We've seen with the enactment in the last 10 years of further restrictions on CSOs a diminishment in their being ordered, because they weren't available for as many cases. In terms of community-based sentences like CSOs, according to Statistics Canada, data shows that in 2019-20, CSOs were imposed in 6,720 cases across Canada. By contrast, in 2004-05, prior to the reforms that restricted their availability, CSOs were imposed in 11,545 cases across Canada.
The purpose of a CSO, as the Supreme Court of Canada has noted in Regina v. Proulx, is a sentence that can have two components to it. It can have a punitive aspect to it, which involves strict punitive conditions like house arrest, curfew and prohibitions on owning firearms, which all go to the public safety component of the sentence. It can also have rehabilitative aspects, and components of it that go to restorative justice.
By imposing these sentences in appropriate cases, it shows that you can get significant reductions in recidivism. Imprisonment in the wrong cases can sometimes strengthen gang affiliation and contribute to stigmatization that actually endangers public safety.