70% of people in Alberta jails haven’t been convicted
EDMONTON Seven out of every 10 people behind bars in Alberta haven’t been convicted of their alleged crime, a statistic the head of a local prisoner advocacy group called “disgusting.”
Data released Tuesday by Statistics Canada show Alberta has the largest proportion of remand inmates in the country, with 72 per cent awaiting trial as opposed to serving a sentence.
“That means that the majority of our people in jail, they’re actually not guilty,” said Chris Hay, executive director of the John Howard Society of Alberta. “When you’re in remand, you haven’t been convicted. That’s a big deal, philosophically, and in terms of how the law would look at it.”
He called Alberta’s high proportion of remand inmates “disgusting, quite frankly.”
In Canada, anyone arrested and charged with a crime can either be released by police or held for a bail hearing. At a bail hearing, the court can order the accused remanded to a correctional facility, or released on bail.
Canada’s provinces are responsible for both remand inmates and people sentenced to two years less a day, while anyone sentenced to more than two years serves federal time.
Hay said people accused of crimes should only be remanded if they’re a flight risk or a violent danger to society.
“The majority of people in remand are neither of those,” he said.
In 2016-17, Alberta averaged 2,682 adult inmates on remand, compared to 1,036 people in sentenced custody — or 72 per cent remand inmates.
Ontario was second with 70 per cent of inmates on remand, followed by Manitoba (68 per cent), British Columbia (65), Nova Sco- tia (60), the Northwest Territories (57), Yukon (56) and Nunavut (53). The remaining provinces had evenly split prisoner populations, or a majority of inmates serving sentences. The numbers include only people in provincial custody and do not factor in prisoner populations in federal prisons.
Jamil Malakieh, the Statistics Canada study’s author, said overall incarceration rates in Canada are shrinking, but the proportion of remand inmates is on the rise.
Big remand populations mean provinces pay more for housing, guarding and transporting inmates, the report notes.
The reasons for rising remand populations are complex and involve police, the courts, non-profits and the correctional system, Hay said.
He said Alberta Crown prosecutors, who recently took over bail hearings from justices of the peace, are “paranoid” about releasing accused people on bail after a bail recipient killed a St. Albert RCMP officer in 2015.
Alberta’s proportion of remand inmates also rose after the construction of the Edmonton Remand Centre, the largest jail in Canada.
Another factor is the over-incarceration of Indigenous people, Hay said, citing recent government statistics showing more than 45 per cent of inmates at the Edmonton Remand are Aboriginal, despite comprising just over six per cent of Alberta’s population.
The Alberta Justice and Solicitor General department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, but when asked previously about the size of the remand population, a spokeswoman said it was “exploring how to best address and respond to the population growth.”