EDIT: If you are downvoting, please explain why. Are you OK with repeat offenders taking up taxpayer funds? Do you disagree that there’s a problem? What is it that you dislike? This isn’t a topic we can ignore.
Not long ago, there was an article posted saying that over 50% of court cases in Ontario are basically dismissed because there aren’t enough resources to handle them.
But every time I read police statements for crimes in my region (Durham), I notice a pattern:
Kaley-Ann FREIER, age 25, of Ajax is charged with: Assault with a Weapon x2 and Fail to Comply with Probation Order x3.
Keith Theodore CONSTANTIN, age 45, poses a significant risk to the community, especially children. This individual has a history of serious criminal convictions, including Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault with a Weapon, Assault with a Weapon, Assault, Robbery, Possession of Explosives, Uttering Threats, and multiple violations of probation orders.
London BOSSIO, age 28 of Whitby is charged with: Robbery; Assault With A Weapon and Breach Of Probation.
Noah COLLINS, age 21, from Brock is charged with: Assault with a Weapon or Imitation Weapon; Assault/Cause Bodily Harm; Fail To Comply With Undertaking and Breach Of Probation
Jalil Luddin SAYAH, age 28, from Oshawa is charged with numerous offences including: Pointing A Firearm x2, Assault with a Weapon or Imitation Weapon x2, Possess Firearm While Prohibited, and Fail To Comply With Release Order x5.
Marten WOODS, age 37, of No Fixed Address is charged with: Uttering Threats to Cause Death or Bodily Harm; Point a Firearm and Breach of Probation.
Michael DE LAURENTIIS, age 41 of no fixed address is charged with Mischief/Damage Property Over $5000, Theft Under, Possess Property Obtained by Crime Under $5000 and Fail to Comply with Probation Order.
Zachary LINTNER, age 33 from Courtice is charged with: Break-and-Enter, Possess Property Obtained by Crime Under $5000, Fail to Comply with Release Order, and Fail to Comply with Probation Order x2.
Joseph DAVRIEUX, age 55 from Clarington is charged with: Break-and-Enter, Dangerous Operation, Flight from Police, Operate a Conveyance While Prohibited, and Fail to Comply with Release Order x2.
These happen daily, and it seems like the all of our resources (police, courts, victim services, etc.) are being drained by individuals who are simply not compatible with society.
What solution(s) do we have that are effective and could be agreed upon by all political parties? This madness has to stop.
I’d say that the problems in the system are sooo all-pervading, that the entire system needs reform, not just any single-aspect of it…
Bias in sentencing? ( seriously, some guy murders & dismembers an Indigenous woman, so he gets 60 DAYS for it, out west? )
Replace judges with some impersonal decision-tree for sentencing, with some kind of metamoderating equivalent for ongoing recalibration…
How make certain that the more-violent-offenders get kept segregated until something changes in their unconscious-mind, if it can?
that requires a systematic triage judging of ALL cases, & prioritizing of the more-violent-offenders.
How about the whole thing where jail ( less-than-2y ttbomk ) & prison ( 2y+ ttbomk ) are NOT manufacturing high-criminality inmates?
That requires a complete paradigm change, as the entire “corrections” system ( with the falsifying-quotes on it ) is oriented to manufacturing inmates, which then helps justifying more enforcement, in the future, through their manufactured/amplified criminality.
( read Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright’s book “Tribal Leadership”, distilling their research into the 5 culture-levels from inmates/gangmembers in the lowest-level, to LIVING IS SELF-INHERENTLY-AWESOME!! at the top, & see that they have serious qualms about manufacturing mass-shooter grade people as an industry, which is what “corrections” does.
Notice that the 3 categories of “game” anchor their 5 culture-levels:
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win-win game, positive-sum, alliance, anchors CultureLevel5 ( they aren’t “stages” as they call them: caterpillar->moth are stages, irreversible. These are levels or modes, reversible, except perhaps the very-top 2 )
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zero-sum game, narcissism, anchors CultureLevel3
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negative-sum game, nihilism, anchors CultureLevel1
: )
I think finding-of-fact & judging-of-context need to be separated, to clear-out much of the court’s backlog…
I think that as much systematic correction of the court’s process, & mechanisms, as possible ought be got in, like a thing which replaces Wikipedia, but has ONLY vetted facts in it, so that no more “reinventing hot water” as the Yugoslavs call it, or “reinventing the wheel” as others call it, is wasting our work.
