Showing posts with label victims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label victims. Show all posts

2012-05-10

Are Foreign Funded Canadian Charities Soft on Child Terrorists

Analysis by the Canadian Press shows that the three of the top four Canadian charities that received the most foreign funding were Care Canada, World Vision Canada and the Canadian UNICEF Committee, all known for helping starving children, many in war torn areas. Many of these children were victims of war and some were likely to have been child soldiers, often forced into battle by captors and even by their own parents. It is reasonable to expect that some of the foreign funders of these Canadian Charities, and even the Canadian doners, consider these children to be victims rather than the terrorists that the Harper government considers them to be. 

So is this perhaps the real root of the Harper government's concerns about foreign funding of Canadian charities, that the charities may be aiding child soldiers which they consider to be terrorists (but which the rest of the civilized world considers to be victims).

2009-06-12

Damn Lawyers Causing Problems – Catholic Church on Priest Child Sexual Abuse

It's all because of the lawyers. If it weren't for the lawyers child sexual abuse victims would approach the church quietly and ask for hush money. So it appears. The Catholic Church has an army of lawyers to help it cover up it's actions and avoid responsibility for the abuse it's priests, and itself as an institution, have perpetrated on young boys. They should understand it is a lawyers responsibility to advise his clients on the best means to obtain justice, especially when they have been abused by the people, and the institution, that were supposed to safeguard their spiritual well being. Does it not occur the them that the responsibility for them being sued lies with the abusive priest and the complicit church as an institution, and not with the victim's lawyer.

Apparently not, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

2007-10-02

Policing by Innuendo – New Ottawa Police Program

The Ottawa Citizen reports on a new program to deter customers of prostitutes. It seems there are times when the police do not have enough evidence to lay charges but believe men are soliciting prostitutes. In this new program the police will now send letters to the homes of these men. But, of course, because they have no evidence, they will not allege the men actually committed crimes but just tell them they should not be in areas “frequented by prostitutes”.

The police stated to the Citizen:

“Letters will be sent to men who are identified while picking up a prostitute or found in the company of a prostitute. They will also be sent to those who police identify as continually stopping and talking to prostitutes or continually driving around neighbourhoods prostitutes are known to frequent, said Supt. Larochelle.”

But since the police have no proof the men have broken any laws, the letters are worded very carefully. We would not want to actually accuse someone of something we have no evidence of, when innuendo will get the job done. As stated to the Citizen:

“Anyone caught trawling Ottawa's streets for prostitutes will soon have a letter sent to their home by police telling them to stay out of those neighbourhoods while also warning of the dangers of the sex trade. Starting next week, Ottawa police will start sending out "community safety" letters that include the time, date and location the recipient was observed by officers in areas known to be frequented by prostitutes. In addition to detailing the potential health hazards associated with street prostitution, such as HIV and hepatitis, the letter explains the harm it causes to the community and asks the recipient to "do your part" by "refraining from bringing your vehicle into this area unnecessarily."

And what about those cases where the police actually have evidence. As stated to the Citizen:

“Supt. Larochelle said the letters will not be sent to the homes of men who are criminally charged with solicitation or who are caught in a police sting and qualify for the pre-charge diversion program known as John school. "People are accountable for their actions. This letter will hold them accountable," he said.”

The police role is to enforce the law and charge people when they have evidence of wrongdoing. It is not their place to find creative ways to punish people they think are doing bad things, where there is no evidence any laws are being broken.

Street prostitution is clearly a problem in neighbourhoods. Of course the prostitutes face much greater risks, including death, in this situation than the residents. Everyone would be better off if prostitutes were not forced onto the streets and forced to work for pimps. But prostitution is not going to go away. It is rather ironic that in todays sex-obsessed society you can use sex to sell everything but you cannot sell sex.

The other irony, of course, is that it is only the financial transaction that is illegal, and actually only “communicating for the purpose of” the financial transaction that is illegal. If these women were “giving it away” there would be nothing illegal but the “problem” would probably be even worse from the neighbourhood perspective.

What is clear is that many women are in the sex trade unwillingly because of economic necessity or abusive relationships. These are the real victims. The solutions are not criminal or quasi-criminal sanctions but economic and social reforms. Women need to be economically independent. Charging abusive partners or pimps with crimes does little good if women feel the necessity to return to those relationships. Charging customers or prostitutes does little good if women feel the economic necessity to return to the sex trade.

The prostitution “problem” will only be solved when no woman turns to prostitution out of necessity.

2007-06-02

Is The War on Drugs a War on the Poor

Canada’s ideological Harper government has decided that the best way to fight crime and the drug problem is to emulate the policies of the country with the biggest crime and drug problem rather than follow the lead of countries with lower crime rates and less of a drug problem.

Despite the romanticism of the sixties left with marijuana and psychedelic drugs the dependence on drugs for escape, recreation or creativity is never a good thing. We can debate whether marijuana is no worse than alcohol or whether tobacco is worse than marijuana or whether the new marijuana is worse than the old marijuana till the cows come home.

The bottom line is that natural highs are always better than artificial ones. Getting high on life is better than getting high on drugs (or money or status, etc.).

