Great essay. Well argued and sourced. I’m sure it will provoke some knee-jerk reactions from the lock-em-up crowd but the real solutions here will have to be a lot more thoughtful.
A key sentence is this: “What’s more, today’s prison population is different from yesterday’s. The closure of psychiatric institutions once hailed as “progressive’ has left the justice system to manage untreated mental illness and addiction. Roughly one-third of federal inmates have a diagnosed serious mental disorder.”
Other than organized crime and gangs, the other main crime issue facing Canada is clearly the population of mentally ill individuals. After One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and de-institutionalization, the promised compassionate community care never happened in either Canada and the US. I am of the view that we need to seriously consider institutions again, for the most serious cases. And with better protection against abuse and unjust institutionalization than we had from 1860-1960. (Women used to be committed for “hysteria” by their abusive husbands!)
We have forensic psychiatric facilities. Currently the provincial ones are generally fully subscribed and the federal facility would probably need to be expanded by orders of magnitude.
With our schizophrenic system who is responsible for paying for an expansion? Are they patients (health) or inmates (criminals)? Both, actually, so who picks up the tab for expansion?
Ms. Smith is going to force treatment on drug addicts, so we will see first hand how unwanted rehabilitation works. Sadly, I wouldn't bet the farm.
I wish mainstream media would report on this issue comprehensively, with this type of background and analysis.
Yesterday I heard a report on CBC radio (Toronto) arguing that our jails are in such a state of disrepair that stricter bail conditions would put the lives of the alleged criminals at risk.
My frustration is that the CBC report basically stopped at, “If you don’t feel compassion for the alleged criminals in this situation, there is something wrong with you.”
These types of CBC reports (and to be fair its not only cbc, but they are a master at this craft) follow a very specific pattern. First label concerns about a social issue, in this case bail reform a "panic". Second pull out a cherry picked study that says "actually its not that bad, its good even. Lastly continue to dismiss concerns as uninformed opinion or misinformation.
Repete violent offenders, and repeat offenders, are not the same thing. How we should be discussing the monitoring of violent offenders as if they are committing mischief is beyond me. The violent ones shouldn't be on the streets, full stop!
Also touched on only briefly is the woeful performance of Govts in keeping our Benches stocked with Justices. Heaven knows this country is well stocked with lawyers; surely there is enough legal inventory to keep the courts stocked.
The valid points raised that smaller number of criminals are responsible for most crime, a high degree of mental illness is driving much of incarceration and organized crime flourishing speak to some simple solutions. Establish institutions that exist to treat mental illness with required treatments with established gateways back into society, say maybe like we had for generations. We still have the same institutionsfor mental illness, now as then, today they are called prisons and this lets the compassionate pretend they are great and good while we hide those in need of help away with no assistance. Facilities to treat mental illness, an idea whose time has come once again. Criminals responsible for rapid continual criminal activity are to be considered what they are. Career criminals who are not salvageable. Permanent lock up like in El Salvador. No one should be able to commit dozens of crimes, no matter what their age. Organized crime involves political sponsors and all should be treated again like in El Salvador. Permanent lock up. We have quite a few Arctic islands that could house a super prison for the deserving few. People who are caught up in the criminal system and are willing to work to change their lives should be given every possible support. That does not include the small number of career criminals, organized crime and their political acolytes. And most importantly we need something other than jail for the mentally ill. But we need somewhere for them to get better. We confuse all the different types of criminals, treating all as equally worthy of redemption. Some are not and should never be left free in society to raze our world to the ground.
I've had the same thoughts. There should not be such a thing as homeless drug addicts, for example. They should all either be in treatment, mental institutions, or (for the incorrigible) prison. The fact that we have "harm reduction" as a concept means we have failed.
Our culture makes excuses to avoid being even momentarily "mean" to anyone though, and our governments are happy to repeat those excuses to avoid paying the political price of rounding these people up, or the financial price of paying for the needed institutions.
We have lifetime lockup. It's called a dangerous offender designation. If you don't know that, you probably aren't ready to discuss what doesn't work about the justice system.
"Dangerous offender designation" isn't quite the same as "lifetime or permanent lockup".