I know from experience that the new system of “Duty Counsel” where there are full-time Duty Counsel lawyers … DOESN’T work, as they won’t do what they ought do, to clear-out cases.
( I had to hire a real lawyer to get all charges dropped against me: it took a carefully-phrased agreement between prosecution & me about what I was declaring wasn’t any of my stuff/responsibility. Duty Counsel should have got that done, in the previous 11 or so months. It took awhile to pay-off the $500 that that cost )
I also know from experience that … I’m not certain I’d trust ANYbody in court, with very-few exceptions ( 1 defense-lawyer I’d trust to automaticallyb understand my meaning & represent me plainly & forthrightly, 1 judge named Peter Wright, I think he retired for health reasons, brilliant loyalty to Justice, in him ) etc…
The unbelievable amount of miscommunication due to different-values, different-intentions, etc, & many of the people cluttering-up the courts system are bragging to all around how they’re getting-away-with crime, but in-court they’re crying victim, victim, victim… many lawyers I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw ( I can’t throw even a miniaturized lawyer far: the human-scale ones I couldn’t even lift )…
The reliance on in-person-ritual is absurd: much of court stuff ought be done electronically…
Self-representation is … pretty-much impossible, in Ontario, as you aren’t permitted to see any related-court-case evidence or decisions, to be able to formulate your case ( Nolo has books on law, for the US, & self-representation is possible there, apparently )
It’s simply that there are sooo many different angles requiring drastic-improvement that for anybody to pretend “if you fix this, it’ll make the whole thing work much better” is … absolutely bogus.
EVERYTHING needs fixing in it, from what I saw.
( I’d also legislate that police HAVE TO do due-dilligence when somebody accuses someone of something, to them, instead of just joyously charging whomever the accused is… with crimes that the accuser themself committed!!
The OPP turned themself into the asswipe of a known criminal, in charging me with that criminal’s crimes, AND they wouldn’t allow anybody to charge them with any crimes that they committed from then on…
This was a guy who, ttbomk, had robbed a pharmacy with an AK-47, previously.
I was NOT impressed with that “police work”. )
Hell, the high suicide-rate among the good cops is because of rot at the top, of the OPP, ttbomk…
Would clearing-out that wrong-values brass help fix things in the courts??
It probably would help…!
Same with the good people who apparently kept quitting the RCMP ( I’ve no recent information on this, it was a couple decades ago ), also due to rot at the top, because there simply is no point in trying to make things work, when the top-brass won’t tolerate anything to be done with real living integrity…
There have to be indicators of whether a police-services organization, at any scale, precinct to national, NEEDS to have their people-in-authority forced into accountability, NOW…
I know that it should be possible to track witness-suicide rate, as a means of identifying where the police themselves are the criminals, intimidating witnesses to silence them… the signal may be subtle, but it MUST be detectable, somehow…
Sorry that this isn’t either “pretty” or “nice” or “politically acceptable” or even “low-cost actionable” stuff, but I want civilization to work right, & this stuff matters!
Finally, we have to orient to harm-reduction, primarily, as mass-shooters prove we cannot enforce Justice: when they off themselves to hide-from consequences, I hold that they’re railroading their future-incarnations, enforcing hell-lives on them, out of their narcissism…
but the one who committed the mass-shooting escapes…
So, in those cases, we are helpless to enforce Justice, in any way, whatsoever.
Which is humbling, & needed-calibration.
Once we accept that we can’t make our system enforce Justice, then we have to contemplate that all we can do is harm-reduction…
Which is true, to me.
Rule of Just Law … XOR … Rule of Legalism?
I hold that Rule of Just Law HAS to outrank Rule of Legalism.
But … while a guy named Pontius Pilate tried to make that be true, in the Christian bible, he was badmouthed both in the Christian bible AND in the Nicene Creed, for his honest efforts…
Rule of Just Law is also called Natural Law.
Legalism is also called Posit-ive Law ( what is posited is law, what isn’t posited isn’t, kinda ).