That all being said, the criminal justice approach to the drug problem, and in particular the zero tolerance approach of the United States that the Harper government wants to emulate, is clearly a failure.

It is very clear that how we treat drug users depends very much on social class.

Although caffeine is clearly a drug, we do not treat it as one because it is the drug most widely used by all classes. People who use coffee do feel dependant on it and do report withdrawal symptoms when unable to feed their habit. Coffee drinkers and other caffeine users use it as a drug, as a stimulant, whether to study or to work long hours. But it is not classed as a drug by society because of it’s wide use, particularly among decision makers.

Alcohol and tobacco are two more example of drugs used by masses, including the middle and upper classes that are treated differently than drugs primarily used by the poor.

Alcohol is the major social drug of our society, Alcohol is a social drink, but it is also used as a drug to alter ones state of consciousness, whether to reduce inhibitions in a social setting or to just get “drunk” That altered state of consciousness can lead to a reduced ability to reason and to impaired physical functions. The biggest impact of this has been the carnage on our roads due to impaired driving.

There have been attempts to ban alcohol consumption such as during the Prohibition period in the United States, which proved to be an unsuccessful as the current War on Drugs.

Smoking was the other dominant socially acceptable drug habit in our society. It is becoming less so as fewer people smoke, and particularly as fewer people in the decision-making higher and more educated classes smoke. The decrease in smoking came as a result of learning of the health risks. However we can clearly see that legislative restrictions against smoking only came about after there was a trend to stop smoking among the decision-making wealthier classes. Once smoking became a habit of the poor, rather than everyone, it became acceptable to legislate against it.

Criminal sanctions are reserved for the drugs of the poor, the so-called hard drugs. These are drugs that victimize their users. These are drugs that destroy users lives and eventually kill them. Yet our government’s approach to the drug problem is to further victimize and criminalize those addicted to drugs. While the aim of the approach is supposedly to target those making money from the drug trade the zero tolerance approach makes no distinction between victimized and victimizer. The American approach is a massive failure yet our government still wants to emulate it.
Have we not learned that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

It is not that we do not have lessons to learn from. The history of our approach to alcohol and smoking has shown us that criminalization does not work and that education does.

Our approach to impaired driving did involve increased criminal sanctions as a necessity because, unlike hard drugs where the main victims are the users themselves, impaired driving kills innocent third parties. However the transformation of impaired driving from a socially acceptable practice to an unacceptable one was mainly the result of education and the changing of social attitudes.

The massive reduction in the percentage of people smoking is clearly the result of massive public health education campaigns. We see that reflected in the fact that smoking rates decline as education levels increase.

So how do we apply these lesson to the drug problem of the poor.

First we need to examine our motives. It is clear that our motives for the War on Drugs are to address the problems drug use causes for the wealthier classes and not it’s impact on the socially marginalized poor. We are not concerned because these drugs are destroying lives and killing people. We are concerned because the addicted victims of these drug problems turn to crime to feed their habit. We see the crime as the problem because it’s victims are middle and upper class.

It is this motivation that causes society not to care that the War on Drugs only revictimizes the worst victims of the drug problem, the addicts. It seems that only the secondary victims, the middle class victims of the crimes count. Of course tackling the real problem and helping the real victims is much more difficult than fighting a war against them. More importantly these victims acre marginalized in society, have very little economic and social influence and have virtually no political power and very low voting rates.

Their very social marginalization and poverty is what makes them easily susceptible to the lure of drugs as an escape from their lives of desperation. Although the War on Drugs supposedly targets those that victimize them, the zero tolerance approach of its implementation fails to distinguish between the victims and the victimizers. More importantly the criminal justice approach of the War on Drugs fails to address the underlying social conditions that make them vulnerable to victimization.

We need a multi-pronged approach to the problem. I do not pretend to have all the answers but I do know what some of the things that need to be done are.

First we need to recognize that drug addiction is primarily a social and medical problem.

We need to find innovative ways to reach the youth in poor communities to educate them about the risks of drug use without preaching to them about how much better middle class society is than the world they live in.

We have to reach those that are addicted and provide them with the resources to overcome their addictions. Reaching them is the most difficult step. These are people that see the social establishment as the enemy, because it treats them as the enemy.

That is why harm reduction programs, such as needle exchange and safe injection sites, that reach out to these victims are so important. Not only do they save lives by reducing HIV and Hepatitis but they bring the addicted into contact with those that truly want to help them overcome their addictions.

More importantly we have to provide these desperate people with the help they need when they ask for it. All too often the window of opportunity when someone is ready to seek help is very short. Telling them they have to wait weeks or months to get into treatment is no better than refusing them treatment. We must be willing to provide the treatment resources necessary to allow people into treatment immediately. The long term costs of not doing that are much greater than the short term costs of doing it.

However, the most important thing we can do to reduce the number of addicted persons is to address their desperate social conditions. A true War on Poverty would be the most effective War on Crime and War on Drugs that ever could be.

We need to shift our emphasis from going to war against the victims of drug addiction to providing help to them.