Provincial jails clogged with legally innocent Canadians

[shockedcanadian]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/provincial-jails-clogged-with-legally-innocent-canadians-1.2716225

Majority not convicted of any crime

On a typical day, the majority of people in provincial jails have not been convicted of any crime, but are legally innocent and waiting for their trial or a determination of their bail, the report says.

"[There] are appropriate times to place conditions on people or to detain people outright," Deshman said. "Unfortunately, what we’re seeing in our bail courts, two-thirds of people who are appearing are charged with non-violent offences."




How many people do NOT have a criminal record, but can honestly say that have been in prison? That is what many in Canada are experiencing; being placed in prison before they have had their trial or even found guilty, often for non-violent crimes. We have become a parody of the old and dead Communist country, except we tell the world that we are a liberal democracy (a recent report labelled Canada as ranking #51 in the world in access to information freedoms, right below the nation of Congo).

What is most troublesome is the threshold for what is deemed a police "investigation" in Canada often goes something along these lines:

Undercover cop to dumb criminal: "Hey, Im going to commit a crime, come along for the ride with me". I am not exaggerating when I suggest that this is a tactic. In fact it is the dumb sucker who is charged with a crime who is aiding and abetting the cop who was committing the crime.

People are being thrown into prison for, having non-conviction records, non-judgements against them, life altering infractions which never came to fruition often initiated by undercover police, confidential information etc...the manufacturing of threats in Canada is a booming business with no restrictions, oversight, oversight or accountability. England had their own incident with the expose of Mark Kennedy et al, but at least it forced changes...no such changes will be coming in Canada unless the pressure is ratched up.

I could literally list dozens of high profile cases in the small population of Canada in which investigative methods would be deemed illegal in other Western countries: everything from "Mr Big" campaigns (which are sometimes accepted in the U.S, most often not), to the RCMP officer actually playfully hugging a perp in a crime lineup to indicate who he wanted the victim to choose as the said criminal (which turned out to be a wrongful conviction after the person has spent decades in prison and was cleared via DNA evidence), to an undercover OPP officer moving into the home of his "target", to intimate relationships between an undercover cop and the target.

There are wrongful convictions in every country of course, and then there is blatant theft of a human liberty based on a disturbing abuse of power which is culturally ingrained and accepted; and noone with the political will to change the abusive system. As an example of what Canada doesn't experience, none other than the FBI recently threw out a high profile terror case in the U.S as they determined that their own officer engaged in entrapment. Kudos to them, the sanctity of the individual and freedom should always trump organizational "successes". You either protect and follow the rule of law, or you are the enemy to the rule of law.