More excellent work:
Judges are routinely turning their backs on a special federal fine they are supposed to levy against lawbreakers to help support crime victims ... The Criminal Code dictates that the fine is to be imposed unless an offender can prove undue hardship, but the study, conducted in New Brunswick, found the fee was waived in two-thirds of 62,000 cases over five years, costing the province millions of dollars in lost revenue for victims' programs.
... The study was conducted to determine why victim funds have stagnated since the early 1990s, despite a 1999 Criminal Code change that made surcharge collection all but mandatory. ...
"It appears that mere assertions of an inability to pay by offenders or perceptions by judges that the offender cannot pay are sufficient to prove undue hardship," said the report.
None of which should come as much of a surprise to anyone who is paying attention - our courts have consistently shown a strong bias against actually doing anything about meaningfully addressing the victims of crime or the perpetrators thereof. Sometimes you'll hear the excuse that judges are not being given the right "tools" - but this provides a nice nugget of proof that lack of "tools" is hardly the issue. This is a particularly nice touch:
...While judges are supposed to justify their decisions for waiving charges, the information was not included in 99 per cent of 861 court files that were reviewed for the study.
For reference, the "victim surcharge" provisions of the Criminal Code can be found in Section 737.
I'd really like to see a spokesperson for our judiciary try to spin this into something other than what it obviously is: Incontrovertible proof of the callous indifference most of our criminal court judges display toward victims of crime.
It seems that the majority of our judges view the victims of the cases they hear as nothing more than the raw material for their livelihood. Usually, any humanistic considerations are reserved for the perpetrator.
Posted by: Mike H | July 18, 2008 at 02:50 AM