The most serious flaw is that the criminal, (no matter how heinous the crime), remains eligible for parole. A sentence which has a built-in potential for getting out of prison is NOT a permanent sentence. It's an indeterminate sentence with the always there chance of getting out of prison.
Consider the case of David Shearing who changed his name to David Ennis. He attacked a family while they were camping. He killed two little girls plus their parents and grandparents. He killed the adults immediately, but he kept the little girls alive. The girls were 11 and 13 years old. He kept them alive for several days while he raped, sexually assaulted and tortured them. After a few days of that, he killed them and burned their bodies along with the other four victims in the family's car.
He's got a lifetime sentence and every few years the remaining family and friends of the the Johnson/Bentley family have to endure his parole hearings.
That crime is so heinous that it should be GUARANTEED that he will stay in prison until he dies. And Canada doesn't have that and until we do, our justice system has a horrible stain on it.
Rehabilitation is a chimera. Keeping criminals in institutions keeps turn from committing crimes. The simple answer is to make sentences increase as the square of the number of convictions. Repeat offenders very quickly come to spend 99% of their time in prison.
While I agree with most of the essay the real problem lies not in the words of the essay or the words of the law, rather it lies in the implementation. It is totally true that Justice in Canada takes far too long and sentencing is inconsistent. I believe for most cases easy bail is a bandage to stop the bleeding rather than a cure for a bogged down system. I’ve followed serious crimes in the UK and other countries and trials with sentencing are complete around a year after the crime. In Canada it can take 3-4 years or longer. I simply do not see the resolve in Canada to address the length of time it takes police to investigate, the lengthy procedures which result in nothing while going through the court system and the lengthy time to pass sentencing. Everybody is frustrated, but nothing changes.
As to bail, first time offenders should get the benefit of the doubt. Repeat offenders, especially repeat violent offenders do not deserve any benefits. The government in its laws list specific repeat crimes that have reverse onus. I believe it should be the individuals overall respect for the law that requires reverse onus. A laundry list of offences may have no specific repeat offences, but indicates a general disregard for the law and that requires firmer treatment, not more leniency.
As I read your comment it struck me that the problem might lie deeper than the justice system. It appears that it takes Canada 3-4 times ad long to administrate anything, whether that be a criminal justice case, approving infrastructure or procuring kit for our military. I would like someone to propose what is it about Canada that seems to create these consistent bad outcomes compared to our peer democratic nations.
I think of words like Complacent, Entitled, Unserious, smug, Superiority complex. We have been granted great gifts of resources, location and access and haven't had to do any real hard lifting since 1940's. We have been riding the shirt tails ever since and slowly sliding into complete irrelevance. Its poisonous and has effected every aspect of our nation. We have completely lost focus on what is important and essential to being a great nation. Being guilty about what we have and apologizing for how we we got here is the mantra of the left and is leaving us far worse off than we should be.
Agree. Administering anything in Canada is the direct responsibility of our Public Service whose job it is to ensure that Parliamentary policies are implemented and enforced. Sadly, our government administration branches are , to use an old military term, completely FUBAR.
There are plenty of innocent repeat offenders. Just because someone did X and Y in the past does not mean they have now done Z. Y'know, the presumption of innocence which is one of the foundations of our justice system. And which I have practiced enough criminal law to know is worth maintaining.
What's wrong with the justice system almost certainly varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - the challenges even individual communities face are likely to be more different than you would imagine.
Also, a reverse onus doesn't matter that much, because bail is done on a balance of probabilities. Having to prove you probably won't breach is not terribly different to the Crown having to prove you probably will (at least once the presumption of innocence is involved, anyway).
Frankly, without data about what percentage of people on bail are reoffending, I do not think there is much point to even trying to talk about bail reform. It will all be sulking about people's feelings and whatever media story is hot this week. This data IS possible to gather, it'd just involve work (i.e. several of summer students for a few months for any of the smaller provinces), and it says a lot that no one seems to be putting in the work and instead are trying to fix it through legislation. When we don't actually know what the problem is.
> Also, a reverse onus doesn't matter that much, because bail is done on a balance of probabilities.
If that's the case, why do opponents of this law say that it will lead to more pre-trial detention and worry that more indigenous people will be denied bail?
