Take a Life, Give Your Life

"I don't think it's OK for people to commit those kinds of horrific crimes, where there's significant impact on families and loved ones, and then you're incarcerated for a very short period of time, released and then you get to enjoy all the same privileges enjoyed by law-abiding citizens in this country. I just think that's wrong."
Tom Stamatakis, Vancouver, president, Canadian Police Association

"Canadians do not understand why the most dangerous criminals would ever be released from prison. For them, our government will change the law so that a life sentence means a sentence for life."
Governor-General David Johnston, Throne Speech

JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Travis Baumgartner who killed three of his security guard colleages is taken out of a van by Canadian Border Services officers at the Aldergrove, B.C. border crossing, Saturday, June 16, 2012.

Vancouver Police Chief Stamatakis doesn't think much of Steven LeClair, now 68, being granted 72 hours of freedom every month to shop, see a film, and enjoy the company of his wife. He is 68. While in prison, during his 34 years of incarceration he 'met' his wife through the auspices of a personal advertisement. Women tend to respond to these types of invitations. It's difficult to understand just exactly why any woman might be interested in a personal relationship with a multiple murderer, but there you are.

In 1980, 34-year-old Steven LeClair went home to get his handgun and returned with it to the downtown Vancouver Palace Hotel tavern out of which he had just been ejected. He then proceeded to shoot pub manager Anthony Dutkiewica, 50, waiter James McDonald, 35, and patron Frieda Kradepohl, 72, killing them. And for good measure shot two more people, who were wounded and lived to see another day.

He then left the tavern, ordered a stranger to drive him to Richmond where he entered the RCMP headquarters and shot and killed Constable Tom Agar, 26, the front desk officer, wounding another officer, before he was finally taken into custody. During his trial he faced surviving bar staff from the stand, stating they were lucky to be alive. When he applied for early parole in 1998 he had no idea of the names of his victims, nor did he much care, obviously.

That he is now out on initial, temporary freedom does not sit well with Chief Stamatakis. Nor, one might imagine, would the families of those whom he murdered, be comfortable with his release from custody. Any Canadian convicted of first or second-degree murder is handed an automatic "life-sentence", and that truly is a misnomer, since that sentence is 25 years in prison, shortened ordinarily with parole eligibility. Someone sent to prison for second-degree murder can be out in ten years.

In fact, the average incarceration time for first-degree murderers was 22.4 years, according to Correctional Service of Canada, between 1976 and 2002. There is the Dangerous Offender designation applied rarely, meant to recognize those criminals deemed by their record to be serial offenders. Any convict threatening the "life, safety or physical or mental well-being of the public" qualifies for that designation. Even so, after four years, such offenders become eligible for day parole, and full parole after seven years.

In late 1990 Gallup found Canadian support for reinstatement of the death penalty had never dropped below 55% between 1978 and 1998. A 2010 Angus Reid survey found 62% support and a January 2011 Abacus Data poll found 66% support for the death penalty. However, a later 2013 Angus Reid poll came up with a bit of a surprise. When respondents were informed they could give offenders "life without parole" rather than death, support for the death penalty dropped from 63% to 39%.

Canadians are not wedded to state-sanctioned death as punishment, they really want such criminals off the streets and secure in prison. Forever. That's the kind of death penalty that appeals to people who believe that the punishment should fit the crime. Recidivism rates among paroled murderers are considered to be low. A 2012 Correctional Service of Canada study looking at 1,129 "lifers" between 1995 and 2005 found 3.5% committed a re-offence.

But paroled murderers do kill again. Between 1998 and 2008, ten convicted murderers committed murder once again following their release from prison, amounting to an average of one murder a year. What connected all of these cases was that the offenders had been paroled even though it was noted that they had a "significant history of violence", and evinced a "lack of remorse", and had a "complete lack of empathy for the victim". These warning signals had been ignored.

In Canada at least, multiple murderers, or those who commit heinous acts taking the lives of other people, those who show no remorse, those who are recognized as serial killers, all those who stand out in the company of other criminals as the worst of the worst, should remain incarcerated without hope of release from prison, ever. In abusing their responsibility to live in society without harm to others they have abrogated their right to freedom.

The current Conservative-led government's move to enact stricter punishment for severe acts of criminal assaults against society augers a tightening of restraints imposed upon the psychopaths among us. Once inscribed by law in the Criminal Code those stricter, life-in-prison-without-parole sentences should remain there, to reflect the concerns and wishes of the Canadian population which does not take lightly the dangers that stalk Canadians.