More adults in jail before sentencing, Statscan says
Oct 11, 2006
SCOTT DEVEAU
Globe and Mail

For the first time in Canada, the number of adults held in custody awaiting trial or sentencing roughly equals those in sentenced custody, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

On an average day last year, about 9,800 adults were serving sentences in provincial or territorial jails. At the same time, just over 9,900 were being held on remand or another form of temporary detention.

By contrast, only a decade ago, 72 per cent of adults in custody were already sentenced, with the remaining 28 per cent on remand or in temporary detention.

The distinction between those remanded into custody and those who are in sentenced custody is that the former have been ordered by the court to be held in custody while awaiting a further court appearance.

They have not been sentenced and can be held for a number of reasons, including the risk that they will not appear for their court date, they will be a danger to themselves and/or others or they are at risk of reoffending.

According to the Statscan report, one of the reasons for the shift in the composition is the increasing amount of time served in remand in Canada.

In 2004-2005, a little more than half of all the adults remanded in custody were held for less than a week (54 per cent), contrasted with 66 per cent a decade earlier. At the same time, the proportion held between one week and one month rose to 25 per cent from 20 per cent, and the proportion who spent more than a month in remand rose to 21 per cent from 14 per cent.

A number of other factors may account for the shift in the custodial population, the report suggests, including changes in bail practices and policies that could affect the probability of bail's being denied in many jurisdictions.

As well, cases in Canada's adult criminal courts have become more complex and are taking more time to resolve, increasing how long adults stay in remand while they await trial or sentencing, the report states.

Conditional sentencing as a punitive option has also been a factor in the shift in composition, and some offenders who would have otherwise been admitted to sentenced custody served a conditional sentence in the community instead, the report states.

The overall number of adults in Canada under supervision in federal, provincial and territorial correctional service agencies has declined slightly (1 per cent), but overall spending has increased marginally (2 per cent).

The average number of adults in correctional services decreased to roughly 152,600 adults.   Last year, Canada spent just over $2.8 billion on its correctional services, up 2 per cent from the previous year after taking in account inflation.

The average daily cost of housing one prisoner in a federal penitentiary in 2004-2005 was nearly $260, compared with an average of $141 per inmate at the provincial/territorial level. The added expense for housing an inmate at the federal level come from increased security and programming levels.

The report also breaks down gender and racial lines — it found that men accounted for 90 per cent of all those adults in sentenced custody.

Aboriginal women represented nearly one-third of all women sentenced to provincial or territorial custody in 2004-2005, while aboriginal men accounted for 20 per cent of all men sentenced to custody in the provinces and territories.

Rates of return to correctional supervision were higher for men (32 per cent) than for women (23 per cent), and almost half of all aboriginal adults were reinvolved in correctional services (45 per cent) compared with less than one-third of non-aboriginal adults (29 per cent), according to the report.

Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

Huge increase in Canadian prisoners on remand: StatsCan
Oct 11, 2006
CBC

Prison inmates in Canada are now just as likely to be awaiting trial as serving a jail sentence for a serious crime, according to Statistics Canada.

Figures released Wednesday show an 83 per cent increase in prisoners on remand or other forms of temporary custody over the past decade, while the number of sentenced offenders in jail cells has declined by more than a third.

Statistics Canada says the trend could be a result of tougher requirements for granting bail, more complex criminal trials taking longer to resolve and the increasing use of conditional sentencing, where offenders serve their time at home in the community rather than prison.

The John Howard Society, which campaigns for reform of the justice system, says the new statistics indicate "a huge problem."

Graham Stewart, the group's executive director, told CBC News that people were now effectively serving criminal sentences even before they had been tried.

"This is a denial of the presumption of innocence," he said, "It is an offence to basic justice to lock so many people up before their trial."

Long periods of time spent on remand subvert the court system, Stewart said, because judges often release convicted offenders for time already served.

Stewart said proposed legislation introduced in the House of Commons last May will make the situation even worse. The bill would broaden the number of crimes that carry a mandatory minimum sentence and restrict the use of house arrest and community service.