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Criminal - Sentencing - Long-term Supervision Order (LTSO). R. v. J.C.
In R. v. J.C. (Ont CA, 2025) the Ontario Court of Appeal allowed an appeal from a criminal dangerous offender designation, substituting a long-term supervision order (LTSO):[4] This is an appeal against the dangerous offender designation. The appellant submits that the trial judge failed to comply with R. v. Boutilier, 2017 SCC 64, [2017] 2 S.C.R. 936, provided insufficient reasons for decision, and erred in assessing his prior criminal record.
[5] For the reasons that follow, I would allow the appeal in part by setting aside the order designating the appellant a dangerous offender, substitute a designation as a long-term offender, and uphold the trial judge’s imposition of a determinate sentence followed by a 10-year LTSO.
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(1) Did the trial judge fail to consider intractability at the Designation Stage, as mandated by Boutilier?
[14] Boutilier establishes that before designating a dangerous offender, a sentencing judge must be satisfied that the offender poses a high likelihood of harmful recidivism and that his or her conduct is “intractable”. The court defined intractable conduct as “behaviour that the offender is unable to surmount”: Boutilier, at para. 27. This requires the sentencing judge to conduct a prospective assessment of dangerousness, so that only offenders who pose a future risk are designated as dangerous and face the possibility of being sentenced to indeterminate detention.
[15] The court in Boutilier further clarified that the prospective assessment of dangerousness necessarily involves the consideration of future treatment prospects: at para. 43. Offenders will not be designated as dangerous if their treatment prospects “are so compelling that the sentencing judge cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that they present a high likelihood of harmful recidivism or that their violent pattern is intractable”: Boutilier, at para. 45.
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[37] Although I would set aside the appellant’s designation as a dangerous offender, I have not found any reviewable error in the trial judge’s findings that his offending conduct satisfied the patterns of behaviour described in ss. 753(1)(a)(i) and (ii) of the Criminal Code.
[38] The issue that arises is the appropriate sentencing disposition in light of these findings. Since the parties did not directly address this issue in their initial written or oral submissions, we invited them to provide written submissions following the hearing.
[39] In those submissions, both parties accept that in these circumstances, it would be appropriate to designate the appellant as a long-term offender, and impose a determinate sentence followed by the 10-year LTSO. In fact, this was the disposition sought by defence counsel at first instance, while the Crown at that time agreed that a determinate sentence followed by a 10-year LTSO was an available and appropriate disposition if a dangerous offender designation was not made.
[40] The appropriateness of this disposition is reinforced by the fact that although the trial judge designated the appellant as a dangerous offender, he sentenced the appellant to a determinate sentence followed by the 10-year LTSO.
[41] I would therefore set aside the appellant’s designation as a dangerous offender, substitute a designation as a long-term offender, and uphold the determinate sentence followed by a 10-year LTSO, as imposed by the trial judge.
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