Preface

• Author: David M. Paciocco
• Pages: 9-12

Preface

M

They believe that courts

are

letting

too

many people

go and are

being

too

soft

on

those

who are

punished.

It is not too

strong

to

suggest

that

some

of

these people

are

disgusted with what they see. This

declining confidence

in the

Canadian criminal justice system

is

worrisome

because

the

stock

in

trade

of any

criminal justice system

is

public confidence.

Without

it, the

system

is

disabled.

It

loses

the

ability

to

give

comfort

to

vic-

tims

and to the

public,

and to

maintain

the

respect

for the law

that

is

essen-

tial

to the

well-being

of

society. Public morale

is

damaged. People become

dispirited, some even

afraid.

When

the

public demands

that

the

system

be

made

tougher, politicians respond,

all too

often

making changes that under-

mine

those

basic principles

that

hold

the

system together. Declining confi-

dence

in a

criminal justice system

is

dangerous

for it can

destroy

it.

For

this reason, when

my

friend

and

colleague William (Bill)

Kaplan,

who is

affiliated

with

Irwin

Law, approached

me to

write

a

book

for

the

Canadian public

on the

Canadian criminal justice system,

I was

quick

to

accept.

I saw it as an

opportunity

to

help

restore

credibility

to

the

criminal justice system

by

trying

to

persuade those

who

administer

the

system

of

justice

to

change things

that

anger

the

public

but

which

are

not

indispensable

to

criminal justice,

and by

explaining

to

those

who are

not in the

system

why

people

get

away

with murder

and

other crimes.

No

matter what changes

get

made

to the

system, there will always

be

tech-

nicalities,

and

occasionally criminals will

find

shelter

in

them.

If the

Canadian public truly understands

why

this

is

so,

I

believe they

may

come,

albeit

grudgingly,

to

accept

it.

Although

I did not

have

the

imagination

to

initiate

this

project,

I

managed,

in

short order,

to

convince myself

that

I was

well situated

to

undertake

it,

primarily because

my

colleagues

at the

Ontario Crown

Attorney's

office,

where

I had the

privilege

to

work

as a

prosecutor,

believe

that

I am too

liberal, while

my

colleagues

in the

defence bar,

where

I now

toil

part-time,

maintain

that

I am too

conservative.

At the

time

I was

approached

to

write this book,

I

interpreted this

to

mean

that

I

had

attained

a

fine

balance that would permit

me to

undertake

a

credi-

ble

examination

of the

system.

I

continued

in

this belief until

my

wife

pointed out,

in her

characteristically gentle

fashion,

that

it

might

signify

nothing more than

that

no one

agrees with

me.

any Canadians are losing faith in the criminal justice system