Community-Based Sentencing: The Perspectives of Crime Victims

5. Reactions of Crime Victims (cont'd)


5. Reactions of Crime Victims (cont'd)

5.4 Contact with Victim/Witness Assistance Program

All the victims to whom we spoke were positive about the support that they had received from VWAP personnel [3]. Most had contact with the same individual, and clearly had confidence in the information and support that they had received. However, several expressed disappointment that contact had ended once the sentencing hearing had taken place. These individuals would have liked some kind of "follow-up". Victims appeared to be aware that resource limitations upon the Victim/Witness Assistance Program prevented this from happening.

5.5 Victim Reactions to Specific Conditions

As noted earlier in this report, the conditions attached to a conditional sentence order define the order. A CSI can be relatively lenient, or it can be oppressively onerous, depending upon the number and intrusiveness of the non-statutory conditions attached. (See Appendix A for a list of the compulsory conditions applicable to all offenders serving conditional sentence). In Proulx, the Supreme Court made it clear that a tight curfew or house arrest should be a standard condition of all conditional sentence orders [4]. Several victims remarked upon the laxity of the curfew restriction imposed on the offender in their case. For example, in one case the offender had a nine pm to six am curfew, which the victim perceived as being not appreciably different from the life of the average citizen, and therefore not a "punishment condition" [5].

Cottage Arrest?

Perhaps the most troubling "house arrest" condition emerging from the study was one in which the offender was restricted to his house or his cottage for certain hours [6]. According to the victim, the offender had spent most of the time at his cottage entertaining friends, and that this had coloured her perception of the sentence. Being allowed to spend time at a recreational home is unlikely to strike many people as the equivalent of a term of custody spent in an institution. None of participants felt that a conditional sentence was equal to jail time.

One condition in particular attracted comment from several victims. Participants felt the no alcohol condition was "a joke" because offenders were not tested and as such it was not enforced, or even enforceable. Several individuals made comments such as "he can still watch tv" when discussing the conditional sentence. However, it is important to point out that the victims did not seem to be advocating stricter conditions or surveillance merely to punish the offender. Often these statements were accompanied by the opinion that "only this way will he follow treatment". In some cases the desire for stricter conditions was related to the nature and seriousness of the offence: two victims stated that they felt tougher conditions and more rigorous enforcement/ surveillance was necessary, but primarily for offenders convicted of sexual offences.

Several of the participants perceived that the offender who victimized them was laughing at/not taking seriously the conditional sentence; this perception was related to the conditions imposed and these victims' expectations that these conditions could be violated with relative impunity. Conditions that are lax or unenforceable can only bring the administration of justice into disrepute. One condition that was cited by victims and victims' advocates was a prohibition against the use of the internet. This had been imposed in a case of a sex offender. There was considerable skepticism regarding the ability of the system to enforce such a condition. Most members of the public are unlikely to hear about these conditions; crime victims however, pay keen attention when the offender is sentenced to a community-based sanction.

Non-compliance with conditions, or the perception that the offender had failed to comply with conditions clearly disturbed a number of victims. One woman who had been badly injured during a brutal assault had heard from a relative of the offender that he had failed to attend court-ordered treatment for anger management. She said, "that's what really blew me away; he's just laughing…". As with many other statements by the crime victims, this was not mere punitiveness; the individual believed that only if the offender received treatment for his anger would he refrain from further offending.

5.6 Sources of Dissatisfaction with the Sentencing

Length of Time to Resolve Case

Participants indicated that they were frustrated by how slowly the system worked and the lack of information they received. One described the time from charge to sentencing hearing as "unacceptable, timewise". The duration of the order came as a surprise to many victims. There seemed to be an expectation that if the offender were serving a community sentence, he would be under supervision for a much longer period than was in fact the case.

Absence of Electronic Monitoring

Several crime victims in Toronto (but not Ottawa) expressed surprise that the offender had not been subject to electronic monitoring. These victims had suffered very serious injuries. It was clear that they would have been far more comfortable with the imposition of a conditional sentence if the offender had been subject to electronic monitoring.

Supervision of Offenders in the Community

The enforcement of community sanctions has long been a concern of victims. Research conducted with crime victims for the Department of Justice a generation ago found the same result. The study's report notes that: "on closer analysis of expressed dissatisfaction with the courts, it is more often dissatisfaction not with the sentence per se, but with the perceived lack of enforcement" (Department of Justice Canada, 1984). All but two of the victims in conditional sentence cases expressed some degree of apprehension about the supervision of the offender in the community.

Most participants did not feel confident that the conditional sentence was being enforced and were unsure of what, if anything, would happen if the offender breached the conditions [7]. Only two participants believed that a breach would result in jail time, others were not informed of consequences and one felt that no consequences would ensue for the offender. The perception that conditions were not being enforced made victims feel angry and raised personal security concerns.

Several victims had encountered or seen the offender in their case during the course of their daily life. In most cases this came about because the offender lived in the area, rather than because he had violated a condition not to approach the victim's residence. However, two victims affirmed that the offender had violated one or more of his conditions. One of these individuals had reported what she believed to be a violation to the police. She had been told that "it would be taken care of", but had not heard any more from the police or any other criminal justice professional [8]. She was unaware of the nature of any action being taken against the offender, or even whether any action had been taken at all. Understandably, these victims were upset at these alleged violations and the perceived lack of response. We also heard from victims living in small communities, in which breaches of orders will be apparent to many people.

Nature and Timing of the Plea

In all the cases in which the offender had pleaded guilty, this plea was entered at the last opportunity before trial. Victims resented this late plea, although they were aware of the fact that it had saved them from having to testify [9]. All common law jurisdictions accord some mitigation at sentencing to offenders who plead guilty. However, the timing of the plea is critical. An early plea should earn the offender a significant reduction in the severity of the sentence imposed. A last-minute plea should carry far less weight as a mitigating circumstance.

A number of victims found an early plea to be of considerable benefit to them. In one case the offender had entered an early plea, and accompanied this by an expression of remorse. This had had a dramatic impact on the victim's attitude to the offender; she stated the following: "I have a lot of compassion for him".

Compensation

In several cases, victims had sustained serious (and in one case, permanent) injuries and incurred expenses, yet there appears to have been little discussion of compensation. On the advice of counsel, these individuals had initiated civil proceedings against the offenders. (The civil suits were in progress when we interviewed the victims.) Several meetings between counsel had already taken place and it was clear that the civil suits were stressful for victims. In addition, to a significant degree, these victims had initiated the civil suit as a way of compensating for the criminal sanction that had been imposed. In one case, by the victim's report, the offender was very wealthy and would have had little problem paying compensation.