Justice Minister Irwin Cotler tabled new legislation yesterday that restricts conditional sentences for serious and violent offences like sexual assault, terrorist activities and organized crime.

His reform package stops short of a prohibition, but requires judges to present written explanations when "exceptional circumstances" lead them to impose house arrest instead of prison terms.

"There may be individual cases where the court -- exceptional cases -- where a court may feel a conditional sentence is appropriate, and we shouldn't entirely both remove that discretion and introduce rigidity in the criminal justice system," Cotler said, citing the case of a woman who received a conditional sentence of two years less a day for murdering her abusive husband because she had been battered, brain-damaged since birth and was remorseful for her act.

Conditional sentences are already restricted for gun-related crimes, Cotler said. An all-out ban might infringe on constitutional rights and freedoms, he said.

But Conservative justice critic Vic Toews called the bill a "shell game" that won't stop violent and repeat offenders, drug dealers and sex offenders from receiving house arrest. Cotler's law continues the current lax sentencing system under a new "guise," he charged.

"He has merely restated exactly what the law is now -- where there is a serious concern about public safety, conditional sentences should not be applied," Toews said. "There is no attempt to limit the discretion of judges to impose house arrest."

Louise Botham, president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association, objected to the government dictating when a conditional sentence is appropriate.

This is cache, read story here