Prince George, B.C. – Community Court in Prince George,   is a distinct possibility.

Speaking to the Healthier You expo in Prince George, Attorney General Wally Oppal says   the community court model is in the pilot project phase in Vancouver, and while still in the early stages, there are already some positive results.

Oppal says Prince George is in the queue for a community court pilot project although the exact timing is not confirmed. “We have to get some sort of empirical analysis” before the program would be expanded says Oppal.  The is no telling when that information may  be ready as  data will be analyzed after the  community court has been in operation for a year and that anniversary date  is  next September.   Oppal says there is another challenge, in that prince George doesn't yet have the housing  or  health services in place .

Community court is a “problem solving court” says Oppal. After a person is arrested, that person is brought to the court room and assessed to see if the person is a candidate for rehabilitation or treatment. If they are not a candidate, they go through the regular system. If they can be helped by services, they are channelled to that system which can help them with health issues, work, and housing. This way, there is a handling of the underlying issues which lead to the crimes.

It also promotes a more rapid handling of matters, skipping the adjournments which often lead to long delays for cases that could be dealt with much faster.

Oppal says 80% of the crime is property crime, and only 7% of the population is responsible for it. Of that 7%, Oppal says the offenders have issues with drugs, alcohol, mental illness homelessness, or a combination of those factors.

“We don’t expect the crime rate to drop over night, it will take us some time to see it working, but there are 27 such community courts in the U.S. and everywhere they have had these courts, the street crime rates have dropped dramatically.”

Oppal says the program is new, beneficial and by organizing all the resources and addressing the root causes of crime are timely and “the way to go”.