God I love irish justice!!!!

[chicamahomico]

Red, it's good that you brought that to my attention. I can honestly say I have not heard of that here in BC but that does not mean it doens't happen here. Standard fare is convicted criminals get a day taken off their sentence for every day they spent in custody going through the legal system, which is fair IMO. Do you know the reasoning behind it?

For time spent in the federal pen system maybe... but here the provincial jail system dumps you right on the street with spotty supervision from your parole officer after 1/3 to 1/2 of your time.

And you forgot one small (but important detail)

Pre sentencing time served...

The time spent in a provincial jail awaiting your trial/sentencing which counts as double time off your final sentence.

So you get 6 years you should go to a fed-pen right?
But oops you spent 2 years in jail awaiting trial and sentencing... counts as double time so you have 2 year left of your time left to do... well, off you go to a provincial jail and are "out" in less than 1 year and you avoid the more severe federal system. Thats unfortunately quite common.

Red

[Red Ketchup]

Do you know the reasoning behind it?

Nope, I'm afraid I don't. My guess would be that it's to encourage a "speedy trial" but it doesn't work out that way...

Just to give you an example, we recently had "mega-trials" of members of a few motorcycle gang members (following the gang wars in in Quebec)... the trials were dragged out endlessly (2 to 3 years from the moment of their arrest!) and the sweet "2 for 1" deal means a few of them were sentenced to less than their 2 for 1 time served... so they walked free!

Oh well...

Red