The Contribution of Judicial Discretion to a Greying Canadian Prison Population

Growing numbers of older incarcerated offenders raise a number of challenges
for Correctional Services Canada (CSC). Without codification, the method for accounting
for the relatively advanced age of older offenders before they become the responsibility
of CSC is through judicial discretion. However, planned federal justice sentencing
reforms would reduce the ability for judges to use discretion to account for the specific
circumstances of older offenders. This raises the question: would sentencing policy
changes result in a greater numbers of older offenders being incarcerated thereby
aggravating the current greying of Canadian prisons? Using a sample of judicial
decisions from the British Columbian Provincial Court Database, it is determined that
judges are considering the 'older age' of offenders. Since judges are tempering the
problem of prison population aging, the elimination of judicial discretion through
sentencing policy changes would result in an aggravation of the current problems
associated with prison population aging.