criminal Code made in 2011, which allow consecutive life sentences for multiple murderers.
Last year, former armoured truck guard Travis Baumgartner received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 40 years for shooting dead three coworkers to rob an ATM the crew had unlocked.
