93% of bail requests granted

But large numbers aren’t seeking release from provincial jails

The vast majority of offenders who seek their release from jail are granted bail, according to statistics from Ontario’s courts, but critics of the province’s bail system say what’s concerning is the number of people who don’t even bother asking for their release in the first place.

The province said statistics from Ontario’s Court of Justice show that in 93 per cent of cases where an accused seeks bail they are released.

Additionally, in four out of every five criminal cases dealt with by the court, the accused was out of custody.

There were 50,817 cases where a criminal accused sought bail in 2015.

In 47,114 cases the accused was released on bail, either at the consent of the prosecutor’s office or after a contested bail hearing.

Only in 3,673 cases was bail denied on consent of the accused or by a justice of the peace.

The statistics also show that 114,131 of the 205,249 cases dealt with by the court in 2015 had the accused — without ever going to bail court — being released by police on a summons to appear in court.

But those numbers are deceptive, said researchers who study bail statistics, since they downplay the 40,301 cases where offenders didn’t seek bail, either because they quickly entered a plea or never asked for their release.

They also ignore the amount of time some of those who are eventually released are in custody, waiting for their bail hearing.

“If we look only at the decisions for cases which began their life in bail court, that 40,301 now represents 44 per cent of all bail cases, instead of the 20 per cent where they can state ‘which is approximately four out of five cases,’ so the numbers look very palatable when you include promise to appear stats in the total,” said Sunny Dhillon, a researcher with the John Howard Society’s centre for research, policy and programs.

Dhillon said the society’s research has shown that accused people who didn’t seek bail were staying nearly as long on remand on average as those who were formally denied bail.

“This tells us that there are some really big inefficiencies plaguing our courts, and any assumption that the 40,301 largely represents accused persons who quickly plea out of the system is false,” he said.

The statistics were provided by the ministry of the attorney general at this newspaper’s request amid growing criticism of the conditions in the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. A task force assembled by former minister of community safety and correctional services Yasir Naqvi — who has since been appointed attorney general — made 42 recommendations to fix the jail, including 13 that dealt specifically with changes to the bail system.

The task force report also exposed deep divisions among some of its members about the role bail plays in the overcrowding at the jail on Innes Road. Some, including representatives from the Elizabeth Fry Society and Ottawa defence lawyers, argue more needs to be done to reduce the approximately 69 per cent of prisoners sitting in the jail who are presumed innocent while awaiting trial.

At that time, Ottawa Crown attorney and task force member Vikki Bair deflected criticism that prosecutors sought onerous bail conditions or too often asked for sureties, or a person who volunteers to supervise someone released on bail. She argued that the prosecution’s primary concern is public safety.

According to the ministry, an average of 4,862 people a day were in jail on remand, awaiting trial, last year. That accounted for about 62 per cent of all prisoners in the provincial system.

The statistics indicated there were 20,524 cases where an accused failed to comply with conditions of bail.

The ministry of the attorney general couldn’t provide Ottawaspecific statistics on the number of people released on bail.

The number of people released on bail isn’t as important as how long it was taking for bail to be granted, added Graham Brown, a policy analyst who co-authored the John Howard Society’s 2013 report titled Reasonable Bail? That report criticized a risk-averse culture among prosecutors that overly relies on onerous release conditions and a need for sureties to monitor an accused while they are on bail.

Brown said it’s taking an “unreasonably long time” for bail courts to come to decisions. He said recent research suggests a “culture of adjournments” persists in bail courts.

University of Toronto criminology professor Anthony Doob added that the number of people on “consensual detention,” because they never ask for bail, is concerning.

“The mere fact that we have people

There are some really big inefficiencies plaguing our courts.

in pre-trial detention that have not been officially detained and they stay there a long time seems to me to identify a problem,” said Doob, who has co-authored numerous publications on Canada’s justice system.

“There are all these people in limbo who aren’t seeking bail. I don’t think that is what was contemplated when the current bail laws came in 45 years ago.”

Doob said he believes the entire bail system is a “mess.”

He said there are frequently delays as an accused tries to come up with a bail plan or sureties that can satisfy the court and the Crown. Many accused ask for adjournments as their defence lawyers on Legal Aid certificates aren’t ready to proceed, he said.

Trials are a rarity in Ontario’s courts, Doob said, so more could be done to quickly resolve cases involving remanded prisoners.

“If we are concerned about the pretrial detention numbers we should be looking to see who’s contributing to that and how we can address that,” Doob said.

The Ottawa jail task force recommended the creation of a special remand court dedicated solely to dealing with in-custody cases.

The ministry of the attorney general acknowledges that issues with the bail system need to be addressed.

The ministry said they are working with the ministry of community safety and correctional services and the justice sector to develop a “comprehensive bail and remand strategy” that will address systemic challenges related to bail, sureties, remand and delay. The strategy also incorporates initiatives for accused with mental health issues and indigenous accused, the ministry said.