In August 2021, a Toronto drug case took a dramatic turn when a prosecutor made what the judge called a “highly unusual” request, asking the court to throw out evidence by a key police witness. It came after defence lawyers had grilled Toronto Police Service Const. Ryan Kotzer over “disparaging comments about black people” in […]

Two girls who pleaded guilty in the alleged fatal swarming of a homeless man in Toronto will not face further time in custody after an Ontario judge found Tuesday that the strip searches they underwent while detained had violated their right to privacy. Ontario Court Justice David Stewart Rose rejected the girls’ bid to have […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm. The justices heard arguments in November in Meta’s bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to […]

Bilingual Quebec municipalities have lost their bid to have several parts of the government’s French-language reform suspended while their case makes its way through the courts. The communities asked the Quebec Superior Court last month to suspend the application of parts of Bill 96 — as the language reform is known — arguing it would […]

The average age of people who died in a Canadian correctional facility in the past two decades was 44, according to a database launched Friday by a team helmed by an Ottawa criminologist. The Tracking (In)Justice data set lists more than 2,100 deaths from all causes of people in custody across Canada over the past […]

More people are being released from Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest correctional facility with nowhere to go home to, and experts say housing shortages, unco-ordinated community supports and a high number of inmates on pretrial detention are to blame. Dan McGettigan, founder and director at rehabilitation non-profit Turnings, says it’s increasingly harder to find stable, safe […]

Ontario is the only province where inmates are regularly locked down due to staff shortages, according to expert evidence in a pair of class-action lawsuits. Former inmates of provincial correctional facilities and immigration detainees who were held there are suing the Ontario and federal governments, alleging that inmates are commonly held in their cells for […]

Ontario will add more beds to its beleaguered jails, which are bursting with inmates, solicitor general Michael Kerzner said Monday. The province intends to add several hundred spots throughout the system as it grapples with a surge of inmates over the past 18 months. “We’re expanding and building facilities that will help front-line staff to […]

The Supreme Court of Canada has partly upheld an appeal from the media about a trial held in Quebec behind closed doors involving a police informant, but the high court insists no “secret trial” ever took place. The trial judge and Quebec Court of Appeal acted correctly in keeping information secret that could identify the […]