THE HIGH RATE OF DROPPED CRIMINAL CHARGES – Consider this: A police officer lays a criminal charge when the officer has “reasonable grounds to believe” an offence has been committed. The charge then falls to the Crown Attorney who has the sole discretion to determine whether the charge should be prosecuted. In order to prosecute the evidence has to meet 2 criteria that 1) there is a “reasonable prospect of conviction” (i.e. that it can be prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” and 2) the prosecution is “in the public interest”. Not only do the police routinely lay more charges than are necessary but there is a large gap between the police and prosecutorial standards which many people (inmates) fall into.
Ontario’s prosecutors drop way more criminal charges than Crown attorneys in other provinces, a phenomenon that almost certainly contributes to overcrowding in jails while prisoners wait for prosecutors to give up on their cases. The numbers are huge and consistent. Statistics Canada keeps national and province-by-province figures, which show that outside Ontario, about 25 per…