Evidence of meeting #14 for Justice and Human Rights in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sentences.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
Bloc
4 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Yes, we're talking about slide seven.
What this chart shows is, for drug-trafficking offences, in what proportion of those offences in 2003-04 a conditional sentence was imposed upon conviction. One-third of the drug-trafficking offences in 2003-04, upon conviction, were awarded a conditional sentence.
For sexual assaults, you can see that 22% of the sexual assaults in 2003-04, upon conviction, resulted in a conditional sentence.
4 p.m.
Bloc
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
I'm sorry, but what exactly is meant by “other sexual offences”? We read here that 67 per cent of offences involve drug trafficking or other sexual offences.
4 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
The other sexual offences category includes such offences as sexual interference, sexual exploitation, invitation to sexual touching, and similar types of offences. That's what that includes as a group.
4 p.m.
Bloc
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
So you're saying then that in 32 per cent of cases, other types of sexual offences are involved.
4:05 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
What we're saying is that 32% of sexual assault offences, upon conviction, resulted in conditional sentences. Sorry, other sexual offences--yes, you're right.
4:05 p.m.
Bloc
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
I don't understand. According to the chart, 179 cases equal 32 per cent, and 2,049 cases equal 35 per cent.
4:05 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Let me try to be clearer on this. If we look at other sexual offences as an offence type and we ask what proportion of other sexual offences would have been awarded a conditional sentence upon conviction, that was 32%.
The total number of cases that were awarded a conditional sentence was 179. We have a total count of the total other sexual offences as well. As a percentage of the total we would be looking at 179 over 13,267. In this case you're looking at just over one-third of the other sexual offences resulting in a conditional sentence upon conviction in 2003-2004. That's how to read this chart.
Is that helpful?
4:05 p.m.
Bloc
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
I see. That helps us considerably to put these figures into perspective.
The Minister said he was not in a position to answer the question about those offenders who received a conditional sentence in 2003 and 2004. With all due respect, I have to say that he has answered very few questions. We're talking about a very small percentage of cases. The Minister talked about 5% of the sentences handed down, while you say that 6% of offenders who receive a conditional sentence are repeat offenders. That's an even smaller percentage.
How many repeat offenders received a conditional sentence upon conviction?
September 21st, 2006 / 4:05 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I'll ask my colleague.
Craig, do we have information available on that?
4:05 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
We know that approximately half had no prior conviction. Of the total of approximately 10,000 persons convicted in 2003-2004, looking at their last conviction in that year, roughly half had a prior conviction. Half had no prior conviction and half had prior conviction.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to the presenters.
I'm taking Joe Comartin's place. I won't be the expert he is, but I know that he was anxious to get this kind of statistical information before the committee.
I don't know if you can answer this, but based on your statistical studies, could you say approximately how many offenders now receiving conditional sentences would likely be sentenced to custody under Bill C-9 or Bill C-10?
4:05 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
We can't provide a definitive answer to that question. There are many assumptions one would have to make around how the proceedings would take place. We can't provide a definitive answer to that.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
Others who have made assumptions in this area have said it could be roughly one-third affected. I don't know if you can give any validity to that, or if it's in the ballpark, but it would seem to me that we've got to somehow get a handle on the number, based on the statistical information available, because that will tell us a lot in terms of how our system can handle the change and what it will mean.
Based on the one-third assumption, I'm trying to figure out what it means for our system. On Tuesday, when asked about the potential cost to the system, the minister said their estimates indicated that there could be additional jail sentences amounting to 442 prison-years, which equates to an annual national expenditure of approximately $21.7 million. Yet if you take the rounded figure of one-third and look at the fact that it costs about $52,000 a year to house an inmate, it looks like the costs would actually be more like $250 million.
There's a huge discrepancy, based on generally accepted information, about what the impact would be and the costs versus what the minister has told us. Have you any idea how the minister could end up with the figure of $21.7 million and what could explain the discrepancy of about $230 million?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
What I can do is refer you to a few things you'll find in your presentation package.
If you look at chart 12, the heading on chart 12--I'm making the asumption that they're not all numbered there--almost one-third of conditional sentences imposed for a Bill C-9 listed offence.... What we were able to do for illustrative purposes was apply the Criminal Code offences listed at the end of Bill C-9 to our 2003-04 conditional sentence data. And when we did that--and we didn't take into account the type of procedure that was followed--we found that one-third, almost one in three of that conditional sentence population, just over 2,800 people, were sentenced to a conditional sentence in 2003-04 that was for a Bill C-9 legislated offence.
It's not in your chart, but I spoke of it a little bit during the presentation that we also added drug offences to those Criminal Code Bill C-9 offences. When we did that we saw that 4,865 persons--about half of all the persons with a conditional sentence in 2003-04--would have been convicted of either one of the Bill C-9-listed offences in the summary document, or of a drug offence.
In terms of your question around cost information, I don't have with me a cost analysis. What I can tell you is that in 2003-04 approximately $1.2 billion was spent on provincial-territorial custody and community supervision. If you look at community operating expenditures, it cost about $5 per community supervision offender per day. And if you look at custody operating expenditures, it cost about $142 per inmate, per day. That's the information I'm able to provide to you here.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
That's helpful. I think that gives us some more information. We can go away and try to do some calculations and understand the impact.
I found it fascinating, looking at the last chart of your presentation--and I didn't know this--that you have the least recidivism rate among those with conditional sentences and those on probation only, and that conditional sentences that combine with probation and sentence custody alone dramatically increases the probability of recidivism.
So in fact what we could be doing with this bill would not only dramatically increase the costs to the provincial treasuries, but increase the incidence of crime generally, because in fact they're more likely to repeat an offence. Can I take that from chart 12?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I certainly can't speak to the eventual impact of the bill, but what I can speak to is the data that you see in the final slide. These data for the four jurisdictions that are presented here do speak to re-involvement after a sentence has been served, but in doing the analysis, we were not able to take into account any prior conviction history. What you do see is that the proportion who returned to the correctional system within that 12-month period was lower among those with conditional sentences and those with probation than it was among those who had a custody sentence. What we cannot say from the data is what the underlying factors causing this are. We are not able to speak to that.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
You've also pointed out that those on conditional sentences, interestingly, end up with a much longer period of supervision than those in all the other categories. I think one could draw the conclusion that in fact we're putting in place some extra precautions, like going the route of conditional sentencing, that we just haven't talked about or been aware of. I know you can't answer that.
My last question is that we've had a lot of concerns--
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
--raised by the aboriginal community. The AFN has pointed out that in fact conditional sentencing was actually introduced so that we wouldn't have this over-representation of first nations people in the criminal justice system. I don't know if you have a breakdown based on your statistics, but could you give us any enlightenment on the impact on aboriginal people in the whole criminal justice system?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Before letting Mr. Martin reply to that, I can say that we can provide a little information from the correctional services data that we have, but we're not able to conduct that analysis within our courts data program.
4:15 p.m.
Chief, Correctional Services Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I'd like to respond very quickly here.
Let's look at the proportion of aboriginal offenders who have various kinds of sentences and who are being supervised in the correctional system. As they currently stand within sentence custody, approximately 21% of people admitted to sentence custody are aboriginal. In comparison, the proportion in remand is approximately 18%, in probation is 16%, and in conditional sentences is 19%. Those numbers are for the 2003-2004 year. That gives you an idea of the profile.
