VANCOUVER -- A big backlog in the court system could mean the victims of a COVID-19 commercial B&E crime wave could be waiting longer for justice.
A court shutdown since late March has reduced caseload in provincial courts to urgent files done over telephone and videoconferencing.
That has meant fewer people sent to custody, and fewer people being arrested in the first place as players in the criminal justice system try to lessen the load.
“Not as many people are being detained as there were in the past,” said criminal defence lawyer Mark Gervin in an interview.
“With the pandemic the courts have to worry about whether an offence is serious enough and do we think it’s necessary to put that person into a jail where once COVID grabs hold, that could put that person’s life at risk,” he said.
One staff member has tested positive at the North Fraser Pre-Trial centre in Coquitlam. Provincewide, the B.C. prison system has reduced its inmate count from 2,185 on March 15 to 1,641 as of April 12.
And in the federal prison system, 54 inmates in Mission’s medium security unit were confirmed to have the virus as of Wednesday. One inmate died in Abbotsford Regional Hospital. Eight prison guards have also been infected.
Traffic through the courts is slowing too: an analysis of public records show that in a week in February, there were about 350 cases through the Vancouver Provincial Court each day.
But in the past week, that has dropped by more than half to just over 150. Of those cases, 106 were in custody pre-pandemic; just 79 are in custody now.
It’s somewhat worrying to small business owner Ajay Dhingra, whose security cameras caught someone stealing the company’s tablet computer at the Booster Juice location at Broadway Station.
“I was like, seriously?” Dhingra told CTV News. “These tablets are what we use for our incoming orders from delivery apps. They’re our lifeline these days.”
The video shows the man order a juice, then cautiously pull the cord out of the iPad. When the cashier’s back is turned, he casually picks up the iPad and walks out.
Dhingra said he was out the cost of the tablet and the orders that he would have received for the time it was out. “It was like our door was closed.”
He gave the surveillance video to the police. He’s hopeful that they use it to catch the person — but also is calling for some compassion if it’s necessary.
“I hope he gets some help. For him to be doing this at this time, he must have his own problems,” he said.
The court shutdown has meant lawyers and judges are meeting not in courtrooms, but over telephones and video. It’s a technological innovation that Attorney General David Eby hopes will help the court clear up the backlog when it resumes full operation.
“We have a very significant backlog building up,” he said. “We are preparing to respond and we need the system to not just continue. It needs to be better than it was before, and if it’s not it’s going to collapse.”
The VPD announced the arrest of 40 accused thieves this week as it tried to crack down on criminals taking advantage of empty businesses.
A CTV News analysis of the VPD's data showed commercial B&Es up, but other thefts down as criminals adapted to changing behaviour patterns in the pandemic.