What never ceases to amaze me is that both on the Federal and Provincial level our leaders want to pretend to be "tough on crime" without addressing the number one tool in their box. There is a severe shortage of judges at both the provincial and superior court level and our Premier and Prime Minister seem oblivious to the fact that appointing more is literally one of their primary powers; no special bills need be passed.
As someone who works closely with the court system, I get to see it's dysfunctions daily and one thing I think the public needs to be made aware of is this; the justice system was designed with the idea that those accused of crimes are rational, self interested actors who can be rehabilitated. Sadly, this is not true. I would estimate 70% of the people accused of a crime are individuals with poor or no impulse control who cannot themselves even tell you why they committed a crime other than "they felt like it". These are the high number of repeat offenders mentioned in the article; the dreaded handful of offenders well known to police because they are responsible for 80% of all the petty crime in town as they run around set things on fire and vandalize small businesses while acting out. They will not learn any lessons because they are *incapable* of long term planning or reasoning. This requires a radical new approach that our current justice system is not set up for.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but prison is only a threat if you have something to lose. If you are unemployable and staring down the barrel of a winter outdoors with only a thin blanket, suddenly spending the next three months indoors getting three meals a day looks very appealing
Modern penitentiaries are still a few hundred years old as a concept. As mentioned they have the disadvantage of being expensive and perhaps a training ground for future criminality. Bail leaves the individual at liberty to continue doing other criminal activity if they ignore the threat of going back to jail.
Ankle monitors seem to be the only technological solution between the two extremes but there may be others if we get creative. The goal is to make it impossible for the criminal to reoffend at a relatively cheap cost and leaving the option for the individual to leave their criminal past behind. Wrist monitors may be a solution for low risk offenders but tech for medium to high risk offenders may be a challenge.
If the criminality is enabled by the social circles the offender travels in, such as drug trafficking, relocation may be effective.
Until we create this tech however judges will be between expensive and ineffective options.
Relocation's probably going to make your organized crime problem worse - your slightly affiliated drug dealer who is in a new place with no means of support seems rather open to turning to his organized crime connections for help.
Identity politics created an untouchable class of individuals, whose membership within certain groups, would provide cover for illegal activities. Identity groups of every persuasion have within them extreme elements. It is these extreme actors that will often manipulate and coerce members within the group to cover for or insulate them from scrutiny. Transnational oppression and tribalism feed off identify politics. Both reinforce the us against them position where justified scrutiny of a individual is framed as a threat to the group. The veil of identity must be lifted to allow these actors to be seen for who they are. Unfortunately, this will be a difficult task as many Canadians, both new and multigenerational, no longer trust the political class to have an honest conversation about the fallout of identity politics on our justice system.
Good article. From the police, who increasingly avoid any heavy lifting, to the chronically backed up and incompetent court system, we just can't seem to get out of our own way. That said, I can't help but feel that our current predicament is just part of an overall deterioration of all aspects of governance in our once great country. The public sector soaks up more and more of the wealth of the nation while everything costs more and the quality of life declines. A major overhaul is long overdue, not just with the criminal justice system but with all aspects of government and public service.
Without increasing resources to courts and corrections (provincial areas of responsibility with some fed overlap), nothing will improve. Cases will get tossed because cases can’t be heard in a reasonable time frame and criminals will be let out of jails and prisons because they’re too crowded. We also need more mental health care for those incarcerated.
This article is basically the only piece of insightful commentary I have seen on this. You can tell that Mr. Copeland may actually know how the bail system works. This puts him ahead of far too many people, including most of the people legislating about it.
Without knowing what chunk of people on bail are offending, it doesn't exactly say good things about the government that they think they know what the problem is or how to fix it. Smart people try not to offer their opinions until they understand a problem. It is literally impossible to understand this problem, because the data does not exist, yet a lot of people seem to have opinions.
