Alternatives to incarceration: for a little more moderation, fairness and humanity

The first part of this article deals with alternative solutions to imprisonment, emphasizing Pierre Landreville's influence on Quebec's correctional policies over the past decades. The author then sets out conditional sentencing measures implemented in Canada in 1996 with the goal of reducing the use of incarceration. In spite of the fact that conditional sentencing provides the means to be a credible and efficient alternative measure, it has been criticized of late by a conservative way of thinking that aims to reduce the granting of conditional sentences. The third and final section of the paper relates a few obstacles to alternative measures, notably the fact that they are constantly being compared to incarceration, that they are not well understood by the public and, lastly, that they are discredited by proponents of "law and order."