Crime has been declining in Canada for more than two decades in virtually every category.
Despite that, the justice system has become steadily more costly.
This apparent disconnect might be attributable, at least partially, to crimes against the justice system itself.
Crimes against the administration of justice include things like obstruction of justice, assaulting a police officer, perjury, tampering with evidence, escaping from custody and the like, but the vast majority are simply breaches of conditions set by the courts for other crimes.
A 2015 Juristat report lays out the statistics. Between 2004 and 2014, the crime rate fell by 34 per cent, while the rate of administration of justice offences (AJOs) only declined by seven per cent. More than half of those were for failing to comply with conditions imposed by the courts.
In 2014, 10 per cent of all crimes nationally were AJOs. In Saskatchewan it was close to 20 per cent. Furthermore, 39 per cent of other criminal cases also included at least one AJO.
Case in point, in Yorkton court on Monday, there were 29 cases on the docket. Nine of those (31 per cent) included AJOs. Three were AJO-only cases.
While the prevalence of this type of offences has increased, it doesn’t readily explain the cost to the system. In real terms, there were less actual charges in 2014 than 2004.
The big difference is AJ offences more frequently result in jail time than other kinds of crimes. That makes a lot of sense. Usually, conditions are placed on people in lieu of jail, or when they are released from custody. Incarceration is the logical result of breaching those conditions and incarceration is expensive.
Still, none of this answers the question of why these particular offences are on the uptick while others are not and government analysis falls a bit short of explaining it.
They do say there may have been changes in how frequently police may be charging people with AJOs or in how they are reported to Statistics Canada.
The former would contribute to cost increases, the latter not so much. Both speak to how, neither to why.
In my own experience, there are two trends I believe are feeding the increase in AJO charges, community policing and victim awareness, which are interrelated.
Over the past few decades a shift has been occurring from cops being crime fighters to crime preventers. Obviously, they still have to react to and solve crimes, but more resources are being deployed to prevention.
For example, in Yorkton, officers are tasked with checking up on offenders known to be on conditions. Guess what? If you check up on people who are on court-ordered conditions, you are going to catch people not abiding by their conditions. That’s just a given.
And one of the main reasons the shift is happening is because of victim awareness. The best way to help victims is to stop them from becoming victims in the first place.
Since repeat offenders commit the majority of crimes, keeping track of them makes some sense.
And holding people accountable is a good thing, right? Yes. But how you do it is also important; there could be a downside, of course. Isn’t there always?
One of the main tenets of an advanced justice system is rehabilitation. Constantly dinging people with administration of justice charges, especially minor ones, and particularly if they result in jail, is a surefire way of creating career criminals.
Nothing feeds crime like the absence of hope.
Things are going in the right direction, Now the challenge is to continue refining the process to also reduce commission of AJOs through preventative measures.
I am not saying this is not happening. In Yorkton, the Hub program, a crime reduction initiative has the potential of also addressing breach-type crimes.
