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Posts Tagged ‘Vancouver’
Limiting Conditional Sentences
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
On Monday, a new legislation will be introduced in Vancouver House of Commons. This legislation announced on Saturday by Attorney General Rob Nicholson (Minister of Justice) would end conditional sentences given to serious crimes.
According to the bill, offenders committing serious crimes should receive an imprisonment term instead of a conditional sentence, which is usually less than two years of community service or house arrest. Nicholson said that previous attempts to introduce alike legislations did not push through in Parliament.
He said the government will submit the proposal on Monday. As a result, “this will restrict the people’s ability to obtain conditional sentencing. It’s also consistent with the efforts to increase the confidence of the public in criminal justice system. Likewise, it would ensure that criminals committing serious crimes will receive sentences commensurate to their actions,” he emphasized.
This proposed legislation is expected to pick up where the “Act to Amend Criminal Code” has left off. Previously, that bill aspired to remove conditional sentencing for offences with 10 years or more maximum sentence.
The 2006 legislation has been altered during the parliamentary process and a lot of serious offences that should be ineligible for conditional sentences proposed by the bill were removed. “So now, the new proposed legislation will hopefully make it clear to the courts which offences should not be eligible for conditional sentences,” Nicholson concluded.
Tags: attorney, conditional sentence, crime, Criminal, House of Commons, imprisonment term, legislation, Rob Nicholson, Vancouver
Posted in Criminal, Criminal News | No Comments »
No Place to Run for Criminals
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
According to federal legislation tabled on Wednesday, criminals who flee to another province will face charges as well. Finally, this proposed change would close a loophole allowing criminals to escape justice simply by leaving the place where they were charged. It’s one of the six updates to the federal crime laws announced by Stockwell Day, Vancouver’s International Trade Minister.
Jim Chu, Vancouver police, said that this is the most influential change in the police force. Currently, accused people on bail can just flee to another province so that the existing warrant will not be enforced. “Criminals need to be accountable to the crimes they commit. They need to know that they can’t escape,” he added.
Now the new offence makes fleeing a two year jail sentence. Also, the police can arrest them anywhere and send them right back to the province where the original charge came from. However, this does not include the funding for the transfer.
Day commented that because of this new law, “People will not be interested to leave. Otherwise, it will be a trip back home with added jail time.”
Another advantage of the new legislation is that police will find it easier to get an electronic warrant as well as to photograph and fingerprint people in custody before laying down charges. Attorney General Rob Nicholson also announced these changes in a recent news release.
Tags: attorney, crime, criminals, jail, Jim Chu, laws, Rob Nicholson, Stockwell Day, Vancouver, warrant
Posted in Criminal, Criminal News | No Comments »