My guess would be that much like the percentage of people who commit most of the crime, most of the serious breaching is done by a small group of people. This is anecdotal, but being a criminal defence lawyer in one of the murder capitals of Canada gives you some insight. There are the clients who inevitably come back, the clients who come back eventually, and the clients who can actually follow conditions. Most clients are in the second or third categories, but you see the first ones more often. You have the option of either locking those people up or monitoring them better (I'd go with monitoring them better, which is probably cheaper and which better respects the presumption of innocence). Either is pretty straightforward. These people usually have lengthy records for breaches, and frankly a lot of them don't get bail as-is. Nor do Crowns or judges tend to repeatedly let out people charged with breaching their current bail order. As Copeland pointed out, jails are overcrowded with people awaiting trial - if we lock up more people, that will become more true.
Significant issues that no one mentions are police enforcement and, frankly, the bit where people do not turn in people who are breaching their bail conditions (especially family members). Look at the Nova Scotia shooter, or the Saskatchewan mass stabbings. The guy in Saskatchewan had breached his parole four months previously. Did anyone turn him in? To be fair, were the public aware that if they saw him they should be turning him in? The RCMP were well aware the Nova Scotia shooter had illegal firearms - did they do anything? The RCMP had one of the guys from the Saskatchewan stabbings in custody, but he gave them a fake name and so three hours of effort on their part was not enough to confirm his identity. And that was with them suspecting who he was - did they talk to his family? Did they look at Facebook?
You do not fix enforcement issues with legislation, both because you cannot make people do things and because the legislation is (likely) not the problem.
Whether reverse onuses actually do anything has also, as far as I know, not been studied in a Canadian context. I'm not sure they really matter that much: 50%+1 one way vs 50%+1 the other way is not significant in most cases. If the judge thinks the guy will probably breach, they deny. If they think he probably won't, they don't. If you're relying on the presumption to save you, that's not a good place to be.
Furthermore, as I have pointed out before, you cannot have a system where no one breaches their bail, because that system is going to be locking up a lot of people who wouldn't. That would be bad. Under the current law, about 50% of people on bail should reoffend. I suspect it's nowhere close to that high (I have seen statistics suggesting it is only about 25%, though unfortunately they were not clearly sourced). If it IS that high, I suspect a lot of it is the same people offending over and over again.
Great essay. Well argued and sourced. I’m sure it will provoke some knee-jerk reactions from the lock-em-up crowd but the real solutions here will have to be a lot more thoughtful.
A key sentence is this: “What’s more, today’s prison population is different from yesterday’s. The closure of psychiatric institutions once hailed as “progressive’ has left the justice system to manage untreated mental illness and addiction. Roughly one-third of federal inmates have a diagnosed serious mental disorder.”
Other than organized crime and gangs, the other main crime issue facing Canada is clearly the population of mentally ill individuals. After One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and de-institutionalization, the promised compassionate community care never happened in either Canada and the US. I am of the view that we need to seriously consider institutions again, for the most serious cases. And with better protection against abuse and unjust institutionalization than we had from 1860-1960. (Women used to be committed for “hysteria” by their abusive husbands!)
Freddie de Boer has written eloquently on this (eg https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-case-for-forcing-the-mentally-ill-into-treatment.html )
We have forensic psychiatric facilities. Currently the provincial ones are generally fully subscribed and the federal facility would probably need to be expanded by orders of magnitude.
With our schizophrenic system who is responsible for paying for an expansion? Are they patients (health) or inmates (criminals)? Both, actually, so who picks up the tab for expansion?
Ms. Smith is going to force treatment on drug addicts, so we will see first hand how unwanted rehabilitation works. Sadly, I wouldn't bet the farm.
I wish mainstream media would report on this issue comprehensively, with this type of background and analysis.
Yesterday I heard a report on CBC radio (Toronto) arguing that our jails are in such a state of disrepair that stricter bail conditions would put the lives of the alleged criminals at risk.
My frustration is that the CBC report basically stopped at, “If you don’t feel compassion for the alleged criminals in this situation, there is something wrong with you.”
These types of CBC reports (and to be fair its not only cbc, but they are a master at this craft) follow a very specific pattern. First label concerns about a social issue, in this case bail reform a "panic". Second pull out a cherry picked study that says "actually its not that bad, its good even. Lastly continue to dismiss concerns as uninformed opinion or misinformation.
Repete violent offenders, and repeat offenders, are not the same thing. How we should be discussing the monitoring of violent offenders as if they are committing mischief is beyond me. The violent ones shouldn't be on the streets, full stop!
