Canada's "Catch and Release" Justice System

"Police services should not have to chase the same criminal three or four times because of an inadequate bail system. This not only represents a drain on policing resources, but is a hindrance to public safety."

"[The Canadian justice system] fundamentally needs to keep anyone who poses a threat to public safety off the streets."

Joint statement from Canada's 13 provincial and territorial premiers 

 

"The scale has tipped so far towards the right of the accused that the right of the public to be safe is almost a secondary issue, and that needs to tip back the other way."

"It's obvious that something is not working with this catch and release system whereby people are out on bail for violent crimes and cases where the police officers haven't even finished typing the report on it yet - and in some cases paroled and notations made in the file that they're highly likely to re-offend."

"I mean, what is wrong with that picture? It's not good for public safety, and it's certainly not good for officer safety."

Former OPP commissioner Chris Lewis

North Bay Police Chief says the public is fed-up and police officers are frustrated with repeat offenders getting out on bail.

"The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) endorses the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s (CACP) statement issued on May 17, 2023, which welcomed the introduction of Bill C-48, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Bail Reform), by the Government of Canada."

"Ontario’s police leaders welcome the proposed changes to the Criminal Code of Canada related to the bail system. In our view, the legislative changes in Bill C-48 are a step in the right direction in eliminating and preventing potential threats to public safety and community well-being posed by repeat offenders with a history of violence."

"Incidents of repeat offenders with a history of violence being granted judicial interim release and committing violent criminal acts are not uncommon today. As police professionals, we will always advocate strongly for the public’s right to be protected from repeat violent offenders. The public’s need for protection from harm must be given far greater weight than is currently the case when bail matters are considered. The safety and security of Canadians must be paramount when it comes to this issue."

Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police

In the past decade, identity-based justice and a distaste for punishment has created a regime that allows chronic offenders to walk free. Tristin Hopper, National Post

In Canada, justices  must adhere to a 2018 federal government explicit provision to hand out bail readily in the instance of Indigenous suspects of crime. A guidance document instructs judges they are required to consider the "circumstances of Indigenous accused and of accused from vulnerable populations". A crime wave more extreme than anything before experienced struck Canada after the COVID-19 lockdowns with disturbingly serious crimes reaching heights never before seen.

 

Unprecedented numbers of police were killed, not matching the historical record where police in Canada are killed in the line of duty encountering violent suspects or executing a warrant. Instead, the recent police murders have resulted from cold-blooded ambushes. In major Canadian cities "stranger attacks" have become a daily occurrence. Where people have been randomly stabbed to death in public spaces. A 2023 Leger poll found that the vast majority of respondents not only feel less safe, but are in fact, less safe.

 

In the streets of Canadian cities people report encounters where they have been screamed at, threatened and assaulted and some experts attribute this situation to a justice system manipulated to accept that prisons produce worse crime outputs, that punishment as a social deterrent concept is outdated in a justice system that is more concerned with an offender's identity than their crime, and it becomes the former that punishment is predicated on. 

 

Before long, the criminal class understood that crimes they commit would lead to 'punishment light'.

 

Surveillance footage from what Vancouver police described as an 'unprovoked' attack on a man outside a convenience store on Commercial Drive early July 31, 2022. (Vancouver Police Department)

Most crime, according to criminology experts, tends to be committed by a tight little cohort of chronic offenders. Police forces in Western Canada use the term "super-chronic offender", defined as someone who commits over one crime monthly. The B.C. Urban Mayors' Caucus in 2022 detailed that 204 offenders were responsible for 11,648 career convictions among them, with an average of 54 crimes committed by each individual of the cadre. 

Individuals newly released from incarceration or police custody are now committing entire crime waves. Random, violent assaults plaguing the city of Vancouver saw its police service crunching numbers to find a trend among those arrested for committing a "stranger assault"; 78 percent already had an earned prior criminal conviction. In a three month period from March to June 2022, the Vancouver Police arrested forty suspects connected to stranger attacks. When all 40 individuals' "prior police interactions" were tallied; the total came to 3,892. 

These statistics and the conditions that lead to them explains why it is that police departments in Canada are increasingly vocal in the absurdity of the situation; apprehending criminals only to see them swiftly return to the streets on compassionate bail. In a 2023 letter, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police spoke of a "criminal justice system that renders much of our work pointless."

 

A sketch of Ryan Cunneen making a court appearance in Toronto on Tuesday. He is accused of killing an elderly woman in Toronto last week in a seemingly unprovoked attack in the city's financial district. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould

 

Canada, a Consequence-Free Jurisdiction for Public Violence

"He was brought before a judge and released with conditions and the charges were later stayed."

Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee

 

"[There is] over-incarceration of Indigenous and other marginalized people in custody [relatable to increased criminality with its roots in societal traumas brought by the Indian Residential School system]."

"It's sad to see, but we still have a responsibility to ensure the public safety of our communities, because 99 percent of the time the offender is Indigenous and so is the victim." 

Daren Montour, Chief of the Six Nations Police Service

 

Flowers adorn a memorial to Paul Stanley Schmidt, a 37-year-old father who was stabbed to death outside a Starbucks coffee shop in downtown Vancouver on March 26, 2023. Residents of Vancouver and Toronto, among other locations, have been terrorized by stranger attacks in the past year, with a 16-year-old boy being stabbed to death at a TTC subway station in Toronto on March 25. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO / Postmedia News

Edmonton Police are loathe to release the name of the man dubbed a 'suspect' -- a man who acted as yet another perpetrator of 'stranger attacks' occurring all over Canada -- who stabbed to death in broad daylight outside a school, an Edmonton mother and her 11-year-old child. Their assailant was a complete stranger. What the Edmonton Police did release is that he had a long history of random violent encounters , including some against children, and had only recently been released from prison.

The spike in random violence is being attributed to a systemic failure of Canadian bail policy, where chronic violent offenders are released from custody, readily and too frequently, according to a near-unanimous coalition of police and political leaders. The situation is seen as the unintended consequence of a program set up to address the country's 'over-reliance' on incarceration as well as the 'over-representation' of marginalized groups within the prison system.

Canada, as it happens, had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the democratic world. Under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, this low rate of incarceration has dropped even lower, reflecting progressive compassion for the perceived underdog, over government responsibility to ensure that cities and towns and their inhabitants anywhere and everywhere in Canada are safe and secure from violence.

In 2015, when the Trudeau Government took office, statistics indicated 87.9 people jailed for evry100,000 Canadians. The last count in 2022 showed 66.8 for every 100,000, representing a 24 percent reduction. The non-profit World Prison Brief in 2016 identified Canada with a lower overall incarceration rate than Luxembourg, Spain and the U.K.; tied roughly with Belgium and France.

Now at the lower end of incarceration rates among G20 nations, in 2021 prison investigators issued a report in Australia concluding that Canada's incarceration rate was over 50 percent lower than its own. In comparing Canada to the rest of its hemispheric coevals, the disparity becomes particularly pronounced. Major South and Central American countries have an incarceration rate orders of magnitude higher than Canada's.

Canada ranked 164th in the world for incarceration rate, according to the tally maintained by World Prison Brief, with 2020 data. A ranking that has Canada with an incarceration rate of 85 per 100,000, in comparison to 531 for the United States, and 174 for Mexico. The only countries with lower prison populations are either European with exceptionally low rates of crime, or African countries lacking resources to maintain comprehensive criminal justice systems.

The-then Justice Minister in 2015 was tasked to explore "sentencing alternatives" and "bail reform" as well as "initiatives to reduce the rate of incarceration amongst Indigenous Canadians". A project no doubt dear to the heart of the-then minister, herself an Indigenous Canadian of high repute and accomplishment. In less than a few months the Justice Ministry released consultation reports focusing on Canada's "Over-reliance on incarceration".

 

Bill C-75 included a "modernization" of the bail system, requiring judges to consider a suspect's ethnic background when reaching judgement whether to release them from remand. Bail hearings previously had for the most part focused on flight risk and public safety. Following that, the Department of Justice produced Bill C-5, proposing to drop mandatory minimum sentences for a wide variety of firearms offences, openly declaring the justice system to be shot through with "systemic racism".

 

Bill C-75 is held by its critics to have yielded the consequence of increasing urban disorder and criminality by removing the option of police enforcing release conditions. Minister of Justice Murray Rankin in British Columbia's government, one led by the New Democratic Party, pointed out that the law had initiated a sharp rise of violent, repeat offenders attacking strangers on the streets of British Columbia.

 

Canada, it seems, has released so many non-Indigenous prisoners they have failed to address core justifications in pursuing the Trudeau government's prison reform in the first place: Indigenous "over-representation".

 

Canada's most recent statistics, according to the Correction Service of Canada, of "custodial admissions identify as Indigenous, a slightly higher share than in 2015, when the Justice Department first began studying the problem of "over-representation of Indigenous people".