Developments in criminal law.

• Author: Davison, Charles B.
• Position: FEATURE on Criminal Law

A society's basic rules governing how citizens deal with one another, and with the state itself, are of such fundamental importance that it is probably not surprising that those rules seem to be constantly under review and revision. Laws which govern specialized sectors of society might go for years without much change, but the criminal laws apply to everyone and tell us in the most basic terms how we are to--or more correctly, how we are not to--treat one another in our daily lives. In our ongoing collective efforts to make society as safe as possible, and to make the criminal legal system as efficient as possible, the Criminal Code, and the other legislation which defines offences and guides our responses when crimes are believed to have been committed, are almost always undergoing amendment and reformulation.

In recent years, a number of significant changes have been made to the Criminal Code: sometimes to give the police new tools in the investigation of criminal offences; sometimes to define new crimes; and sometimes to change the formal legal processes by which the courts decide whether the criminal law has actually been violated, and if so, what the proper response might be. Rarely do the changes involve decriminalizing prohibited conduct or enhancing and protecting the rights of those accused of crime. Most of the recent developments reflect a stricter approach towards those who break the law and demonstrate a clear willingness on the part of government to listen to and accommodate the requests or demands of law enforcement, victims groups, and similar bodies and interests within society.

One of the most significant changes in the last several years was the creation of a national DNA data bank containing the profiles of individuals convicted of the most serious criminal offences. In June 2000, legislation became effective which required convicted persons to provide blood or other bodily samples for the purposes of DNA data banking (the dates used in this article are usually those when the laws in question were brought into force even if they might from time to time be referred to as the dates of enactment). Now, persons convicted of the most serious offences--including murder, sexual offences, kidnapping, and various terrorism-related crimes--are required to provide samples from which their DNA may be extracted and then catalogued in a national data bank maintained by the RCMP in Ottawa. (Persons convicted of certain less serious offences may also be required to provide samples if a judge decides this is appropriate in the circumstances.) The information in the data bank is then used whenever DNA is found at a crime scene which cannot be identified as being that of a known offender, witness, or complainant. The unknown DNA can be compared to all of the samples in the data bank to determine whether someone previously convicted of an offence is somehow connected to the unsolved crime.

Another tool even more recently handed to the police came with...