I'm just going to continue from there.
The reality that we have come to speak about today is that a conditional sentence is not a term of imprisonment; it's in fact closer to a term of probation than to incarceration. It is a community-based sanction that can be used appropriately for certain offences.
The aspect of this sentencing regime that we have noticed disturbs many is the lack of honesty around the description of the sentence. In fact, offenders serving this sentence are not in jail. They live at home; they go to work, school, and appointments and shop for necessities; they attend religious places of worship and have other types of outings. Many such offenders have the house arrest condition or curfews, except for these defined purposes. However, for many offenders, the exception to house arrests are quite numerous. Aside from the house arrest or curfew conditions that may appear, many of the offenders have conditions that would also commonly be found on probation orders.
To state that these offenders are in jail in the community is misleading, in our submission. The main difference from probation in the offender's eyes, where there is no house arrest on the order, would be the enforcement mechanism. Where there is a house arrest condition on the order, the primary difference is the removal of spontaneity in the offender's life, in terms of the ability to plan outings—and obviously they have travel restrictions—and there's a lack of ability to attend non-essential outings, such as for strictly recreational or entertainment purposes.
While we acknowledge and appreciate that some offenders are most diligent in adhering to the terms of their order and are working towards rehabilitation, we also acknowledge that many aspects of the sanction depend upon an honour system. When the offender is at home serving his or her jail sentence, he or she may enjoy the freedoms that the rest of society enjoys, including having friends over, having parties, watching television, using the Internet, having unlimited telephone use, enjoying time with their families, etc. This is not jail, and calling it such is undoubtedly one of the contributors to the erosion of public confidence in the justice system. Further, for victims who may feel threatened by the presence of the offender in the community, advising them that the offender is in jail, and yet at home, may not address their fears or needs for safety.
To indicate that such a sentence has a great deterrent value for serious offences and offenders is not accurate, in our opinion, and continues to ignore the many resources and bodies of research revealing that the public, front-line professionals and the victims are not supportive of community-based sentencing for very serious crimes of violence. Professor Roberts is here today, so I don't need to go into much of the research, but to ignore these bodies of research and the Department of Justice's own fact sheets is to ignore those who are key constituents in the justice system.
Aside from these issues, we've also observed the comments made during some of these hearings that jail does not serve as a deterrent. While some of the most recidivist offenders may not respond to any sanction or attempt at rehabilitation, there are some for whom jail is a deterrent. If jail did not have any deterrent capacity, then why are offenders, for example, cautioned that non-compliance with various types of sentences will result in a jail term? If no deterrence existed, why do we not have line-ups of offenders at our doors to tell us of all the undetected offences and breaches they have committed? The reality is that conditional sentences carry less deterrence than true incarceration, and this further explains the frequency with which offenders will plead guilty in exchange for this opportunity to be in jail at home.
In addition to these issues around the transparency of the description of the sentence, there are issues frequently mentioned and questions raised, including the level of monitoring, resourcing, and enforcement of conditional sentence orders. We do have comments on each of these, if time permits, but we may have to leave those for later.
We are relieved that the very frequent practice we were seeing of using conditional sentencing in child sexual offences, both child pornography and contact offences, will diminish somewhat due to the passage of Bill C-9. The concerns we would still have related to this bill is that some of the hybrid offences that could have child victims, such as sexual assault or assault causing bodily harm, could still result in a conditional sentence. So without an amendment to this bill, we would hope that the sentencing principle related to abuse of children would be closely adhered to, and we would hope those offences wouldn't result in a conditional sentence.
For those who are concerned that the passage of Bill C-9 would result in excessive sentences of incarceration, a lack of community supervision, and/or a lack of restorative justice opportunities, we do have some comments of relevance or points to remember. We probably don't have much time to get into them here, but there are, as people know, the aggravating and mitigating factors remaining, and judicial discretion to determine the sentence would remain, so we would still be going from the range of a suspended sentence plus probation, up to, obviously, incarceration.
It's been recognized that in many conditional sentences the term is longer than the period of incarceration would have been. Also, taking into account that offenders serve only two-thirds of the sentence in jail, the term of actual incarceration would be less than the conditional sentence.
The reality is that if the circumstances of the offence and the offender were so compelling as to warrant a more lenient sentence, this would be the situation as it stands now. We note that some offenders wouldn't go into custody at all. They would get straight probation.
Note, too, that some of these offenders, first offenders with one of the potentially excluded offences, would be eligible for Ontario parole. The rates of provincial parole in Ontario fell from about 59% in 1993-94 to about 22% in 2003-04. One of the significant contributing factors was conditional sentencing. Some of these offenders will in fact be suitable. In such cases, if they were given a term of incarceration, they might become eligible for parole at one-third and then go on probation. So there was still adequate opportunity for community supervision of these offenders.