Making Justice Work Faster

Canada's criminal justice system is facing a rather unique problem. In fact I suspect it may be the first jurisdiction in the western world that has had to resolve this issue. The problem, quite simply, is that the Supreme Court has said that people who have been charged with a crime, have the right to have a trial within a reasonable time. It appears as if some of our courts  are so backlogged that it is not possible in some cases to meet the Supreme Court's guidelines. Consequently, people who have been charged with serious crimes will be freed with no trial regardless of whether or not there is significant evidence that they may have committed this crime.

There is no doubt that those who have been charged for a crime but not convicted must be treated as if they are innocent.  I am a firm believer in the general concept that we need to err on the side of human rights rather than overzealous prosecution.  On the other hand it is concerning that it is conceivable that people guilty of a crime will never have a trial because the courts are too busy.

For anyone who has spent any time in court it is obvious what at least part of the problem is. The lawyers, both the crown and the defence are not in any particular rush. Both sides are busy, in some cases overwhelmed with the number of cases they have to process. For those lawyers who work within the legal aid system, the remuneration rate per case is so low that they need, to make a reasonable living, to assume responsibility for too many cases. The Crown is equally over burdened. It becomes much easier at the lowest levels just to adjourned a case for another few weeks while both parties attempt to gather, share and read the facts of the case.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, at one point in my professional career I spent a lot of time in court supporting individuals who had, for the most part, been charged with very minor offenses. A simple charge could take six months to resolve simply because either the crown or the defence requested an adjournment pleading a conflict in schedules or insufficient time to read and discuss the information.  There were numerous mornings when the cases that had been adjourned two weeks previously, were once again being adjourned because the work had not got done. It appeared to me and to others sitting in the court room waiting for their two minutes in front of the judge or the justice of the peace, that the lawyers were spending more time in court waiting for the opportunity to adjourned a case than they were spending dealing with the issue. If they spent less time in court juggling their schedules and workloads - they would have a lot more time to actually go to trial.

Like so many other problems, the obvious solution is to put more money into the system. Allocate more money to the legal aid system, hire more crown attorneys and perhaps more judges. But this solution only addresses the symptoms of the problem. Hiring 10,000 more lawyers will not make the system work better or faster. The courts need to insist that lawyers move along with a bit more speed. There needs to be a sense of urgency injected into the system from day one. I appreciate that some trials may be incredibly complex and that people need to take the time to make sure that justice is served, but from my limited experience, so many of the cases are not complex. We need to streamline the system.

Streamlining the system means that the police and the Crowns need to be more rigorous as to which cases they want to pursue (why are we arresting young people for simple possession of marijuana?); for simple misdemeanour charges, we need to create other more efficient and less expensive ways of dealing with those cases and we need to somehow impress upon those who have been charged with a crime and are guilty - to plead guilty sooner as opposed to dragging out the process only to plead guilty five minutes before their trial.  I am convinced that those who work in the system full time know what needs to happen to be more effective. We should ask them.

We have created a court room culture that says quite clearly - there is no rush - it doesn't matter how long it takes or how much it costs. But it does matter. Cost or time should never be the only reasons why the criminal justice system makes decisions but that does not mean we should waste those resources.