So, Pontius Pilate, the Nuremburg Trials, & … NOTHING else … seems to exemplify the West’s actually holding to Rule of Just Law, aka Natural ( Moral ) Law.
Legalism, however, defeated Pontius Pilate, convicting the root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph, & legalism still rules now, among the “Christian” legal paradigm of today.
https://www.amazon.ca/How-Think-Like-Lawyer-Why-ebook/dp/B08SMGMX3C/
I got far enough in that book to understand that legalism is ALL law, nowadays.
Consider the difference between objective & subjective perspectives:
Say person-A is being gradually murdered by Huntington’s disease…
& they want mercy-killing…
Say somebody comes along & wants to murder somebody who can’t fight-back, & they murder the Huntington’s disease patient who wanted mercy-killing…
Was it murder?
From whose perspective??
From the one who wanted release from being gradually-murdered by Huntington’s disease? No, it was mercy-killing ( I’m presuming it was a low-suffering method of death, in this example ).
But from the perspective of the one who intentionally murdered… yes, it was!
So, it wasn’t AND it was, murder.
See?
Subjective-perspective & objective-perspective can contradict!
Western law apparently ignores such depth, consistently…
Yet another obstacle to clearing-out the courts, isn’t it?
Whatever: there are many many points to consider, when anything so horribly complex as a legal-system needs reform, that it’d take LOTS of people’s perspectives, & LOTS of work, to identify the actual obstacles, let-alone resolve any prioritized set-of-fixes to be acting on…
It does need doing, though…
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Honestly, I don’t think you can get all parties to agree on a solution.
I think the best course of action is, as another commenter put it, more and better public services and more judges. And more (Norweigen style) cells for repeat offenders.
The issue I have is that some people are bad. Now what do we do about them? The other issue is that some bad people are born rich. Any solution should treat bad rich and bad poor people equally.
And more (Norweigen style) cells for repeat offenders.
I wonder how receptive the public would be to that in North America.
The issue I have is that some people are bad. Now what do we do about them?
This is a point a struggle to find an answer to. There are people who really can’t be “rehabilitated”, because criminality is their personality.
The traditional justice system has no effective way of managing this type of criminal.
The other issue is that some bad people are born rich. Any solution should treat bad rich and bad poor people equally.
Absolutely.
People who cannot be rehabilitated need to be segregated from the population/community.
Period.
The whole calendar-and-prophecy-by-judge method of sentencing is bananas…
It’s supposed to be when this person is no-longer a threat for this category of problem, then they are rehabilitated/corrected, & can return into the community.
That is event-driven, not calendar-driven.
Nothing in our current method works that way.
It requires that we be able to test, objectively, the current-unconscious-mind of the people in “corrections”.
Brain-imaging, polygraph by true professionals, whatever works.
It’s a totally-different sentencing-paradigm, though.
It’d have to also apply to witnesses, though, including official-witnesses, like police, for it to be trustworthy…
( there is a book on journalism which identifies that in a death-sentence case, the police had the confession of the actual-killer, but ignored it, as they wanted this other guy getting executed, so they got this other guy on death-row…
That isn’t police-services officers, that is officers who are enforcing evil.
A class of journalism-students got that particular wrong-conviction fixed.
“Elements of Journalism”, I’ve no idea if the current edition has the same story, but the edition I read, years ago, did. )
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You’re not going to like the answer. It’s treating people with dignity, offering social services, offering healthcare, and perhaps most importantly, offering PUBLIC HOUSING.
You’re not going to like the answer.
You aren’t wrong. I like the answer, and believe those would be helpful to a small number of people who genuinely did not intend to commit a crime and used poor judgment on their “worst day”.
However, none of the rest applies to some of these individuals, and it makes the assumption that only poor, sick, homeless individuals are committing crimes. That’s not true at all.
Most already have homes, healthcare, access to social services (access doesn’t mean they’ll use them), and simply act as if the rules don’t apply to them.
The problem is that these criminals know they won’t have to suffer any consequences of their actions, so probation or court orders don’t mean anything. Certainly not after the 5th time they “promised” to behave.
Surely, this problem has a solution that we can all agree on.
