Project Inclusion: Confronting Anti-Homeless & Anti-Substance User Stigma in British Columbia
"By centring and amplifying the voices and experiences of people most affected by BC’s homelessness crisis and drug policy crisis, Project Inclusion identifies the legal, policy-related, and other structural barriers that must be addressed in order to meaningfully prevent opioid-related deaths and other health and safety harms, particularly among people who are experiencing homelessness and people in deep poverty who use substances.

Project Inclusion is the culmination of over a year of research by Pivot Legal Society lawyers and researchers, who travelled to ten communities across BC’s five regional health authorities. Working from the perspective that people are experts in their own lives and hold powerful visions for change, the Pivot team interviewed people about their experiences of homelessness, with accessing harm reduction and health care services, with the criminal justice system, and with accessing services such as income assistance, shelters, and hospitals."

B.C.'s Overcrowded Prisons Endanger Inmates and Staff, Auditor-General Says

"British Columbia’s overcrowded prisons endanger both inmates and staff, and a number of core programs designed to keep prisoners from reoffending have failed, according to a new report by the province’s Auditor-General.

The findings from Carol Bellringer’s audit of provincial adult custody facilities, released Tuesday, echo the calls by the union representing British Columbia’s correctional officers, which has long voiced concerns about the dangerous conditions brought on by overcrowding.

In 2013/2014, nearly 16,000 people were admitted into B.C. correctional centres, divided about equally between those who were sentenced and those awaiting trial or sentencing. Population growth and the closing of 10 provincial facilities in 2002 contributed to 'extensive double-bunking in cells'– almost all of which were designed for single occupancy, the audit found....

'Prison overcrowding increases risk to both inmates and staff and contributes to the potential for conflict,' Ms. Bellringer said in a media conference call after the release of her report.

'Although the adult custody division inspects, assesses risk and monitors and reviews critical incidents regularly, it cannot demonstrate whether operating its prisons at these capacity levels provides for safe custody.'

Safety and security incidents have nearly doubled in the past five years, she noted."

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B.C. police Taser use down 87% since Dziekanski death

Taser use by police in B.C. is down 87 per cent since Robert Dziekanski died at Vancouver's airport five years ago, prompting questions Tuesday from politicians wondering what police are doing now to control out-of-control people.

B.C. police officers used their Tasers 640 times in 2007, compared to 85 deployments last year, assistant deputy justice minister Clayton Pecknold told an all-party committee assessing the status of recommendations to tighten provincial Taser policy since Dziekanski's October 2007 death.

The figures had Liberal MLA John Slater wondering what police have been doing instead to subdue people who are potentially dangerous.

"How many of them have been shot by police?" said Slater. "What has happened in the last five years?"

Gabi Hoffmann, program manager for the police services division in the justice ministry, said police shootings have not increased since Dziekanski's death and the 2009 public inquiry and recommendations of former judge Thomas Braidwood, but she did not provide data.

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A matter of justice, without delay

We live at a time when our national government is transfixed with “tough on crime” policies. We also live at a time when crime rates are the lowest in decades.

Take British Columbia, which, until the late 1990s, had the highest rate of Criminal Code offences of the four western provinces. Today, its rate (third lowest of the four) is about where it was in 1970; it has been dropping for the past 10 years, with youth crime falling faster than overall crime. And yet, less crime has not translated into lower court costs. Crime is down 33 per cent in the past six years, but criminal justice costs are up 35 per cent in the same period.

Smacked in the face by these results, the B.C. government has been conducting internal reviews; it also issued a green paper on modernizing the justice system and appointed lawyer Geoffrey Cowper to study the problem. His findings, reported last month, were disturbing. In fact, if you took the words “lawyers,” “judges” and “justice system” out of the report, an innocent could imagine he was describing the health-care system.

To wit, these observations from Mr. Cowper:

“The system fails to meet the public’s reasonable expectations of timeliness.”

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Speed up B.C. court process, 270-page report urges

British Columbia’s justice system must transform itself from a “culture of delay” to a “culture of timeliness,” the head of a government-ordered review says.

Geoffrey Cowper, a lawyer with Fasken Martineau, made dozens of recommendations in a report of 270-plus pages issued on Thursday. Premier Christy Clark appointed Mr. Cowper in February to lead the legal-sector review of the justice system after excessive delays caused more than 100 cases to be stayed last year and endangered thousands more.

However, the government did not commit immediately to act on his recommendations.
Mr. Cowper proposes a province-wide plan to reduce crime, and measures that would revise how prosecutors handle cases and resolve them sooner. His primary aim, he said, is reducing delays and backlogs, and he suggests a system to track cases to prevent them from being stalled.

“In my consultations, there’s really one topic on which there appears to be universal agreement: the system works too slowly,” Mr. Cowper told reporters in a news conference at a downtown Vancouver hotel. “People also agree that delay undermines all of the goals of the justice system.”

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B.C. man secretly taped in own home, then sued over comments

Private detective hired by plaintiff poses as would-be-neighbour

A retired justice of the peace from Vernon, B.C., was secretly recorded by a private detective during a casual conversation in his own home and his words were then successfully used against him in a B.C. court.

"We were tape-recorded in our own home expressing our own opinions," said Jack Aasen.

"[After that] we started whispering in our own home because we didn't know if the house was bugged," added his wife, Judy. "We would go out on the back deck to talk rather than stay in the house."

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