In 2013, I fetched a file from the crypts tucked into the back of the Ottawa federal Crown’s office. It was unimaginably dusty and some of the files, including this one, dated from the early 80s. The first striking thing about it was that I recognized the names of both the prosecutor and defence counsel etched into the front cover. One still worked in the Crown’s office and the other was a senior defence lawyer who I had met with earlier in the day. The second most striking thing was that I could decipher the arcane appearance shorthand on the front of the file. The process that brought this file from the charges being laid to its trial nearly thirty years ago was similar enough to current practice that, even as a new lawyer, I recognized it. If my experience was not an aberation, this means that since the 1980s the fundemental machinery of the criminal justice system is largely the same as it was 40 years ago.

This journal is tracking my study of these routine, low-key processes. I want to understand how they interact and how they need to evolve in order to catch up with the added complexity of the last 40 years. As part of this study I will collect data about movement of cases through real courtrooms, and try to create models of that data to better understand that complexity.

The Project

The plan is to collect granular information about remand court appearances over the course of many months. These remand appearances are like a window into the production line of the criminal courts. Each appearance often includes updates on the status of the case, any issues that have arisen, what the next step will be, and is often the place where the next steps are scheduled. Collecting enough information about these appearances allows for a detailed understanding of how the process operates. For instance, this data should allow me to answer questions like:

• How often are case adjourned for: disclosure? pre-trials? no reason at all?
• How long are these adjournments? On average? In the worst cases?
• Are there prerequisites for setting trials or pleas? How do those resolve and how often?
• What are the edge cases that result in catastrophic failure?

Why bother?

Collecting this data is the first half of the problem; the second half is to derive some insight from it. The complexity of the criminal law scheduling problem is hard to overstate. Cases compete for resources like court space, lawyers, and judges. Each case is different and there are sometimes thousands of cases¹ running through each courthouse at a time. Building up a series of abstractions (or mental models if you prefer) will help better reason about that complexity and how that complexity changes over time. That will take up a significant part of the early efforts as I’m collecting the data.

The reason to collect this data in-person is that it is probably the only way to do it at a fine enough granularity. Statistics like those that Stats Canada or the provincial Attorneys General release are typically rolled up to the case level. They might count the number of appearances but provide little insight into what happened at them. The only reported decisions that would provide those insights are those cases where excessive delay resulted in the court producing a detailed accounting, almost always as a result of a Charter application. That accounting, especially when taken as a group, is useful but misses any information about the majority of cases since these applications for Charter relief are, thus far, still not the norm.

Next Steps

Right now I am building up the toolbox (codings, spreadsheets, academic writing etc.) for collecting this data while I’m in the courthouse and pinpointing that data that will be most useful.