Following a guilty plea to robbery, the Crown sought a dangerous offender designation based on a lengthy violent record, institutional misconduct, and expert psychiatric evidence of high violent recidivism risk.
Applying the dangerous offender framework, the court accepted that the index robbery was a serious personal injury offence and that the offender posed a substantial risk of future violence absent treatment and controls, but held the Crown failed to prove intractability beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court emphasized that the offender had never received substantial treatment for polysubstance abuse and gambling addiction, despite evidence those conditions materially drove the offending, and that he had previously remained offence-free during a structured statutory release and for years thereafter.
The application for dangerous offender designation was therefore rejected.
The court instead found the statutory criteria for long-term offender designation met and directed that further sentencing submissions be heard.
