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Peace and Order

Governments provide protection against many dangers, both internal and external to the country - this is a major part of what we expect our government to do.

Part of this expectation is that our government work to create a peaceful and orderly society so that we can live with a sense of security, and build prosperity with the knowledge it cannot be stolen from us. We give our taxes and power to our government to protect us from individuals who seek their own ends at the expense of the lives, health, and happiness of others.

The Correctional System

However, locking people away for periods of time has not proven very effective - and it doesn't fulfill the two things sensible people want from their justice system. We want to:

1. Protect ourselves from anti-social behavior - the justice system locks people up only after the crime has been committed.
2. Recompense victims of crime where possible.
   1. Re-integrate anti-social people so that they become productive members of society, rather than a threat and a drain on resources.

Simply locking people away only protects us while they are locked up; once they get out - they are often better trained at anti-social behaviour, have no money, have no meaningful and gainful work, and not much hope of gaining a decent place in society - some of these people may now be more of a threat. Even those who do want to turn their lives around are hardly helped by our "correctional" system.

Choose Your Path

Is there a way to make us safer, reduce our cost of containing or correcting anti-social, destructive behaviour, and bring these people back into society? For non-violent criminals, they should have two choices:

1. Incarceration for the full extent of their prison term; no parole, no early release, no privileges. Upon release, monitoring for relapse into criminal ways.
2. A stint on a Sail Training Vessel (STV), followed by the duration of their stay on a work farm.

Option 1 would be chosen by those with serious issues, and whom we must guard ourselves against very carefully. The second option is for those who truly wish to turn their lives around - and are willing to make the effort to create positive habits and regain the trust of society. It is only for those who committed non-violent crimes.

Sail Training Vessels

People who commit a crime have made a poor choice, even those who try to rationalize their choice as no choice. In a conventional prison, they are surrounded by people who reinforce those rationalizations, set up criminal hierarchies, and teach new ways to attempt to gain something-for-nothing. In jail, criminals learn to make more poor choices. Three-to-six months on a sail training vessel is the start of a process to learn constructive behaviour.

On a vessel isolated at sea for an extended time:

• People must cooperate and work with their shipmates
• They must learn specific, important duties - and fulfill those well
• They must be responsible, and will have the opportunity to take on greater responsibility
• They must live in close quarters with others - with their mistakes and quirks - and learn to be tolerant and considerate
• There is plenty of time to work on improving an education
• There are no drugs or alcohol at sea - a chance to break old habits and make new choices

Every sailor must create a plan for positive change that is a requirement for moving on to the next stage: the work farms - may as well call them what they are.

Work Farms

After the sail training vessel, it's off to a work farm. Here, the prisoners will:

• Grow and prepare all their own food
• Grow all the food for the guards, the military, the Coast Guard, and those on the sail training vessels
• Grow all the food for the parliamentary cafeteria
• Complete high school and some other education: a trade, college, university - that is in demand in Canada
• Fully participate in a program to learn how to be a valued, useful, and happy member of society

Upon release, prisoners who have satisfactorily completed their term receive a conditional pardon that becomes a full pardon after five years of keeping clean. The goal is to motivate people to make positive choices and changes.

We allow prisoners on the work farms to earn and save some money so they don't come out with nothing - we pass along some of our savings in reduced guard and staff costs, food costs, and recidivism. Because these people are now working toward a positive future, fewer guards and fences will be required.

Law-abiding members of society have a right not only to protect themselves from criminal behaviour, but to take steps to prevent and correct such behaviour.

Protecting Our Country

We also expect our government to look to the defense of our country from external threats, to provide a Coast Guard for rescue, for mapping our coasts and marking shipping lanes, and so on. Some of these duties are very difficult to make 'greener.' However, there's no reason that our Navy and Coast Guard couldn't do some of their training of new recruits using Sail Training Vessels, as many other nations do.

Sailing vessels emit no greenhouse gases and teach many of the same skills that new recruits will need on the motor-driven vessels. People can learn navigation and shiphandling, discipline and teamwork, cooking and supply management, and so on, regardless of the type of vessel, so why not make it a carbon-neutral sailing ship?

It is also possible that some Coast Guard duties could be carried out by sailing vessels - let's ask the Coast Guard to investigate whether tasks like buoy maintenance and sea floor mapping could be done by sail-powered ships.

While we're at it, many of our universities conduct ocean research, from measuring pollutants to checking fish populations to sampling the sea floor for minerals. Why not build these new Coast Guard - and correctional service - vessels with extra accommodations and research facilities for scientists and their research, and make that part of the Coast Guard's mandate?

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