OTTAWA – The number of offenders who were permitted to serve their time at home rather than in prisons and jails climbed five per cent last year, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday.
The increase in conditional sentences comes at a time when the federal Conservatives are trying to curtail the use of conditional sentences.
At the end of any given month in 2008-09, there were 13,419 adults serving a conditional sentence in the community, the agency said. The increase follows two years of declines in judges imposing alternatives to incarceration.
"Since the introduction of this sentencing option in 1996, the average number of adults serving a conditional sentence has increased annually, except in 2006/2007 and 2007/2008," said Statistics Canada.
A conditional sentence is a sentence of less than two years that is served in the community and can be subject to strict conditions. Upon breach of these conditions, the remainder of the sentence could be served in custody. Since conditional sentences are served in the community, they are not included in the incarceration rates.
Statistics Canada also reported the number of adults held in custody inched upward last year, building on a four-year trend driven largely by an increase in suspects held in remand awaiting trial or sentencing.
The agency said the incarceration rate grew by one per cent in 2008-2009, following a two per cent increase in the previous year.
It was the fourth consecutive annual increase, following a decade of steady decline attributable to the number of youths and federal offenders serving time in prisons.
The number of adults held in remand, on the other hand, has doubled during the past decade.
On any given day in 2008-09, a little more than13,500 adults were held in remand, outnumbering the roughly 10,000 adults who were serving a sentence in a provincial or territorial jail.
After rising for four consecutive years, the number of offenders in federal prisons on any given day remained stable in 2008-09 at about 13,300.
Also, the number of youths serving time in custody also decreased in 2008-09, continuing a deep and steady decline since the adoption of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2003, which seeks alternatives to incarceration for all but the most serious crimes.
The incarceration rate for youths under 18 was down eight per cent last year from the previous year and 42 per cent from 2003-04.
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