RCMP Staff Sgt. Jerry Nutbrown brings you behind the scenes with a serious of columns taking you behind police work and how it’s done in our community. If you have a question you think needs to be answered in Behind the Bison, send it to admin@borderpulse.ca and we will be sure to share it with him.
One thing you likely have noted in some police media releases, is bail hearings, AKA Judicial Interim
Release hearings. Often when we do a media release on a charged person, we will indicate if the
accused has been released or held in custody.
A bail hearing is where an accused person can ‘speak to bail’. This means that they can request to be
released rather than be held in custody. If police feel it is necessary to take an accused before a justice
for the purpose of a bail hearing, that means we either want them held in custody or that there be
conditions put on them for release that we do have the authority to put on them.
Police have the authority to release people for a number of reasons after an arrest. We will release
people on our own documents, possibly with conditions, but generally this is for less serious crime or
where the accused has had little criminal involvement to date.
Police can put some conditions on an accused such as not to be in contact with an alleged victim, or not
to go to certain places related to the alleged offense. If police are not opposed to release but want more
restrictive conditions that we don’t have the authority to impose, we would take the accused before a
justice in a hearing. Police can ask for conditions but ultimately the decision is up the justice. We may
request they be held in custody, but the justice may release them. It isn’t very common where we ask
for a person to be released on conditions but instead the justice orders them held in custody.
In the hearing a person can be represented by a lawyer as it is a Crown Prosecutor that represents the
crown. The accused may remain in custody and not speak to bail until a later date and then would most
likely do that in front of a judge. If an accused requests bail/release but is denied, they likely won’t get a
second chance at bail for some time. There is some strategy by accused persons on when to speak to
bail in order to more likely be granted it.
A condition of release can be money paid up front or a promise to pay which is to dissuade the accused
in disobeying their conditions. The amount and if it is a promise or an actual deposited amount varies
widely but is very much related to the accused’ likelihood of obeying release conditions.
Another person can put up the consideration for bail for the accused, and they are called a surety. This
person then either pays or promises to pay on behalf of the accused. If the accused breaches a condition
of release, the surety can be made to pay up. Also, if the surety gets cold feet fearing the accused might
not obey their conditions, they can revoke their commitment. There is a fair bit more to bail for accused
individuals, but these are the basics.
Read more: Behind the bison – Traffic collisions
