Gangster must continue living in halfway house, board rules
After several months living in a halfway house, convicted trafficker and longtime gangster Jarrod Bacon wanted to move into new digs with his girlfriend and “eventually start a family.”
But the Parole Board of Canada says he must stay where he is, despite making some progress since his release from prison last summer. Bacon, a Red Scorpion gangster with links to the Hells Angels, applied to have the condition removed that he remain in a Community Residential Facility.
But board member Michel Lalonde said in a ruling Tuesday that he should stay in the halfway house for another six months at least. Bacon was sentenced to 12 years in 2012 for conspiracy to traffic 100 kilograms of cocaine after getting caught in a police sting. The B.C. Court of Appeal later increased his sentence to 14 years.
When Bacon got statutory release in June after serving twothirds of his sentence, he spent time with loved ones, then volunteered at an undisclosed “resource” in the community, Lalonde’s ruling said.
“You finally involved yourself in doing full-time supervised volunteering,” Lalonde said. “You explained that you wanted to give back to the community and avoid negative influences. This appears to have been a positive experience both for you and the resource, according to you. It allowed you to work on your attitude and humble yourself, and the resource only has good words for the help you provided.”
He stopped volunteering to take courses in September. Then in October, Bacon delayed going for a urine test until the very last minute, Lalonde said.
He then claimed he had been a victim of a hit and run and got morphine at the hospital just an hour before the deadline for the urine test. “The following day, you met with your caseworker and appeared agitated,” Lalonde said, adding that Bacon’s urine test came back negative.
“You insisted you had nothing to hide and did not use drugs.”
He said Bacon is doing well in his courses. But Lalonde also said that given Bacon’s entrenched criminality, he was still a risk to reoffend and endanger the community before the end of his full sentence. The ruling blanks out the province in which Bacon is living, but Lalonde is based in Quebec.