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| John L. Hill |
But with the decline in readership of local newspapers and people ignoring local news generally, can a judge’s harsh sentence seem analogous to the tree falling in the forest that nobody hears? While a harsh sentence may deter the offender, does reliance on severe penalties continue to serve to protect the public?
Take the case of Cory James Keers. His Facebook picture shows a good-looking, physically fit, bearded 40-year-old man listing numerous friends in his hometown of Cobourg, Ont., including the current chair of the Cobourg Police Service Board. His photos tell us nothing about his psychological or psychiatric condition.
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Media reports say the investigation resulted in the seizure of roughly $320,000 worth of illegal drugs, including possession of morphine, oxycodone and psilocybin, for the purpose of trafficking, after a raid on a local homeless shelter.
This was not Keers’s first encounter with the police. On Nov. 5, 2019, Cobourg police executed a search warrant on a local house. Keers, 33 at the time, was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking fentanyl and cocaine, and possession of a prohibited weapon. Multiple news outlets covered that bust and the charges.
Then, on April 23, 2021, the Ontario Provincial Police responded to a report of a vehicle being driven erratically in Hamilton Township, near Cobourg. The police located a vehicle idling, and the driver, identified as Cory Keers, then age 35, was found “passed out” or “asleep” behind the wheel of his car. He was charged with drug-impaired driving, multiple “for the purpose of trafficking” counts (cocaine, meth, etc.), weapons/weapon-possession counts, and other related offences.
There is no credible public record showing final court outcomes (convictions, sentences or dismissals) for Keers relating to his 2019, 2021 or 2025 arrests. Aside from reports of Keers’s arrest, there is no reporting on what happened during his trial. Whatever happened resulted in little, if any, specific deterrence for Cory Keers (he continued getting arrested on drug-related charges) and had absolutely no impact on teaching others what they could expect if caught possessing or trafficking illegal substances.
It can be argued that the sentencing principles of denunciation and deterrence are not made meaningless just because the penalties imposed in each case are not publicly reported in the media. Their force comes from their being applied and recorded in court, not from whether the public later hears about them. Denunciation and deterrence assume we are alike in knowing and choosing to commit crimes. Our understanding is that a harsh penalty will give us pause to decide not to commit a criminal offence.
But there is an important nuance: the public-communication aspect of sentencing can contribute to deterrence, even though it is not required for the principle to have legal effect. Those who profess to be advocates for harsher sentencing typically agree with the statement that general deterrence is served by the imposition of a penalty commensurate with the gravity of the offence, regardless of whether the public is widely apprised of the sentence. This logic is typical of the reasoning in Canadian appellate decisions on sentencing (e.g., R. v. Proulx, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 61 and R. v. Lacasse, 2015 SCC 64).
So, although publicity can amplify deterrence, the principle is not nullified when a case receives no coverage. It has a minimal effect on crime. Using denunciation and deterrence as the central concepts for imposing harsher sentences may be satisfactory for explaining societal dissatisfaction with crime. Still, they serve no purpose in explaining why a crime was committed.
Without knowing why Cory Keers involved himself with drugs, we simply assume that by making his incarceration longer and tougher, he and others will stop their involvement in dealing illicit substances. As crime coverage diminishes, harsh penalties will affect only the person receiving the sentence.
Perhaps if we looked further into why a crime was committed, we could achieve a better result in reducing future crime. Maybe we could put greater emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment so we would not have to keep sending people like Cory Keers to jail — or to the grave — to keep our society safer.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a JD from Queen’s and an LLM in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. His most recent book, Acts of Darkness (Durvile & UpRoute Books), was released July 1. Hill is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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