Very interesting and telling first hand account about handgun freeze from an officer (reddit)
As an officer, this outrages me profusely. Not because I take issue with legal gun owners possessing firearms but because it is an absolute farce.
In the area I work, gun crimes are rampant and the courts do nothing but a slap on the wrist. I can't stress the number of times that I or my coworkers have laid charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, dangerous use of a firearm or something similar and the Crown prosecutor either withdraws it completely or let's them plead it down to something so pitiful that it wasn't worth our effort. Not just the logistical effort of putting a case together but also the physical effort of putting ourselves at risk to get these guns just for the criminals to procure them again.
I don't hold the Crown fully responsible, they are overworked and understaffed but they do carry at least some of the blame of our justice system. I've seen them withdraw slam dunk cases because they don't want to put in the effort.
The other difficult part is the awful case law that's been created. For example, every firearm we seize that is related to an offense we need to have tested to prove that it is in fact a firearm. So if a criminal uses a firearm in an offense and is smart enough to remove the bolt or the firing pin and hides it, we can no longer technically prove that it was a working firearm without it in working order. Same goes with homemade firearms and same goes for offenses where we know the suspect and that they used a firearm based on statements but they've now hidden the firearm and we can't locate it. Usually, it ostensibly having been a firearm would be enough but an overworked Crown just sees lots of time spent fighting in court.
The thing about Crown prosecutors now is that they get promotions to better firms by getting a good win/lose ratio. Usually that entails something close to 0 losses. As withdrawn charges don't count as a loss, if they think that they could lose it, they'll just kill it and not risk the loss.
Another major failure is the financial side of the justice system. Nearly every single person who is charged with an offense and is held in custody is released on an Release Order. Release Orders have conditions on them that the accused needs to abide by or they will be charged with another offense. One of those conditions is that failing to attend court on the assigned date will make the accused legally required to pay the court the amount prescribed on the order. The amount ranges based on the accused ability to pay it but I have never heard of a single person compelled to pay the money they owe. The same thing goes for anything that isn't being physically held in custody. Written apologies required by court, community service, pretty well every kind of debt repayment, etc. The court fights for nothing.
I routinely see the system negatively affecting first time offenders because they don't know how to abuse the system or that they can. Whereas career criminals know full well that all they have to do is avoid the system and it struggles to work on them.
A statistic that would be vitally important for Canadians to know would be how many charges are laid vs. how many actually go through court. Personally I've lost count of how many charges I've laid against people. I've been in court once. Everything else has been withdrawn or plead down to a lesser charge. Nearly all the officers I work with have experienced the same. And by "plead down" I mean serious charges dropped down to something that doesn't even capture the seriousness of the original offense. I've seen aggravated assault charges plead down to a basic mischief charge with no jail time.
In my area, you pretty much need to kill someone in order to be prosecuted. Either that or do a basic traffic offense.