eNews: Court
From dental hygiene to housing to art, music and writing opportunities, partnerships with organizations outside the justice system play an important role in the work of Vancouver’s two specialized sentencing courts, the Downtown Community Court and the Drug Treatment Court. Involvement in activities like these help court participants rebuild their lives and avoid criminal behaviour.
On March 13, 2023 fire devastated the Law Courts in Golden, British Columbia. Not just courtrooms, but paper court files were destroyed. Twenty years ago, this would have caused serious delays or put an end to many court proceedings.
Opened in 1914 and constructed in the imposing Classical Revival style, the Vernon Law Courts is one of BC’s older courthouses. Since 2019, it has been undergoing necessary renovation including repairing flood damage, remediating the structural foundation, upgrading the roof and electrical system, and rebuilding cells and courtrooms.
The BC Provincial Court’s annual reports are fact-filled summaries of the last fiscal year, presented in a colourful, readable format, as part of the Court’s commitment to transparency and accountability. They include caseload and operational performance statistics, judges’ and judicial justices’ demographics, responses to complaints, and more.
Each year since 2006 the Canadian Law Blogs Awards have honoured “the very best Canadian online legal content”. The awards began with blogs. But as free online legal content appeared in new formats each year, “the Clawbies” expanded to include those formats. The 2022 awards cover Canadian legal blogs, podcasts, videos, social media, longer publications, and novel legal information projects.