Also touched on only briefly is the woeful performance of Govts in keeping our Benches stocked with Justices. Heaven knows this country is well stocked with lawyers; surely there is enough legal inventory to keep the courts stocked.
The valid points raised that smaller number of criminals are responsible for most crime, a high degree of mental illness is driving much of incarceration and organized crime flourishing speak to some simple solutions. Establish institutions that exist to treat mental illness with required treatments with established gateways back into society, say maybe like we had for generations. We still have the same institutionsfor mental illness, now as then, today they are called prisons and this lets the compassionate pretend they are great and good while we hide those in need of help away with no assistance. Facilities to treat mental illness, an idea whose time has come once again. Criminals responsible for rapid continual criminal activity are to be considered what they are. Career criminals who are not salvageable. Permanent lock up like in El Salvador. No one should be able to commit dozens of crimes, no matter what their age. Organized crime involves political sponsors and all should be treated again like in El Salvador. Permanent lock up. We have quite a few Arctic islands that could house a super prison for the deserving few. People who are caught up in the criminal system and are willing to work to change their lives should be given every possible support. That does not include the small number of career criminals, organized crime and their political acolytes. And most importantly we need something other than jail for the mentally ill. But we need somewhere for them to get better. We confuse all the different types of criminals, treating all as equally worthy of redemption. Some are not and should never be left free in society to raze our world to the ground.
I've had the same thoughts. There should not be such a thing as homeless drug addicts, for example. They should all either be in treatment, mental institutions, or (for the incorrigible) prison. The fact that we have "harm reduction" as a concept means we have failed.
Our culture makes excuses to avoid being even momentarily "mean" to anyone though, and our governments are happy to repeat those excuses to avoid paying the political price of rounding these people up, or the financial price of paying for the needed institutions.
We have lifetime lockup. It's called a dangerous offender designation. If you don't know that, you probably aren't ready to discuss what doesn't work about the justice system.
"Dangerous offender designation" isn't quite the same as "lifetime or permanent lockup".
The most serious flaw is that the criminal, (no matter how heinous the crime), remains eligible for parole. A sentence which has a built-in potential for getting out of prison is NOT a permanent sentence. It's an indeterminate sentence with the always there chance of getting out of prison.
Consider the case of David Shearing who changed his name to David Ennis. He attacked a family while they were camping. He killed two little girls plus their parents and grandparents. He killed the adults immediately, but he kept the little girls alive. The girls were 11 and 13 years old. He kept them alive for several days while he raped, sexually assaulted and tortured them. After a few days of that, he killed them and burned their bodies along with the other four victims in the family's car.
He's got a lifetime sentence and every few years the remaining family and friends of the the Johnson/Bentley family have to endure his parole hearings.
That crime is so heinous that it should be GUARANTEED that he will stay in prison until he dies. And Canada doesn't have that and until we do, our justice system has a horrible stain on it.
It is rarely used.
Rehabilitation is a chimera. Keeping criminals in institutions keeps turn from committing crimes. The simple answer is to make sentences increase as the square of the number of convictions. Repeat offenders very quickly come to spend 99% of their time in prison.
While I agree with most of the essay the real problem lies not in the words of the essay or the words of the law, rather it lies in the implementation. It is totally true that Justice in Canada takes far too long and sentencing is inconsistent. I believe for most cases easy bail is a bandage to stop the bleeding rather than a cure for a bogged down system. I’ve followed serious crimes in the UK and other countries and trials with sentencing are complete around a year after the crime. In Canada it can take 3-4 years or longer. I simply do not see the resolve in Canada to address the length of time it takes police to investigate, the lengthy procedures which result in nothing while going through the court system and the lengthy time to pass sentencing. Everybody is frustrated, but nothing changes.
As to bail, first time offenders should get the benefit of the doubt. Repeat offenders, especially repeat violent offenders do not deserve any benefits. The government in its laws list specific repeat crimes that have reverse onus. I believe it should be the individuals overall respect for the law that requires reverse onus. A laundry list of offences may have no specific repeat offences, but indicates a general disregard for the law and that requires firmer treatment, not more leniency.
