Bail reform may not be the answer people are looking for to create safer communities, according to one Lethbridge Lawyer. Ingrid Hess, who primarily focuses on criminal defence, presented to the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs alongside Crown Prosecutor James Rouleau on June 8.
They gave a talk called The Bail Conundrum — Hess said the conundrum is whether or not changes to the bail system would create safer communities.
“Tinkering with our bail system is probably not going to do much to lead us to a safer society,” she said. “It is not my experience that we have a catch and release system. Frankly, I find it challenging for some offenders in particular to get them released pending trial if they have challenges as far as homelessness, addiction and any kind of a prior criminal record. The issues and the practical challenges to obtaining bail are considerable.”
Central to both speakers’ points was the criminal code, which says people being held before trial are technically innocent until convicted of a crime.
“70 per cent of those in provincial jails right now are legally innocent in that sense, they have not been found guilty of a crime, they haven’t pleaded guilty or been found guilty and they are in pretrial detention,” Hess said.
She pointed out that a slow system for processing bail can result in people who are not proven guilty losing jobs, family or homes.
Rouleau focused much of his portion of the talk on innocence and the different considerations that go into granting a person bail. He pointed out that bail as a small piece of a larger system and it does not work to address root causes of crime.
He said granting bail boils down to whether or not a person is expected to reoffend and cause harm, whether they will attend the court process and it is based on factors such as criminal record and possible conditions to lessen risk.
“If we asked for perfection [in] the bail system, you could never be satisfied to 100 per cent that a person will show up to court or that a person won’t commit further offenses,” he said. “People are entitled to release. People are presumed innocent and yet some people will be detained despite the fact that they are still presumed innocent.”