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There’s an app for that — even to help monitor people on bail in Ontario.
And it’s getting some upgrades, courtesy of a $2.4-million provincial grant, finalized last year.
Back in 2019, Toronto police created a bail compliance dashboard, a mobile and desktop app, to give officers one spot to review bail conditions, surety information and the address of those out on bail for firearms-related charges before checking in on them. Earlier this year, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) took over management of the app to expand it across the province.
With three years of provincial funding, which began in 2023 and wraps next March, Toronto police have improved their systems so the dashboard receives court information faster and on more individuals, allowing officers to do more compliance checks.
They can also now start monitoring people on the app facing other serious charges, like carjackings, home invasions and human trafficking. The work, done in partnership with Durham Regional Police, is called Project Aware.
“We’ve expanded year over year,” said Craig Lawrie, project lead from the Toronto police’s information management unit.
“We’re getting court data faster, it’s more accurate, and we’re making sure that we’re reducing administrative burdens where we can, so frontline officers have more time for bail compliance.”
Number of checks up 200%
Last year, Toronto police completed 200 per cent more bail compliance checks compared to when the dashboard was first created six years ago. During Project Aware, officers were able to complete 2,718 more checks in 2024 than they did in 2023.
“In the past, officers would have to use very manual-type methods like spreadsheets or mug shots on a wall,” said Det. Sgt. Andrew Steinwall, who works with the bail enforcement unit.
“This takes us into modern times.”
Steinwall says officers review the app before completing a compliance check, which usually starts with going to the home of a person out on bail for a serious offence to make sure they’re following their conditions. What happens after depends on what they find.
There are now more than 1,200 people facing charges from TPS with their information in the dashboard. The majority (714) are for firearms offences, alongside roughly 500 individuals being monitored for the other serious charges the service has added.
More enforcement better than bail reform: lawyer
Alison Craig, a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer, thinks this a good investment.
“I’ve long said the solution is more compliance checks and enforcement, rather than change in the bail laws and bail reform,” she said. “I hope if the system is proven effective, it will assist perhaps in more people getting bail, because our jails are overcrowded.”
Most of Ontario’s jails were over capacity in 2023, according to a Canadian Press investigation from last year. And people held in custody waiting for a court date or trial made up 80 per cent of that population in 2022-23, the most recent year for which data is available from Statistics Canada.
“One of the grounds that has to be considered in bail is the public perception,” said Craig.
“If the public is aware that bail compliance is being taken seriously and money is being invested in that, then perhaps it will assist in fewer people being detained pending trial, because more people can be safely released on bail knowing that there will be compliance checks.”
Funding for the OPP’s province-wide expansion of the app and these upgrades stem from $112 million in spending the Ontario government earmarked for strengthening bail enforcement in April 2023.
16 Ontario police services using app
There are now 16 police services in Ontario using the Provincial Bail Compliance Dashboard, with another service set to start this week, according to the OPP. All of the police services in the Great Toronto Area are on it, and an OPP spokesperson confirmed it’s working with the remaining police services in the province to get their data on it, as well.
All together, the app is monitoring more than 2,730 people on bail, compared to about 1,650 nearly two years ago, Lawrie told CBC Toronto.
“We’ve been able to get a better sense of the broader picture of who’s on bail, and for what, through this project,” he said.
CBC Toronto obtained a copy of TPS’s funding application and other related records for this provincial bail enforcement grant through a freedom-of-information request.
The application included baseline numbers and targets for various stats aimed at reducing the rate of bail violations and recidivism, and improving the tracking of “high-risk” individuals on bail.
Toronto police wrote in the application that in 2023, 2.9 per cent of those they monitored for bail compliance had re-offended. But they said they didn’t know how many people under community supervision had been found in violation of their bail conditions overall nor how many of them had been re-admitted to custody while on bail.
In their application, they said they didn’t have the “technology and/or processes” to track those statistics.
But Lawrie says that’s also changing.
“We’ve developed processes,” he said. “We’re hopeful, as it mentioned in the grant, by the end that we are able to have a better sense of that number, and then we can scale that to other agencies, as well.”
Another goal listed was to increase the total number of people monitored by the dashboard to 2,900 by the end of March 2026. At the moment, they’re just under 200 people shy of that target. But Lawrie says their focus is quality over quantity.
“We need to make sure that we have the capabilities to ensure that what we have in front of the officers doing the checks is always up-to-date and accurate,” he said.
“Until that can be assured, then we can’t expand.”