As I read your comment it struck me that the problem might lie deeper than the justice system. It appears that it takes Canada 3-4 times ad long to administrate anything, whether that be a criminal justice case, approving infrastructure or procuring kit for our military. I would like someone to propose what is it about Canada that seems to create these consistent bad outcomes compared to our peer democratic nations.
I think of words like Complacent, Entitled, Unserious, smug, Superiority complex. We have been granted great gifts of resources, location and access and haven't had to do any real hard lifting since 1940's. We have been riding the shirt tails ever since and slowly sliding into complete irrelevance. Its poisonous and has effected every aspect of our nation. We have completely lost focus on what is important and essential to being a great nation. Being guilty about what we have and apologizing for how we we got here is the mantra of the left and is leaving us far worse off than we should be.
Agree. Administering anything in Canada is the direct responsibility of our Public Service whose job it is to ensure that Parliamentary policies are implemented and enforced. Sadly, our government administration branches are , to use an old military term, completely FUBAR.
Excellent point. It should be of great national concern which it unfortunately is not.
There are plenty of innocent repeat offenders. Just because someone did X and Y in the past does not mean they have now done Z. Y'know, the presumption of innocence which is one of the foundations of our justice system. And which I have practiced enough criminal law to know is worth maintaining.
What's wrong with the justice system almost certainly varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - the challenges even individual communities face are likely to be more different than you would imagine.
Also, a reverse onus doesn't matter that much, because bail is done on a balance of probabilities. Having to prove you probably won't breach is not terribly different to the Crown having to prove you probably will (at least once the presumption of innocence is involved, anyway).
Frankly, without data about what percentage of people on bail are reoffending, I do not think there is much point to even trying to talk about bail reform. It will all be sulking about people's feelings and whatever media story is hot this week. This data IS possible to gather, it'd just involve work (i.e. several of summer students for a few months for any of the smaller provinces), and it says a lot that no one seems to be putting in the work and instead are trying to fix it through legislation. When we don't actually know what the problem is.
> Also, a reverse onus doesn't matter that much, because bail is done on a balance of probabilities.
If that's the case, why do opponents of this law say that it will lead to more pre-trial detention and worry that more indigenous people will be denied bail?
What never ceases to amaze me is that both on the Federal and Provincial level our leaders want to pretend to be "tough on crime" without addressing the number one tool in their box. There is a severe shortage of judges at both the provincial and superior court level and our Premier and Prime Minister seem oblivious to the fact that appointing more is literally one of their primary powers; no special bills need be passed.
As someone who works closely with the court system, I get to see it's dysfunctions daily and one thing I think the public needs to be made aware of is this; the justice system was designed with the idea that those accused of crimes are rational, self interested actors who can be rehabilitated. Sadly, this is not true. I would estimate 70% of the people accused of a crime are individuals with poor or no impulse control who cannot themselves even tell you why they committed a crime other than "they felt like it". These are the high number of repeat offenders mentioned in the article; the dreaded handful of offenders well known to police because they are responsible for 80% of all the petty crime in town as they run around set things on fire and vandalize small businesses while acting out. They will not learn any lessons because they are *incapable* of long term planning or reasoning. This requires a radical new approach that our current justice system is not set up for.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but prison is only a threat if you have something to lose. If you are unemployable and staring down the barrel of a winter outdoors with only a thin blanket, suddenly spending the next three months indoors getting three meals a day looks very appealing
Modern penitentiaries are still a few hundred years old as a concept. As mentioned they have the disadvantage of being expensive and perhaps a training ground for future criminality. Bail leaves the individual at liberty to continue doing other criminal activity if they ignore the threat of going back to jail.
Ankle monitors seem to be the only technological solution between the two extremes but there may be others if we get creative. The goal is to make it impossible for the criminal to reoffend at a relatively cheap cost and leaving the option for the individual to leave their criminal past behind. Wrist monitors may be a solution for low risk offenders but tech for medium to high risk offenders may be a challenge.
If the criminality is enabled by the social circles the offender travels in, such as drug trafficking, relocation may be effective.
Until we create this tech however judges will be between expensive and ineffective options.