There’s an incorrect-assumtion in there, I think…
IF one sees a graph of crimes committed,
say one depicts numbers-of-crimes as the Y-axis, & severity-of-crimes as the X-axis,
THEN one’s going to see that the most crimes are minor, right?
there’s going to be a powerlaw ruling the relationship between numbers-of-crimes & severity-of-crime: the greater the severity, the fewer-instances of it…
Now … mix-in the problem that living-wage isn’t a legal-right in any jurisdiction in North America…
AND mix-in the problem that white-collar-crime isn’t prosecuted the way that blue-collar-crime is ( theft which causes the disemployment of multiple people will not likely result in prison-time, but multiple retail-thefts will be more likely to do so )
What the economic-system itself becomes, then, is a “conveyer belt producing criminals”, in some sense…
& the single greatest indicator of whether a person’s going to be charged with crime is whether they’ve already been charged with a crime…
Remember the now-discontinued “scared straight” program, or whatever it was called?
Apparently it backfired: when you aquaint youth with jail, you normalize it, so you’ve moved the frame-of-reference, & now criminality is much more normal than it had-been, in their minds, so … they’re more likely to be going 'round criminaling on ye, see?
I think that the real tough-cases are the ones you’re seeing, the ones who don’t rehabilitate, & the actual most-cases isn’t them.
( I also wish there was some systematic get-lives-out-from-criminality’s-churn mechanism like “Doing Time Doing Vipassana” the documentary showed really works, for some people )
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Bright lines, & hard walls.
Sometimes hard/actual consequences are the ONLY correction which produces any result.
Female-cultures tend to assume that social-pressure’s entirely-sufficient ( Scandinavian cultures are this ).
There’s a Scandinavian country where a serial-murderer keeps being let out, because he keeps saying he won’t do it again, so the authorities let him out, & he murders yet-another innocent life…
I’d force those damn incompetent authorities to be the lives that serial-murderer got to take-out next: teach them some ACCOUNTABILITY, & their future-incarnations would have respect for actuality, one hopes…
They are accessories to that murderer’s murders, & they themselves just get off without any accountability??
We have to have a system which can identify where the system is most failing, & correct that.
Those … idiots … who hold that social-pressure’s sufficient, & evidence “can’t” falsify social-consensus … need to be deemed criminally incompetent, at least.
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Where are you getting your information when you say:
Most already have homes, healthcare, access to social services (access doesn’t mean they’ll use them), and simply act as if the rules don’t apply to them.
… because as someone who has been struggling to get the services I need for more than a decade, it sounds like your head is up your ass. None of us are secure in those things and many lack some entirely.
Where are you getting your information when you say:
Most already have homes, healthcare, access to social services (access doesn’t mean they’ll use them), and simply act as if the rules don’t apply to them.In the cases within Durham Region, the police reports themselves, the expensive homes where these criminals have been arrested from, news reports/interviews. Someone trafficking drugs through their million dollar home isn’t doing it because of lack of social services.
But Canada-wide, you can see that crimes (and repeat-offences) aren’t only lumped into low-income or homeless demographics.
… because as someone who has been struggling to get the services I need for more than a decade, it sounds like your head is up your ass. None of us are secure in those things or have them at all.
That’s truly unfortunate, and I’m sorry to hear that.
I know several people who’ve been able to easily access a multitude of services from Ontario Works (even when they have no plans to work), various mental health programs (Whitby Shores, CAMH, etc.), and to get housing. The problem that I see, and that could be why you’re having difficulty, is that services are being given to those who truly aren’t in need, taking resources away from those who are.
We do need better access to services, no denying that.
To get back to my original post. There’s an obvious concern with repeat offenders. Perhaps if we could have a more efficient justice system, we’d have money to spare for those social services programs. But we’d need to figure out how to deal with crimes the first time, and not the 3rd, 4th, 5th time, and not assume that they are being committed due to external factors (a repeat violent rapist can’t possibly justify their actions being down to their circumstances).
Was this the article? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/criminal-case-outcomes-ontario-delays-1.7378668
Yes! “The majority of criminal cases in the province have ended with charges being withdrawn, stayed, dismissed or discharged before a decision at trial since 2020. In 2022-23, the latest fiscal year of data available, 56 per cent of criminal cases ended that way…”
