Canada Supreme Court raises standard of proof required in inmate disciplinary proceedings
The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decided on Friday that the standard of proof required in major disciplinary offence proceedings for inmates would be raised from a “balance of probabilities” to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
This decision comes from John Howard Society of Saskatchewan v. Saskatchewan (Attorney General) where it was successfully argued that use of the “balance of probabilities” standard—where it must be proven that the offence was more likely than not committed—as required by section 68 of Saskatchewan’s Correctional Services Regulations, 2013 subjects inmates to “severe liberty-depriving consequences” when there remains a reasonable doubt as to their guilt. The SCC found this violated inmates’ constitutional rights, including the presumption of innocence, and could not be justified as “minimally impairing.”
The lower courts said that possible disciplinary sanctions were not severe enough to warrant a higher standard of proof, a view now overruled. The punishment from a major disciplinary proceeding can be either segregation up to ten days or loss of up to fifteen days of earned remission, which the SCC says amounts to a severe enough depravation of liberty to trigger a constitutional right. This overruled the previous interpretation of “true penal consequences” within inmate disciplinary proceedings from R v Shubley.
While six judges formed the court’s majority, three judges dissented, saying “disciplinary proceedings are not criminal in nature but are administrative … and the sanctions stemming from the disciplinary proceedings are not true penal consequences within the meaning … of the Charter”
Everyone accused of a crime in Canada must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, where the only reasonable explanation of the crime in question is the guilt of the accused. This requirement is a constitutional right, protected as a principle of fundamental justice under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.