I really appreciate the intent of this. I understand that the intent is to create a procedure where administration of justice offences would be dealt with in a form where you wouldn't end up with a criminal charge or a criminal conviction. What really concerns me, though, is that we're introducing this procedure against the backdrop of a risk-averse system. We know that one of the main problems is that police are risk-averse in terms of their release decisions already. Bail courts are risk-averse in terms of the conditions they impose, the forms of release and the detention orders. Nothing in this procedure would push people who are already subject to arrest and criminalization into this alternate process. It's entirely within the discretion of police and Crown prosecutors when to trigger this process.
My real concern is that without something to push people down the criminalization ladder, this will be net-widening. We have police officers who release people with warnings now. They say, “You're out past curfew. This is minor stuff. Just go home. Don't do it again. I don't want to see you out past curfew.” Well, now they have another tool. They can say, “Okay: I don't want to see you again. I'm not going charge you, but I'm going to send you back to appear before a justice of the peace to have your bail reconsidered. Then we're going to ramp up your conditions.”
Without anything to tackle risk aversion, this will channel more people into the bail process and more formal adjudication rather than less. We really think the problem here is over-criminalization of relatively harmless behaviour. We need to tackle not the processes but actually the administration of justice charges themselves. Narrow the scope of those criminal offences to when there's a risk to another individual or there's a threat to another individual. Stop criminalizing people for routine behaviour, for conditions that should never have been imposed, or for behaviour that does not really put in jeopardy anybody else or the administration of justice.