t4 - Sundays, January 24, 1988 ~ Narth Shore News

THE RECENT sentencing of 22-year-old Bruce Glassford
by an Ontario judge to imprisonment for a mere 90 days, to
be served on weekends, for a serious assault upon a woman
has not been too well received across the country.

District Court Judge Vannini
was of the opinion (on what basis,
we are not told) that the woman
did not suffer any lasting emo-
tional or psychological harm.

Maybe there are women who,
after being forcibly taken to some
secluded place, pinned to the
ground and beaten in the face
when they resist sexual intercourse,
just get up, hum a few bars of: ‘‘It
was just one of those things, just
one of those crazy things’ and
skip home, chuckling: ‘‘Ah, well,
boys will be boys.”

Maybe the judge knows of
some. I don’t; and my mostly
low-life friends and acquaintances
who know about such things say
they don’t recollect any
themselves. One said he had heard
of one, but the report was third-
hand and the event occurred in
Liberia or Zaire, so he couldn’t
really put much stock in it.

The judge gave young Mr.
Glassford this little slap on the
bum because he noted the offender
came from a good family, had
good potential for rehabilitation
and probably had learned his
lesson. *.-- .
~-He also noted that the offender
had developed an ulcer. We do not

- know whether the ulcer was the
result of remorse, the lawyer's bill
or just anger at being deprived of
full penetration. Anyway, the.
judge, under some delusion that he
had to put the proffered ulcer
somewhere, plunked it onto the
accused’s plus side.’ Se

The uproar about this sentence
‘and the expressed justifications of
it have now, been followed by a

“Toronto Committee of Violence
Against Women and Children
analysis of 450 other sentences in
sexual assault matters. Mr.-

Glassford’s light sentence appears
to be the norm, rather than the ex-
ception according to the commit-
tee.

Because the committec’s study
only deals with sexual assaults, it
does not even begin to recognize
that this sort of social-study
nonsense as a basis for sympathetic
sentencing is common in all sorts
of cases and offences these days.

Two years ago, during its annual
regatta, the City of Kelowna’s
downtown area was taken over by
a howling, rampaging mob
smashing windows, looting and
raising hell. The mayor had to read
the Riot Act, finally, with its
threat of life imprisonment.

A long time later one of the par-
ticipants was convicted of being a
member of this unlawful assembly.
He didn’t receive a fine. He wasn't

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given a day in jail. He was given a
conditional discharge with six
months probation. All this meant
was that if he didn’t commit any
more offences for six months,
there woutdn't even be a record of
conviction for the offence he
comsnitied. (Others also received
small penalties: as you would ex-
pect, the hoodlums took note and
the riots were even worse last
year.)

The Kelowna judge explained he
was doing this because he didn’t
want to “‘ruin’’ the 24-year-old of-
fender’s college studies or his
eventual career goal. The offender
was taking criminology courses
which the college claims (J am not
inventing this) will help him and
others become good police of-
ficers. By this process, police
recruiters can be legally deceived,
when they ask about prior convic-
tions.

The Toronto committee is right
to question the illogical, irrelevant
or ludicrous reasons given by
judges for light sentences. It is
wide of the mark, though, in at-
cributing this leniency just to the
resemblence of the offender's
status to the ‘‘socio-economic
Ye

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Status’’ of the judge.

The teal fact of the matter is
that, ever since the lawyers aban-
doned the old apprenticeship
system and foolishly turned educa-
tion over to the universities, law-
yers and Jawyers who later became
judges have all been exposed to
and immersed in their most im-
pressionable years, the often wool-
ly, unreal views of academics in
the arts and humanities and the
law schools, for seven years or
more.

This has inevitably had the result
of some brain-damaged iawyers
advancing without embarrassment
or blushes — and some equally-
afflicted judges to adopt — the
most incredible, unreal and
fatuous nonsense about the causes
of crime and the treatment of it. .

Go into almost any criminal!
court today. In one case the judge
will be urged to impose a light
sentence or none at all because the
offender comes from a good,
respected family background, has
ambitions, is repentant, the of-
fence is thus out of character and
the offender is therefore unlikely
to repeat.

In the very next case the same

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judge will ~- sometimes by the
same lawyer — be similarly urged
to show identical leniency because
the offender comes from a poor,
deprived socio-economic
background, the victim of society
who never had the advantages of
others, is ambitious, remorseful
and unlikely to repeat.

In each case the offender will
sport a recent haircut, a shave and
will wear a shirt and tie and an
earnest, honest, innocent, rehabili-
tated look on his puss.

The submissions are clearly con-
tradictory, where not irrelevant.
To adopt them is to neglect the
principles of punishment and
deterrence and to encourage even
more such offences against society.

Translated, all this embroidered
pap means that no one should be
punished in a meaningful way.
Society is the real offender and
equal status the road to crime-free
society.

The Toronto committee would
do well to look beyond the court-
rooms where this blithering
nonsense is regurgitated and vent
equal anger upon the educational
system which produces it®@

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