Relocation's probably going to make your organized crime problem worse - your slightly affiliated drug dealer who is in a new place with no means of support seems rather open to turning to his organized crime connections for help.
Identity politics created an untouchable class of individuals, whose membership within certain groups, would provide cover for illegal activities. Identity groups of every persuasion have within them extreme elements. It is these extreme actors that will often manipulate and coerce members within the group to cover for or insulate them from scrutiny. Transnational oppression and tribalism feed off identify politics. Both reinforce the us against them position where justified scrutiny of a individual is framed as a threat to the group. The veil of identity must be lifted to allow these actors to be seen for who they are. Unfortunately, this will be a difficult task as many Canadians, both new and multigenerational, no longer trust the political class to have an honest conversation about the fallout of identity politics on our justice system.
Good article. From the police, who increasingly avoid any heavy lifting, to the chronically backed up and incompetent court system, we just can't seem to get out of our own way. That said, I can't help but feel that our current predicament is just part of an overall deterioration of all aspects of governance in our once great country. The public sector soaks up more and more of the wealth of the nation while everything costs more and the quality of life declines. A major overhaul is long overdue, not just with the criminal justice system but with all aspects of government and public service.
Without increasing resources to courts and corrections (provincial areas of responsibility with some fed overlap), nothing will improve. Cases will get tossed because cases can’t be heard in a reasonable time frame and criminals will be let out of jails and prisons because they’re too crowded. We also need more mental health care for those incarcerated.
This article is basically the only piece of insightful commentary I have seen on this. You can tell that Mr. Copeland may actually know how the bail system works. This puts him ahead of far too many people, including most of the people legislating about it.
Without knowing what chunk of people on bail are offending, it doesn't exactly say good things about the government that they think they know what the problem is or how to fix it. Smart people try not to offer their opinions until they understand a problem. It is literally impossible to understand this problem, because the data does not exist, yet a lot of people seem to have opinions.
My guess would be that much like the percentage of people who commit most of the crime, most of the serious breaching is done by a small group of people. This is anecdotal, but being a criminal defence lawyer in one of the murder capitals of Canada gives you some insight. There are the clients who inevitably come back, the clients who come back eventually, and the clients who can actually follow conditions. Most clients are in the second or third categories, but you see the first ones more often. You have the option of either locking those people up or monitoring them better (I'd go with monitoring them better, which is probably cheaper and which better respects the presumption of innocence). Either is pretty straightforward. These people usually have lengthy records for breaches, and frankly a lot of them don't get bail as-is. Nor do Crowns or judges tend to repeatedly let out people charged with breaching their current bail order. As Copeland pointed out, jails are overcrowded with people awaiting trial - if we lock up more people, that will become more true.
Significant issues that no one mentions are police enforcement and, frankly, the bit where people do not turn in people who are breaching their bail conditions (especially family members). Look at the Nova Scotia shooter, or the Saskatchewan mass stabbings. The guy in Saskatchewan had breached his parole four months previously. Did anyone turn him in? To be fair, were the public aware that if they saw him they should be turning him in? The RCMP were well aware the Nova Scotia shooter had illegal firearms - did they do anything? The RCMP had one of the guys from the Saskatchewan stabbings in custody, but he gave them a fake name and so three hours of effort on their part was not enough to confirm his identity. And that was with them suspecting who he was - did they talk to his family? Did they look at Facebook?
You do not fix enforcement issues with legislation, both because you cannot make people do things and because the legislation is (likely) not the problem.
Whether reverse onuses actually do anything has also, as far as I know, not been studied in a Canadian context. I'm not sure they really matter that much: 50%+1 one way vs 50%+1 the other way is not significant in most cases. If the judge thinks the guy will probably breach, they deny. If they think he probably won't, they don't. If you're relying on the presumption to save you, that's not a good place to be.
Furthermore, as I have pointed out before, you cannot have a system where no one breaches their bail, because that system is going to be locking up a lot of people who wouldn't. That would be bad. Under the current law, about 50% of people on bail should reoffend. I suspect it's nowhere close to that high (I have seen statistics suggesting it is only about 25%, though unfortunately they were not clearly sourced). If it IS that high, I suspect a lot of it is the same people offending over and over again.