What this site is

Revolving Door BC is an independent, non-commercial public-interest project. It looks at repeat offending and release decisions in British Columbia using the courts' own published decisions and Statistics Canada data.

Why no names

We're making a point about the system, not the individuals. People in these cases have already been sentenced. Naming them adds nothing to the argument and can harm family members and victims. Each person gets a number instead, and each case links to the public court decision it came from, so anyone can check our numbers.

What the badges mean

• On bail / probation / parole when they offended: the judge says the person was on bail, probation, parole or a conditional sentence when they committed the new offences.
• Walked out at sentencing: the person did not go back to jail on sentencing day, because of credit for time already served or because the sentence didn't involve jail.
• Total sentence: the full sentence the judge imposed, including credit for time the person already spent in custody before sentencing.
• Where are they now? This is an estimate worked out from the sentence, not a live custody record. Most people in BC are released after serving about two-thirds of their jail time (earned remission or statutory release), so we add two-thirds of the jail left to serve to the sentencing date. If that date has passed, we show "Likely back in the community". "Serving sentence at home" means a conditional sentence served in the community. "Status unknown" means the decision doesn't give enough to estimate.
• Rap sheet dots: one dot for each prior conviction the judge describes. Red dots are breaches: failing to comply with a court order, breach of probation or failing to appear. A dash means the decision didn't give an exact number.

How complete is this?

The counts are complete as of each sentencing. Before a sentencing, the Crown gives the judge the person's full criminal record from the national police database. Our "prior convictions" number is what the judge describes at that point.

It doesn't include:

• Crimes that were never solved or charged.
• Charges that were stayed or dropped.
• Anything the person did after that sentencing.

Where a judge only said "a lengthy record" without a number, we show a dash rather than guess.

We only see published decisions. Most criminal cases in BC are decided in Provincial Court. Many sentences are given orally, with no written decision published at all. This site draws on written decisions from the BC Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. So "Offender #1" is the worst record among the decisions we've reviewed, not necessarily the worst offender in BC. New decisions are added every week.

What we don't track

We can't confirm where anyone is today. Custody records aren't published, and parole, breaches or new charges can change a person's status at any time. That's why the "Where are they now?" status is always shown as an estimate.

Sources

Case information comes from reasons for judgment published by the Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Court of Appeal for British Columbia at bccourts.ca. We summarize these decisions and have tried to check them carefully, but always read the full decision. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Courts.

City statistics come from Statistics Canada, police-reported crime tables for British Columbia police services (see the note under the scoreboard). Police service boundaries don't always match city boundaries. City positions on the map are approximate.

The daily court lists

The Bail Tracker, the "This Week in Court" strip and the court-list cards in Catch & Release come from the Government of British Columbia's Public Access Completed Provincial Court Lists (Adult). Those lists are published for public information and research. They are not official court records, and entries can be corrected after they're posted.

We read every courthouse's list each day and remove names and file numbers before anything is saved. One person's files are grouped only within a single courthouse on a single day, so nobody is tracked from one day to the next. Sexual offences, restricted files and anything under a publication ban are left out. Traffic tickets and provincial offences are left out too, so only Criminal Code and drug charges are counted. "Came to court from the community" means the person wasn't in custody or under a detention order at that appearance. A charge is not a conviction. Crown stays are often part of a plea deal where the person pleads guilty to other charges.

Corrections

If you think a number is wrong, compare it against the linked court decision. The decision is the authoritative record, and we'll correct any error we find.