The Pre-Cautionary Culture: Interpassivity and Radical Prevention in the Making of Canada's Remand Crisis

Abstract

There is a remand crisis in Canada. Pre-trial detention rates have nearly tripled in the past thirty years and today, of the 25,208 adults detained in Canada’s provincial and territorial jails, over half are remand prisoners (54.5%) (Porter & Caverley, 2011; Dauvergne, 2012). These trends cannot be attributed to rising crime rates nor the absence of legislation governing the use of pre-trial detention. Both the crime rate and the violent crime rate have been on a steady decline for over the last 20 years (Boyce, Cotter & Perreault, 2014). Further, the legal framework guiding bail in Canada, as established by the Criminal Code (S. 515) and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (S.11(e)), mandates the presumption of release, absent conditions, unless the Crown can show just cause as to why conditional bail or the detention of the accused is justified (Meyers & Dhillon, 2013). It would seem that the remand problem in Canada may be arising from the abstract nature of the federal legislation being translated into practice in an ad hoc manner across the provinces and territories (The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, 2014).