Title: The Criminal Offence of Entering Any Shoppers Drug Mart in Ontario: Criminalizing Ordinary Behaviour with Youth Bail Conditions
Abstract: Conditions of release are attached to bail orders in an attempt to constrain the behaviour of accused young persons in the community. However, each condition, by virtue of its attachment to the release order, creates the possibility of a new criminal offence. Should youths fail to comply with any one of the conditions, they can have their bail revoked; they may not be released again; and they can be charged with the criminal offence of not complying with a judicial order. This study looks at the bail conditions placed on 83 youths released by justices of the peace from four different courthouses in the metropolitan area of Toronto, Ontario. On average 9.3 conditions were imposed and over 40% of the youths had more than 10 conditions attached to their release order. Many of the conditions that were routinely imposed had little or no relationship to the grounds for detention and facts of the alleged offence. Overall, 40.7% of conditions imposed had no apparent connection, 21.5% had an ambiguous connection, and 37.8% had a clear connection to the allegations or grounds for detention. Rather than exercising restraint and crafting narrow conditions that were clearly related to the grounds for detention and the facts of the alleged offence, conditions were generally vague and far reaching. The result of such practices is infringements on the liberty of legally innocent youths.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 43
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