Law360 Canada (October 27, 2026, 2:53 PM EDT) -- In minimum security, I lived for a few months with two men with life sentences for murder, another who had sold fentanyl and another convicted of drug smuggling. These are serious crimes. Yet I found these men to be easy to live with, reasonable to get along with, good housemates. I never felt a moment of fear or anxiety with any of them.
My experience was in stark contrast to what many people assume — that prisons are full of dangerous peopluuse who need to be kept away from the rest of society. Instead, I mostly met men who, even though they had committed serious crimes, did not seem that different from anyone else. Many I felt would make good neighbours. Some were talented artists or musicians, others athletes. Some wrote poetry. There was a former lawyer who helped people with parole applications and other legal matters. One of my housemates could fix anything electrical. Others were talented cooks who, against prison rules, shared food. Just regular folks — who had committed a serious crime.
No doubt there are people in prison who are dangerous — psychopathic, or unable to control their anger. I saw flashes of this in a few people who were in the federal assessment unit with me. And had I seen people under the influence of drugs, which are involved in a lot of crime, it would doubtless have been worse.
Still, of the more than 30,000 people who are locked up in Canada on any given day, the evidence suggests that the vast majority are not a great risk to public safety.
About two-thirds of all prisoners are in provincial jails. More than 70 per cent of those are on remand, being held for trial on a wide variety of crimes. The rest are serving short sentences for minor crimes. But even in federal prisons, which hold the people who have been convicted of the most serious crimes, many people once released are never convicted of another crime. (In general, a small number of people
account for a large proportion of criminal convictions.)
Here’s another indicator. Several thousand federal prisoners are paroled in Canada each year, typically with many restrictions and conditions. Well over 90 per cent complete their parole with no breaches and no further criminal convictions. To the surprise of many, people paroled after serving time for murder almost never commit another crime of any kind. People convicted of sex offences also have
very low reoffending rates.
For every Paul Bernardo or Robert Pickton, there are hundreds of people whose stories are much more like my housemates. Neither of those with life sentences was now like the young men they had been when they committed their crimes. Yet they had spent more than 60 years in prison between them —
not unusual at all for people with life sentences, many of whom are never paroled. It was hard to see what purpose was being served by keeping these men in prison for so long.
Even worse, sentences and time served are
getting longer. In 1976, when capital punishment was abolished, the average sentence for second-degree murder was 15 years. By 1999, it had doubled. At the same time, fewer people were getting timely parole.
Here’s another measure —
out of half a million pardons issued in Canada up to 2015 (when pardons were made much more difficult to get, a situation that continues today), fewer than 500 were revoked.
In other words, most people serving time in our jails and prisons today, even when they have been convicted of a serious crime, do not represent a significant public safety risk. Meanwhile, being imprisoned creates significant harm — lost jobs, lost housing, lost relationships, lost income for families and children.
Hundreds of thousands of children in Canada, innocent of any wrongdoing, suffer in many ways from having an imprisoned parent.
Ninety per cent of those imprisoned in Canada will eventually be released. It makes sense, without minimizing the wrongs they have done, to focus on how we can help them live a law-abiding life. Keeping people in federal prison costs a lot of money — close to $150,000 per prisoner per year. If people spent less time in prison, that money could be spent in better ways — more and better drug rehab, early intervention for high-risk young people, mental health supports, helping people with records find meaningful employment, and more and better support for victims of crime.
Take me as another example. I had a short sentence for the federal system, only a few years. A decade earlier I would likely not have been imprisoned at all. But in the 2010s, government policy choices made a lot of things tougher. My parole was delayed, and I had more restrictions while on parole.
I completed parole successfully and in the decade since then have not been re-arrested or charged with any crime. Indeed, I have won several awards for my volunteer contributions, including this column. Yet Canadian taxpayers spent, I estimate, half a million dollars prosecuting and imprisoning me, and my criminal record has consistently made it harder for me to contribute, even by doing volunteer work.
How can that be good public policy in a world full of people who need, and can’t get, help for things like homelessness or anger issues or substance abuse? In practice, we are making it harder for former prisoners who would like to make a contribution.
I have given considerable thought at to why that is. The central issue, as I see it, is that crime generates strong emotions in people — in particular anger and disgust. These emotions cloud our judgment and pull us away from thinking about what would actually be in the public interest. Instead, we focus on punishing people for doing something we don’t like — and a lot of people seem to want those consequences to last a lifetime: “Lock him up and throw away the key.” As a species, we seem to like and even thirst after revenge and punishment. Perhaps that is the reason there are so many sermons about compassion and forgiveness — because those practices don’t come easily to us.
Most of us know in our hearts that punishment is a failing strategy even if it feels good in the moment. A huge amount of research also
concludes that more imprisonment and longer sentences do not improve public safety and may make it worse. “Tough on crime” has an intuitive appeal, which makes it an effective political slogan. But filling prisons with people who do not need to be there hurts everyone. It’s not about being kind to criminals, it’s about doing what’s best for all of us.
David Dorson is the pen name of someone who went through arrest, case disposition, imprisonment and parole in Ontario a few years ago. Law360 Canada has granted him anonymity because he offers a unique perspective on a subject that matters deeply to many readers, and revealing the author’s identity would make re-establishment in the community after serving his sentence much more difficult than it already is.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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