Column: Will being cooped up at home change minds on house arrest?

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After his high-profile client was sentenced to four months at home, London defence lawyer Gord Cudmore got into a donnybrook of an argument on a local radio show about the merits of house arrest.

“Everyone said it was a kiss. It wasn’t a kiss,” said Cudmore, reflecting on the 2014 sentencing of London’s ex-mayor and MPP Joe Fontana, who was convicted of fraud and breach of trust by a public official.

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Column: Will being cooped up at home change minds on house arrest? Back to video

Back in the good old days, when we could go out and stuff, everybody, including Cudmore’s radio opponent, had an opinion about Joe and that doctored $1,700 expense claim from 2005 when he was in the federal government.

By the time Fontana rode off into the sunset, he’d already resigned the mayor’s chair. He was ordered to be in his home in Arva at all times, with some exceptions for work and three hours on weekends to pick up supplies.

There was backlash from the camp who viewed conditional sentences as a weaker alternative to a traditional jailhouse detention. There were the same sort of rumblings for the Fleming Drive St. Patrick’s Day rioters and the teenage computer hacker who unleashed the Heartbleed virus on Revenue Canada.

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But here we are now, six weeks into this pandemic and locked away in our homes with no real end in sight and I’m wondering if some of those folks might be rethinking that position.

Fontana picked up the phone when I called him Thursday to ask him if this experience was similar to what he went through. He cheerily declined comment.

But Cudmore said this must be how it feels. “It’s not a slap on the wrist,” he said of house arrest. “Incarceration, whether it’s in a jail or in your house, it’s about a loss of freedom.”

Conditional sentences have had a bumpy history. They were enacted in 1996 to divert people from jail if the sentence was no more than two years less-a-day and if they weren’t considered a danger.

But in 2006, the Conservative federal government put the kibosh on them for serious personal injury offences. By 2012, the list was expanded to a slew of indictable offences under the Safe Streets and Communities Act as part of a tough-on-crime agenda popular with the public.

Retired Crown attorney and law professor Brian Farmer never understood why people fussed so much about house arrest.

“The physical setting may be more comfortable, but psychologically, you’re in prison,” he said. “If I put you in a palace and you can’t leave it, it becomes a prison.”

In some ways, frankly, this is worse. At least under house arrest, you can have people visit. Trips to the grocery store don’t require masks and gloves.

Farmer said this is a time to reflect on that isolation. “I think it should give people a new perspective on how it affects you when you can’t go anywhere and you can’t see anybody,” he said.

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“I think  . . . out of all of this, there’s going to be a change in people generally on how they look at society, other people, themselves and probably our form of democracy.”

Andy Rady, president of the London Criminal Lawyers Association, said that could include revisiting conditional sentencing, or at least opening up the conversation.

Not everyone wants to be at home. Conditional sentences, unlike traditional jail time, require every day of the term be served without any chance of remission. Rady said he’s had clients who would rather do 30 days in jail than six months confined to home.

“House arrest is a lot tougher than what people think,” he said, and in the age of COVID-19, “people may think a little bit harder about how easy that may be.”

We’re all finding that out. All the jigsaw puzzles, home projects, video streaming services, and teleconferencing can’t quell that sense of isolation and longing for a time we can be together.

“The comforts of home soon lose their appeal,” Cudmore said. “I have a comfortable home and it’s driving me crazy.”

jsims@postmedia.com

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