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| Vivian Sim |
Bill C-320 would develop the victims’ right to information. The CVBR right to information includes information about the criminal justice process, services and programs available to victims, and the right to file a complaint regarding the infringement of rights under the CVBR (s. 6). Victims also have rights to information pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of the offence (s. 7) and information about the accused or offender (s. 8).
MP Colin Carrie, who sponsored Bill C-320, tempered its scope to garner unanimous endorsement, without amendment, from the National Security and Public Safety Standing Committee on Dec. 11. Registered victims of crime are already entitled upon request to information about “the offender’s conditional release” by virtue of s. 8 of the CVBR.
The Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) further specifies that eligibility and review dates shall be disclosed upon request, and when the offender is to be released on temporary absence, work release, parole or statutory release, that the victim will also be entitled to the actual date of such release if the Commissioner holds the opinion that “the disclosure would not have a negative impact on the safety of the public.”
Bill C-320 adds a requirement that, along with such dates, victims also be provided with an explanation of how they have been determined. In essence, it ensures that relevant procedural information accompanies the information about the offender. Bill C-320 is an example of a bill that enhances a right in the CVBR.
Contrast that with Bill C-351 (a revised version of the earlier Bill C-342), which has dubious connections to any of the four aforementioned victims’ rights, though its preamble invokes the “spirit and intent” of the CVBR. Bill C-351 is rooted in retribution, and uses confinement in maximum security institutions as punishment, contrary to “least restrictive measures” provisions of the CCRA. It would set aside actuarial and clinical risk assessments, and instead assign to all prisoners convicted of multiple first degree murders or designated as dangerous offenders a maximum security classification for the entirety of their custodial sentence. Placement at a particular security level is not a component of punishment, and accordingly, is not determined by the sentencing judge. It is an administrative determination completed by the Correctional Service that ensures that the level of supervision and control corresponds to the security risks associated with keeping the prisoner in custody. In other words, security classification is an assessment of what the “least restrictive measures” to safely manage a prisoner are.
A prisoner’s opportunity to cascade down to lower security levels is consistent with the principle that all humans have a capacity for rehabilitation, upon which the Canadian justice system is predicated, according to our highest Court (R. v. Bissonnette 2022 SCC 23). Lower security level institutions better prepare prisoners for reintegration into society by providing more access to rehabilitative programming and skills development.
The opportunity to cascade down is also an incentive for good behaviour. Even pre-release, while prisoners are separated from community, prisoners’ good behaviour has safety implications for correctional workers and the prison population. Post-release, this policy raises broader public safety concerns. The use of harsh confinement as punishment fails as a specific deterrent to recidivism — it is actually counterproductive from a public safety perspective, as it has repeatedly been found by researchers that harsher prison conditions are criminogenic (see Drago et al., Gaes & Camp).
Bill C-351 is an example of political pandering. It is not effective, evidence-based policy. Rather it:
- Is fiscally irresponsible: in 2021-2022 it cost $221,993 per year to house a male prisoner in maximum security, as compared to $135,676 for medium;
- Is contrary to the safety interests of the public, correctional workers, and the prison population;
- Is inconsistent with the correctional objective of rehabilitation, which can be balanced with other sentencing objectives, but which is unconstitutional to negate entirely (per the Bissonnette decision), as this bill aims to do for a subset of prisoners.
Victims have legitimate interests in the criminal justice system that are reflected in the CVBR. In particular, information and measures like no contact orders that protect them from further victimization are important. Those interests, however, should not extend to increasing punishment beyond what tribunals and administrators have objectively determined are just and proportionate. Nor should they needlessly interfere with statutory requirements to rehabilitate and safely reintegrate those under sentence, which prevent the victimization of others.
Vivian Sim is a policy advisor at the John Howard Society of Canada.
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