# Drunk man negligent to his children, they freeze to death and he gets off easy \[RO\] **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 8, 2009, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunk-man-negligent-to-his-children-they-freeze-to-death-and-he-gets-off-easy-ro/480310 "2009-01-08T00:42:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 19
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2009, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunk-man-negligent-to-his-children-they-freeze-to-death-and-he-gets-off-easy-ro/480310/19 "2009-01-08T06:30:55Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > That is a good question. Along with how in the hell does someone get 51 convictions while only being 25 years old? Assuming that Canada, like the US, only counts convictions starting at age 18\*, then the guy has been arrested and convicted 7 times a year. > > That is just amazing. That’s typical for a young adult male aboriginal from a northern Canadian reserve. Constant drunken violence is common on many of Canada’s northern reserves. I don’t have any general stats handy, but even if we just look at spousal killings in aboriginal communities, the rates are astounding when compared to the general population of all Canadians. Although aboriginals form only approximately 4% of Canada’s population, aboriginal spousal killings of females by males constitutes 14% of all spousal killings in Canada committed against women by men, and whopping 22% of all spousal killings in Canada committed against men by women. [http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collectio...5-224-XIE.html](http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collectio...5-224-XIE.html) The prime factors leading to aboriginal communities being violent places include economic and social deprivation, alcohol and substance abuse, and an inter-generational cycle of violence. Again, I don’t have any stats handy, but the conviction rate for aboriginals is off the edge of the graph when compared to the general Canadian population. > [@RickJay](#): > > I wonder if I’d get a “Sentencing circle” if I left my child to die in the cold. > > Of course, I’d never be such a waste of space that such a thing could happen, and if it did I’d long have since done the honorable thing and killed myself, but hypothetically… oh, right, I’m not the right race. > [@Equipoise](#): > > Geez, maybe alcohol is such a big problem up there because of all the fucking racists. I wouldn’t press the racist button too quickly, for quite literally, there are different sentencing considerations and procedures depending on whether an offender is aboriginal or not. The theory is that sentencing by one’s community, including one’s elders, will have a greater effect on an aboriginal offender than sentencing by a white southern judge. Locking up aboriginal offenders from northern reserves has not been very successful, for as soon as they get released, they go on violent drunken binges and get thrown in the hoosegow again. It becomes no more than revolving door justice. To address this, the Criminal Code has been amended such that “718.2 A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles: . . . (e) all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.” Faced with such huge social problems, policing on many reserves is limited to only policing the most severe drunken violence. Obviously that is no solution either. Sentencing circles try to find a solution that lies between the two extremes of revolving door justice and under policing. When a person is sentenced by the people with whom he interacts on a daily basis, he is more likely to accept the sentence, rather than simply blame the whites. When the sentence includes supervision by the community, there tends to be more success (less recidivism) than when aboriginal offenders are jailed off reserve. Sentencing circles started with minor matters, but due to their success, are now taking on more serious matters, in hope that there will be similar success. Note that sentencing circles are still under the aegis of the Court. If the judge is not satisfied with the outcome, then the judge trumps. What is hard to accept for many non-aboriginals is that this means that there is one law for the white man, and a different law for the aboriginal. An aboriginal is given “particular attention” when trying to make a non-custodial sentence. A non-aboriginal is not. An aboriginal can ask for a sentencing circle. A non-aboriginal can not. Although the different treatment based on race is an attempt to mitigate the tremendous problems that many aboriginals live with, to many people non-aboriginals there is something tremendously wrong when there is not one law for all. I would not call that position racist – in fact desiring one law for all it is quite the opposite of being racist. As far as the proposition that the alcohol problem is a result of racism goes, it does not wash. On northern reserves, whites are few and far between – often just a nurse, a teacher or two, and a police officer (if the reserve does not have its own aboriginal police officer). It would be ludicrous to suggest that such a small number of people could drive an entire community to severe alcoholism by virtue of their racism, if indeed they were racists, which is unlikely given the locations they chose to work in. Governmental paternalism based on race, however, has had hugely detrimental effects on aboriginal communities. The single greatest example of this is the residential school issue. For several generations, aboriginals from northern reserves were taken from their parents and placed in boarding schools, where they were then raised to live as if they were white men. The result was that the parents, stripped of their children, often fell heavily on the bottle. The children, upon finishing school and returning to their reserves, often had little memory of their families, no understanding of their own culture, and most disturbingly, absolutely no comprehension of normal family life. They too, often fell on the bottle. That paternalism based on race, however well intentioned it may have been, resulted in severely dysfunctional communities. Now here’s the question: is having one law for aboriginals and a different law for non-aboriginals yet another example of governmental paternalism based on race, or is it an effective mechanism for dealing with extraordinary circumstances by promoting community self-determination? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunk-man-negligent-to-his-children-they-freeze-to-death-and-he-gets-off-easy-ro/480310)._