Justice delayed is justice denied — for everyone

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2024 (415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another day, another shortage in the health-care system.

Seems pretty much par for the course, not just in Manitoba but in much of the country.

This time, it’s months-long delays for people who have been accused of crimes and are waiting for psychiatric assessments.

“Our province lacks the infrastructure to meet the needs of mentally ill accused persons engaged in the criminal justice process,” Winnipeg lawyer Ethan Pollock told the Free Press. It’s a concern echoed by many other lawyers working in this province’s criminal justice system.

The Criminal Code of Canada, Section 672.14 (1), sets the guidelines for such an assessment: an order lasts just 30 days, and can only be extended to a maximum of 60 days. But due to a shortage of forensic psychiatrists, Manitoba lawyers are seeing their clients face delays for assessments that can stretch far beyond that limit.

It’s unacceptable, but the truth is, the issue is hardly new.

The Free Press wrote about the same issue in this province — wait for it — on the editorial page in February 2013: “The Manitoba courts have run into a new source of backlog — lengthening lineups for psychiatric assessments are delaying cases, forcing accused persons to sit in pre-trial custody in jail or the remand centre.”

It’s been a problem in British Columbia, in Alberta, in Nova Scotia, in Prince Edward Island — and further afield in the U.S., New Zealand and Australia.

In the U.S., such delays were ruled by a federal court to have been a violation of constitutional rights — in 2014.

That’s an American court, and the American Constitution, but the issue is the same: people with mental health issues not getting the timely assessment and treatment they deserve.

It is unfortunately not surprising that the issue has stretched on for so very long.

The unfortunate fact is that people with mental health issues often don’t get a fair shake in the justice system, regardless of the best efforts of police, defence lawyers, prosecutors and even judges. Anyone who has reported on the court process — or even sat in on it — has seen the broad extent that is made to treat the mentally ill with care and compassion. But to say that people with severe mental health challenges are ill-equipped to work within the structure of the justice system is an understatement.

In the great wide world of health-care concerns, it’s also not an understatement to suggestion that psychiatric assessments for people accused of crimes fall pretty far down the scale of public concerns about failures in the health-care system. There’s unlikely to be a groundswell calling for provincial governments to provide the timely psychiatric assessments that the law explicitly requires.

The fact is that people are generally the most concerned about health-care issues that they can imagine could affect themselves, their family or friends. While mental health issues affect a large number of Manitobans, it’s hard for most to put themselves in the shoes of someone whose mental health problems have brought them to court for their actions.

Perhaps it would generate more attention if the general public was more widely aware of the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada has made it abundantly clear that justice delayed is justice denied — and that people accused of crimes who don’t have the full array of judicial timelines met with due diligence, are often given stays of proceedings, meaning those accused of crimes may be released without even be tried for their alleged offences.

There is a price to pay for ignoring the legal requirements imposed on the justice system.

It’s not one we should ignore.