Articles & News

August 21, 2008

JUST PAST the halfway point in his career as the Honourable Chief Judge of B.C. Provincial Court, Hugh Stansfield came to town to officially welcome Calvin Struyk, a Terrace lawyer, to the bench. He took the opportunity to discuss several aspects of the justice system.

Go directly to jail

A common complaint is that people convicted of crimes get too little jail time.

If judges fail to apply the law as set out by Parliament then the prosecutor’s recourse is to appeal and for a superior court to say that judge’s ruling was wrong, Stansfield said.

However, the number of appeals is tiny relative to the number of cases heard – in Vancouver criminal court there are only 35 to 40 appeals out of 13,000 cases in a year.

“If we really get it wrong, we would think the Crown would appeal to straighten us out,” he said.

As for concerns that people convicted in B.C. receive lighter sentences than in other provinces, Stansfield says according to a study done by the provincial government, sentences here are slightly higher than average when incarceration rates across the country are considered.

CHIEF JUDGE Hugh Stansfield sits on the bench here in 2005 when he toured around the province visiting several communities to learn more about each area and provide a face of the court for the public. He returned here recently to welcome newly appointed provincial court judge Calvin Struyk to the bench.

There may be a gap between what people perceive, what they see on TV and what actually goes on, he said.

For example, one community believed nobody goes to jail for property crimes but found that 56 per cent of property criminals did go to jail.

It’s not our goal and should not be to have a certain number of people in jail at any given time, he said.

Stansfield’s quite satisfied that provincial court judges are sentencing according to the criminal code and sentencing guidelines of the court of appeal.

In any event, jailing people may not be the solution.

The U.S. has more people in jail and sentences more people to jail than anyone else and it’s not apparent that this is the answer, he said.

For example, there are 500,000 people in jail for narcotics offences south of the border but the Americans are still fighting the war on drugs, he added.

Double for nothing?

If people are kept in custody until their trial dates, and if they’re convicted, they will receive credit for double the amount of time they’ve been held, even though it’s not a legal requirement.

In most cases, the B.C. Court of Appeal has ruled that double time is appropriate and is to be followed by the judge’s sentence, Stansfield said.

It’s reasonable for the public to ask ‘what’s that all about?’ he added.

If three months has been spent in custody before trial, credit is given for six months because being held in custody is seen as the equivalent to serving six months sentence in jail.

Double time is granted because it is considered to be harder time than the actual sentence in jail.

Remand centres often don’t have any counselling services or recreation whereas jails have these services readily available.

Although nowadays time in custody may not be more difficult as so many remands are done in jails, Stansfield added.

Talk about it

Alternative procedures, such as restorative justice, in cases involving drug or mental health issues or both show good results and there has been a decrease in recidivism.

The public is affected most when someone who commits crimes changes his or her lifestyle, said Stansfield.

There’s a really serious problem in B.C. with the collective failure as a society to address the needs of those with mental health issues, he said.

Many people with mental health challenges are supported by their community and/or family but there is a percentage of people with mental health issues don’t have those supports.

Mental health problems are prevalent in the street population – in particular property crimes – and a Vancouver study showed that 26 per cent of people who caused the most grief to the community by committing property crimes had significant mental health problems, he said.

Stansfield did a walkabout with the Vancouver police and an officer told him if society did a better job of providing the mentally ill with housing and resources then the number of people left on the street would decrease so dramatically that police work would be a great deal easier.

In 2004, Stansfield took part in a street crime workshop – the first time he had sat down with health professionals.

They discussed solutions to the problem of street crime and the health care professionals said housing was the main issue.

“It wouldn’t have been my answer as a judge,” Stansfield said, adding that if asked now, he would agree housing was the answer.

“When we can address housing needs, the psychologists can intervene with medications and physical health needs and there’s a likelihood of crime dropping,” he said.

Dividing them up

Even though Terrace has only one provincial court judge while Smithers and Prince Rupert have two each, Terrace is not lacking in judiciary.

Terrace at one time had two resident provincial court judges but after a restructuring of the Northwest district – that stretches from Prince Rupert almost to Prince George – it was determined that having two judges in Smithers, two in Prince Rupert and one in Terrace served the surrounding communities better by lowering the overall travel demands on the judges, he said.

The province has about 137 full-time judges and 17 part-time judges who sit in 88 communities in the province. It means lots of travel is involved in the job.

Stansfield said he feels badly that Terrace had to go as long as it did without a new full-time judge being appointed – Judge Ed de Walle left the city for Salmon Arm at the end of August 2007 and Judge Calvin Struyk was officially appointed earlier this year.

Stansfield is pleased that Struyk was appointed to the bench because he is a local lawyer.

Now past the halfway point of his five-year term, Stansfield laughs when asked if there’s anything he still wants to do while in office. When his time as chief judge is finished, he believes he’ll be able to say he has exerted a modest influence on the system for good and hopefully he can also say he accomplished as much as he reasonably could, he said.

He’ll likely return to working as a provincial court judge, and assigning himself to a court will probably be his last task as chief judge, he said.