Prince George-Mackenize Liberal MLA Mike Morris is fed up with what he calls the “catch and release” cycle of crime plaguing many communities including ours.
The critic for public safety and solicitor general stated even with a large spike in the administration of justice offences like breach of probation, the number of people charged remains low.
Morris told Vista Radio the issue is getting out of hand in larger centres like the Okanagan.
“Kelowna is having a significant problem. They have increased their policing budget by 84% per cent in the past year and when you look at the administration of justice offences in Kelowna they have gone up 156% in the last seven or eight years.”
“But, they now have the same number of administration of justice offences that Prince George has even though we have 64-thousand fewer people. That flag for me is that we have a very prolific problem in Prince George with the administration of justice offences.”
Morris adds it’s imperative the issue gets dealt with by Attorney General David Eby and the NDP government before somebody loses their life.
“We have to get a handle on this before somebody loses their life or before a police officer is seriously injured or killed in the line of duty trying to keep these prolific offenders in line.”
In addition, with the number of social issues taking place across the province including Prince George, more wrap-around services are needed.
“We need treatment centres for addictions, we need treatment centres for mental illness and if we were to provide the proper treatment, maybe we wouldn’t see so many people getting involved in the criminal justice system by default as a result of that,” said Morris.
However, Morris notes Eby has a responsibility to take action and reduce these troubling numbers.
“Attorney general’s, one of their responsibilities is the ability to adjust their resource level and to adjust their approach to prosecutions to a number of things that we have going on in the field of justice all the time to at least address the conditions that Bill C-75 would place on them and to address the conditions that the courts place on them as well as prosecutors and their court decisions.”
A letter was sent to Eby as well as Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth by the BC Mayors Caucus. Criminal offence data was collected where it found PG has 15 prolific offenders.
A prolific offender is identified as someone with over 30 negative contacts within the last year.
Subsequently, a negative contact is described as an individual or suspect that has been considered a suspect or charged.
Lastly, a PRIME file is better known as Police Records Information Management Environment (PRIME–BC), which consists of your personal information, including your name, fingerprints and what you’re charged with, which will be collected by the police and entered into its computer system.
For example, the letter states the top 15 prolific offenders in PG generated 736 PRIME files across BC, 282 of which were negative contacts.
One of the key examples was an offender from the northern capital who accumulated 916 PRIME files since 2016 – this includes 262 in the last 12 months.