Criminal justice system needs reform: report
Groundbreaking new statistical research confirms the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent warnings that the nation’s $11-billion criminal justice system is riddled with unnecessary delays, inefficient practices and inadequate resources.
After nearly two years of work, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa public policy think-tank, is releasing a report card Wednesday assessing each province and territory’s criminal justice system based on five key measurements: public safety, support for victims, costs and resources, fairness and access to justice, and efficiency.
The findings reveal extraordinary crime rates in some jurisdictions, poor rates for solving crimes in others, inadequate support for victims, soaring costs, excessive delays, large numbers of cases stayed or withdrawn and high rates of aboriginal incarceration.
“With few exceptions, our justice system is slow, inefficient, and costly,” it concludes.
Ontario, the country’s most populous province, has the worst record for the proportion of criminal charges stayed or withdrawn — 43.1 per cent — compared with just 8.6 per cent in neighbouring Quebec.
Ontario is a significant outlier in another respect: of the cases that do make it to trial, the percentage of accused persons found guilty is just 55.3 per cent.
British Columbia received a failing grade for the average number of violent crimes police “solve” by way of charge — slightly more than half of all cases — from 2013 to 2015.
Prince Edward Island received the top overall ranking. It has one of the lowest violent crime rates in Canada, a “good” three-year average clearance rate (71 per cent for violent crimes, 26 per cent for non-violent) and fewer police officers per capita than any other jurisdiction. Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia placed second, third and fifth respectively. Quebec was fourth. The three territories, with disproportionately high per-capita crime rates far exceeding any of the provinces, ranked near the bottom. The Yukon ranked 13th, the worst in the country.
Among the provinces, Manitoba’s criminal justice system ranked the worst overall, with the second highest per-capita violent crime rate and fourth highest percapita property crime rate among the provinces.
The cost of public safety per person is lowest in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, while it is highest in the territories, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
The report’s authors, University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin and Richard Audas, associate professor of health statistics and economics at Memorial University, conclude the advent of the Charter of Rights and Supreme Court of Canada decisions related to its protections have resulted in dramatically increased litigation, “including a litany of procedural motions and enhanced obligations on Crown prosecutors to disclose potentially relevant information to the defence.
“Lengthy delays have resulted in stays of proceedings
WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS, OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS SLOW, INEFFICIENT, AND COSTLY.
of even the most serious criminal charges.”
“The justice system has reached almost $11 billion in costs. It’s job is to protect our legal rights, our property, our safety and our lives,” Perrin said in interview. “We can see now in very clear terms it’s actually failing in a number of parts of the country and in a number of areas.”
In a pair of decisions in July, the Supreme Court upheld stays of proceedings against a British Columbia man appealing a drugtrafficking conviction and an Ontario man convicted of sexual assault against a minor decades ago because of the length of time it took for the cases to get to trial — four years for the B.C. man, three years for the Ontario man.
The court imposed “ceilings” on how long cases will be allowed to move through the system to combat what it characterized as a “a culture of complacency towards delay.”