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It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be plausible

Despite plenty of evidence their efforts will be futile, the people who study such things continue to insist on analyzing the actual usefulness of the Harper government’s crime policy.

Decades of evidence on prison policy is being trumped by ideology and populist pandering, says an independent report on the Conservative government’s corrections road map. “Raw wedge politics — in place of studied evidence — is the new face of public policy for Canada,” Graham Stewart, one of the study’s co-authors, said at a news conference Thursday.

… Their analysis was immediately dismissed by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, who made a point of referring repeatedly to Mr. Jackson as “the professor.” “The professor has a different philosophy than us,” Mr. Van Loan told CBC Newsworld. “We think the protection of society has to come first.”

… Ian Brodie, Harper’s former chief of staff, told a McGill University symposium last March that criticism of the tough-on-crime policy by sociologists, lawyers and criminologists actually bolsters the Conservative case — because they are held in lower regard than politicians.

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