Mandatory Minimum Penalties in Canada: Analysis and Annotated Bibliography

3.0 Conclusion

This report has tried to draw attention to the policy, legal and academic discussions on mandatory minimum punishments. While it has focused on the Canadian context, it has also examined the broader theme of implementing harsher criminal punishments in various other jurisdictions; the point of consensus is that there are tensions between the political goals of MMPs and the outcomes of MMPs as a crime control strategy. As an exercise in evidence-based criminological and legal research, not political science, the consensus in research can be described by Tonry’s (1996: 134) in his 1996 observation:

Evaluated in terms of their stated substantive objectives, mandatory penalties do not work. The record is clear […] that mandatory penalty laws shift power from judges to prosecutors, meet with widespread circumvention, produce dislocations in case processing, and too often result in imposition of penalties that everyone involved believes to be unduly harsh.

Given this point of consensus and existing themes, it is important to provide a comprehensive review of the existing academic literature, government and non-governmental organizational reports to inform policy, debates, and reviews of MMP legislation in Canada.