Alberta’s Justice Minister says the money being invested in the justice system will help make it more accessible.
Tyler Shandro says they’re increasing funding for the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service by $20 million.
“We’ve had a high turnover rate for our prosecutors for a number of years. The turnover rate would hover anywhere between 8-12%. We’ve actually got it down to 4.1%, so we have 55 more prosecutors in the system working than under the previous government. We’ve been working with the prosecutors and making sure we’re listening to them and their concerns.”
Shandro says they’re also hiring 16 more prosecutors to support the expansion of a pre-charge assessment system.
He says they want the justice system to be more responsive to people’s needs.
“The hard part is that we still do see increased crime throughout the province, including in rural Alberta, as a result of changes in 2019 from the federal government. The rules for whether you committed a crime with sentences and whether you get bail, that’s all in the criminal code and can only be amended by the feds. They really changed the bail regime with bill C-75.”
The full interview we did with the minister can be found below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
