Is bail reform keeping violent offenders off streets? Hard to tell, police say

Police in Canada say they are still waiting on more data to become available to determine whether Canada’s bail reforms over recent years are keeping violent offenders off the street.

Prior to the changes, the RCMP tracked that more than half of suspects in murder investigations in that force’s jurisdiction were released early from custody.

“Between 2019 and 2022, in the RCMP jurisdiction, 53 per cent of those that committed a homicide were on some form of community release,” RCMP deputy commissioner Jodie Boudreau told The West Block host Mercedes Stephenson.

It’s a trend that extended to urban areas too that have their own police services, according to current Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police president and Winnipeg police chief Danny Smyth.

“I can tell you from my own experience in Winnipeg, we see about 20 per cent of those that we’re arresting for violent offences that are, in fact, on bail. So that will be something that, collectively across the country, we’ll really try to watch,” Smyth said on the show.

At the start of January, amendments to Canada’s bail legislation came into force, reversing the onus for certain people accused of violent offences such as those charged with firearms offences and intimate partner violence. Reverse onus means the accused needs to demonstrate why they should be eligible for bail, rather than the onus being on Crown prosecutors to prove to a court why someone shouldn’t be eligible for bail.

Smyth says that generally speaking, most people who are arrested and charged with an offence are released the same day on some kind of order to later appear in court.

“That reform took place in January of this year. It was passed and started Jan. 4,” Boudreau said. “We don’t really have the stats