‘We are essentially ordering them not to have a disease’
Specialists agree: court-ordered alcohol bans can make a bad situation worse
Court orders forcing offenders and those accused of crimes to stay away from alcohol are overused and often don’t take into account at least one significant effect, a provincial court judge has said.
“It can turn alcoholics into criminals,” Judge Wayne Gorman wrote in his recent sentencing of a Labrador man convicted of assault and multiple counts of breaching his no-alcohol order.
As a result of recent amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada, Gorman said, bail conditions should be reduced and an order to not consume or possess alcohol should be a resort used on a “much less frequent” basis.
Gustave Rich, 33, pleaded guilty to assaulting another man by grabbing him by the throat in his own home, as well as five charges of breaching a court order compelling him to stay away from alcohol.
Gorman noted the assault was a serious crime, despite the lack of evidence of the extent of the choking or any injuries suffered by the victim, and he took into account Rich’s significant criminal history, which includes prior assault convictions. Court order breaches, while a serious issue, have a range of seriousness, the judge said, referencing previous cases to prove the point. Rich’s breaches were much less serious than, for example, breaches of orders involving contact with witnesses or victims, Gorman explained.
Rich’s lawyer and the Crown both suggested a sentence of jail time served — 95 1/2 days — for Rich, and the judge agreed. In handing Rich a 12-month period of probation, Gorman ordered him to attend all counselling sessions recommended by his probation officer. He didn’t order Rich to refrain from consuming alcohol.
“On each occasion that Mr. Rich was released, the release document included a condition that he not consume alcohol. Thus, he was arrested as a result of the excessive consumption of alcohol and released on a condition not to drink alcohol; arrested as a result of the excessive consumption of alcohol and released on a condition not to drink alcohol,” Gorman said for each of the breaches.
Eventually Rich had been arrested and held in custody until his sentencing.
“This pattern is not unique to Mr. Rich and its existence should cause a reconsideration of the present approach to release, detention and prosecution,” Gorman wrote.
As The Telegram reported last month, this is something the courts seem to be recognizing as of late. On any given weekday, the vast majority of charges on any provincial court docket are breaches of court orders.
One woman in St. John’s, arrested late last year for a series of breaches and petty crimes, was about to be released when she addressed the judge from the prisoner’s dock.
“Your Honour, I’ve been alcoholic for a long time and I really believe that condition is setting me up to fail,” she told the judge of the no-alcohol condition the Crown had just requested.
“OK, we can do something about that,” the Crown lawyer replied, asking instead for the woman to be banned from possessing, consuming or having alcohol in her body unless she was inside her own home. The judge granted the order.
Rose Ricciardelli, a Memorial University sociology professor specializing in corrections, told The Telegram in April there’s no reason to have a justice system that includes so many charges of breaches, and there should be more individualized approaches.
“I think the challenges of what a condition actually means in life and to that person is not always thought out in that context,” she said.
“We’ve got to make things more manageable in terms of what constitutes a breach and we have to look more at a person’s file and look at whether they would have gone in a different direction without the breach. Breaches shouldn’t be happening with the frequency they do. There’s something wrong with how we set people up. It’s not that they’re being set up to fail, because in essence, if those conditions were adherable maybe they’d be really good structures to have in life, but for many of them, maybe it’s impossible.”
According to one St. John’s area addictions specialist, it’s hardly ever a maybe: it’s impossible for most. The courts aren’t always considering the widely accepted understanding that addiction is a disease of the brain, she said.
“We are essentially ordering someone to not have a disease,” said the addictions specialist, who preferred not to be named. “Essentially, we’ve criminalized a brain disease, and with that comes various social harms and judgment in stigma. How willing is a person with conditions going to be to look for help when they are in violation of their (court order)? If anything, it’s going to deter people from getting help.”
Treatment for substance abuse doesn’t automatically mean a person is all better either, she said.
“To be clear, most chronic substance abusers have lost everything: jobs, houses, children, their health. A random judge telling them to stop isn’t going to work. If repercussions like that worked, we wouldn’t have substance abuse.”
The issue is not going to be solved by the justice system alone, she said; it will also require co-ordinated education, employment and housing resources.
“If we truly want to work on substance abuse, we need to look at the whole picture.”