The Habitual Criminal Act
At the Manitoba and Saskatchewan penitentiaries, the topic of the Habitual Offender Act was often discussed in their respective publications: Mountain Echoes and Pathfinder. Codified in 1947, this legislation allowed for the designation of individuals as habitual offenders if perceived as a threat to public safety, or for those who had been convicted of three separate offences with sentences of at least five years. Such individuals, colloquially referred to by inmates as being ‘on the bitch,’ were subjected to indeterminate imprisonment. This Act, which partially inspired California’s three-strike law, was used unevenly and demonstrated, and revealed a discriminatory and inadequately informed approach towards substance abuse and addiction.
In January 1955, S.C Smith tackled the topic in Mountain Echoes with an article titled, “Habitual Criminals or Curable Ex-Criminals.” Smith reveals that the Manitoba Penitentiary at that time, had six men serving indefinite sentences as habitual criminals. “Everyone of them is, or was, a narcotic addict,” he wrote, and “all of them, with the exception of one, are serving an indefinite term on top of their original sentence for a narcotics charge. The lone exception, whilst he is a narcotic addict, received a two-year term for theft and on top of this was sentenced to an indefinite term as an habitual criminal.” Additionally, Smith details personalizing details to each individual’s criminal and life history, and asserting that the classification was unwarranted. “In 1939, no. 5 joined the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Previous to the war he had a criminal record and was also an addict. Apparently this made no difference to his country, then. In due course, he landed in Hong Kong and was eventually taken prisoner by the Japanese … after V.J. Day, he arrived home acclaimed a hero, one of many heroes. Some nine years later he is still a prisoner, only now is serving an indefinite term and classed as an habitual criminal. I agree, apparently, he is an habitual prisoner, but I certainly don’t think he’s an habitual criminal. “ Another, he writes, became addicted to narcotics after a stomach hemorrhage and a lengthy hospital stay. “His record is bad, true, but at twenty-seven years of age it seems a little early to me to class him as an habitual criminal.” Smith's article lends credence to issues with the Act that would not officially come under scrutiny until 1966 – eleven years later. At that time, it was demonstrated that the Act was often applied unevenly and incorrectly, and often to non-violent offenders, especially those with addiction issues. This is emphasized in Smith’s article, in which all those charged under this Act were addicts, including an individual on a two-year charge (not the minimum of five), as well as a twenty-seven-year-old, who certainly could not have already served three five year federal sentences.
Smith finished his article by proclaiming, “This idea of just picking up the odd addict here and there and tossing the Habitual Criminal Act at him is not only inconsistent, it is accomplishing nothing towards defeating this problem.”
In 1961, an article on the Habitual Criminal Act, entitled “Double Jeopardy,” detailed how the anonymous writer had been deemed a habitual criminal. “Evidence will be submitted to the court that from the year of our Lord, 1949, you have been and now are leading a persistently criminal life; that you are and have been an habitual associate of thieves, burglars, bank robbers, drug addicts and criminal trafficers in drugs: that you have no regular employment or honest occupation ; that you have already been convicted of possessing narcotics drugs on three separate and independent occasions – in the 1949, 1953 and 1955.” This writer provided additional evidence to Smith’s article, emphasizing that, in the case of the Manitoba Penitentiary, habitual criminals were most often those with frequent and non-violent narcotics charges, who often fell under the requirements of having three separate five-year sentences. The writer further emphasizes, “this Habitual Criminal Act is an obvious form of revenge, and only primitive people take revenge. This Act is contrary to the Concept of true justice … and the truth is, that it is unjust by reason of discrimination ; and is a direct contravention of the Bill of Rights.”
Doug Bevans, the editor of Pathfinder, addressed the topic of ‘the Bitch’ in March 1965, stating “The Habitual Criminal Act predicts the future by the yardstick of the past.” Bevans argued that this Act undermines the concept of rehabilitation, and that the Act effectively tells a prisoner, “I have read your mind, looked into the crystal ball that is your future and found with absolute certainty that you will never change.” Bevans also drew from his own personal experience in interacting with those deemed habitual criminals, “I have lived in this penitentiary for a number of years now and I tell you this; I have never met a Habitual Criminal. I have met many men wearing the “label” Habitual Criminal, but believe me it amounts to no more than that. They are men with values, and like all men living in this century, those values are open to charge, and their tomorrows are as unpredictable as yours or mine.”
In 1966, the Act faced scrutiny in Parliament for its uneven application, particularly in the prairies and on the west coast. Judges in Quebec and Ontario were less likely to use the Act, and only 15% of offenders with habitual offender status came from these provinces, despite a significantly higher prison population. Additionally, evidence demonstrated that the Act was often wielded against non-violent offenders, and used as a coercive tool by the Crown to secure guilty pleas. In 1969, the Canadian Committee on Corrections recommended the Act be overturned after they found that Habitual Offenders were often a “serious social nuisance” but “not dangerous.” This Act was replaced by the Habitual Criminal and Dangerous Sexual Offender Act in 1977, which created a much more stringent set of rules before prisoners could be given an indeterminate sentence.
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