By Peter Mazereeuw

Ottawa’s Somerset ward has a bail problem.

Residents of Somerset discharged on bail—release from police detention after an arrest and before a court date, usually with specific conditions of good behaviour—violated the conditions of their bail at a rate ten times the city’s average last year, according to an analysis of police statistics.

Just more than 15 bail violations were reported per thousand residents in Somerset ward in 2013. The next-highest rate, in Rideau-Vanier, was 6.4. The median rate among wards–which is not influenced by the high number for Somerset ward—was just 0.59 bail violations per thousand residents last year.

Those numbers are similar to the rates of bail violations in 2012. Somerset ward led the way with 19.5 violations per thousand residents, followed by Rideau-Vanier at 6.4. The 2012 city median rate of bail violations per thousand residents was 0.54.

Police track crimes based on the number of incidents reported, instead of arrests made, because one incident can sometimes involve multiple arrests, according to Statistics Canada.

Somerset ward includes much of Ottawa’s urban centre, stretching from the Rideau Canal to the east, the Rideau River to the north, the Queensway highway for most of its southern boundary, and the O-Train tracks to the west. The bars, drug activity, and community housing within the ward, and even the Elgin Street courthouse, likely account for its high rate of reported bail violations, say the Ottawa police and others who work in the bail system.

Somerset ward actually trailed its downtown neighbour, Rideau-Vanier, in its rates of the other most commonly reported crimes last year, including assault, mischief, fraud and theft under $5,000.

Rideau-Rockliffe, Gloucester-Southgate, and River wards had the next highest rates of bail violations last year, but none cracked 1.5 violations per thousand residents.

National and provincial figures for bail violations are difficult to determine; Statistics Canada lumps them into the broader category of failing to comply with a court order. The national average for that category of offences was just more than 3 violations per thousand residents last year. The rate for Ontario was 1.74, and the rate for Toronto was 0.98.

People involved in altercations in or around downtown bars are sometimes also on bail, and are found to be violating bail conditions such as abstaining from alcohol, said Ottawa Police spokesman Cst. Marc Soucy. As a result, more bail violations are reported in neighbourhoods in Somerset and other wards with many bars, he said.

Violating conditions of bail is a summary offence, and as such is punishable by a fine and/or up to six months in jail.

Ottawa police also spend more time in downtown wards such as Somerset and Rideau-Vanier, and so are more likely to encounter people drinking in public or violating other terms of their bail, said Geraldine Castle-Trudel, a criminal defence lawyer who works in Somerset ward.

Soucy was unable to explain why Somerset ward had a rate of bail violations nearly three times higher than the sometimes rowdy Rideau-Vanier, which includes the Byward Market and has higher rates of reports for many other kinds of crime.

“We can’t explain from year to year what happens. It always depends where the offence occurred,” said Soucy.

“We don’t analyse trends for breaches [of bail],” he said.

Ottawa’s John Howard Society, a non-profit that supervises bail cases in the city, also couldn’t account for the much higher rate of reported bail violations in Somerset ward compared to other wards.

Sue Morse, the society’s bail program coordinator, said many of the people on bail she supervises live in Vanier or Lowertown (parts of Rideau-Vanier) or in Centretown (part of Somerset), but she couldn’t explain why so many more violations were reported in Somerset ward.

The John Howard Society meets with people to help guide them through the bail process and to help them “remedy issues that may have contributed to the alleged misconduct,” its website says.

These meetings are a mandatory condition of bail, and Morse said she contacts police if individuals under her supervision miss more than one meeting without contacting her.

Ontario’s bail supervisors generally have “flexibility” in their obligation to report violations of bail, said a July report on Canada’s bail system by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

While most supervisors reported multiple missed appointments, there were greater differences in reporting between supervisors and police officers when it came to violations of requirements to abstain from drinking.

The vast majority of Ottawa’s bail supervision is done through Morse’s Lowertown office, she said.

Socio-economic differences across the city don’t entirely account for the gap in bail violations either. Somerset ward had a median income of $43,817 in 2005–the most recent census data available on income by municipal wards in Ottawa—compared to $69,743 for Ottawa as a whole. Rideau-Vanier was even lower, at $40,373.

The location of the Ottawa courthouse on Elgin Street could explain some of the violations, said Castle-Trudel.

“It would be very interesting to know how many of those violations occur within two blocks of the courthouse,” she said.

Release on bail often comes with conditions that prohibit contact with victims of the offender’s crime, or those associated with it. Castle-Trudel speculated that individuals leaving the courthouse after a bail hearing could be caught calling the victim or a witness, or, in the case of domestic assault cases, being picked up by the victim.

“Police and special constables are very savvy about that sort of thing,” she said.

Soucy said it is a “possibility” that more bail violations could occur near the courthouse than elsewhere.

However, Jason Gilbert, a criminal lawyer who also works in Centretown, said he believed it would be “very rare” that a person would be caught in violation of their bail conditions in the area around the courthouse.