(Ottawa) The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down mandatory minimum prison sentences for child luring crimes.
In a six-to-one decision made public Friday, the country’s highest court concluded that such mandatory minimum sentences violate the right guaranteed by the Canadian Charter which protects “against all cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.”
The court ruled that mandatory minimum sentences for the offense of child luring apply to a “range of behaviors […] extremely broad” and can therefore lead in certain cases to “grossly disproportionate” sentences.
The justices looked at these mandatory minimum sentences with reference to two specific court cases. They emphasize from the outset that their decision comes at a time when “modern means of communication, particularly the Internet, allow those who use them to have unprecedented and unsupervised access to children”.
One of two appeals considered by the Supreme Court involved a man who pleaded guilty to child luring and sexual interference after having sex with a girl four times over two years, starting when she 13 years old and him 22.
At sentencing, the defendant challenged the constitutionality of the one-year mandatory minimum sentence for child luring, calling it “cruel and unusual.” The trial judge instead imposed five months’ imprisonment on that charge.
The Court of Appeal majority then upheld both the sentence and the finding that the mandatory minimum sentence was unconstitutional. The Crown then turned to the Supreme Court to challenge these decisions.
However, even if the Supreme Court concludes that the mandatory nature of the minimum sentence is unconstitutional, it orders a sentence of one year in prison in this specific case, applying “the principle of proportionality” in determining a sentence.