Conditional sentences on condition.

Conditional sentences were introduced into the Canadian justice system in 1996 and since then, courts across the country have been setting out guidelines and limits on their use. Recently, the Courts of Appeal in Ontario and Alberta have made decisions about conditional sentences. In Alberta, the court rejected an application by a man convicted of spousal assault for a conditional sentence. The Court said that in cases of spousal assault, an appropriate sentence would combine both deterrence for the public and denunciation of the crime itself and these aims would not be met by a conditional sentence. In this case, the accused was sentenced to...