OUR SELF SERVING JUDICIAL SYSTEM MARCHES ON

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys this story "Bail system in need of a revamp: report". The report was issued today by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. They claim that pretrial detention is vastly overused and is punishing innocent people, slowing the judicial process and costing unecessary tax dollars. It is indeed doing all of that and more. It is also used by overzealous authorities in an attempt to stifle legitmate dissent in this country. By throwing people in jail on the most minor of charges it can have a dampening effect upon legitimate protest. It has even been used in cases where the charges are withdrawn the next day after the innocent person has spent time in jail.

What is beyond ridiculous and should be prima facie evidence of the stupidity of the process is the fact that a number of provinces have 60 to 66% of their incarcerated citizens, on any given day, in jail without ever having been convicted of a crime. They are there awaiting either trial or a bail hearing. That is expensive and unjust. Also the vast majority of these people are incarcerated for non violent, minor criminal charges.

Other issues include judges imposing ridiculous bail conditions including someone can be returned to jail for being five minutes late for an appointment. One teenager was even advised by the judge that if ordered to make his bed and he failed, that was grounds for breaching his bail conditions. Go to jail immediately.

It seems clear to me that this is a system which desperately needs more inmates to keep their funding up. Hard to demand increases year after year if your "clients" are being reduced all the time. Hence bail conditions are a dandy way to keep your jails full. Talk about a marketing scheme. Way past time for governments to put a stop to this nonsense.