A dreadful murder in Toronto where the suspect was on bail has, once again, led to media outrage. Calls to restrict or even prohibit bail have been made. What is striking about the media outrage is how ill-informed the response seems to be about bail itself.

There has been a complete elimination of the discretion not to charge in sexual assault complaints followed by a complete elimination of the individual Crown's discretion not to prosecute them. There are two major types of individuals who suffer as a result: real victims of sexual assault and those who should never have been charged in the first place.

Three odd cases of "justice" are in the news these days, all of them likely to make those who don't commit crimes uneasy. No sane person wants an innocent person wrongly convicted (hence the abolishment of the death penalty). By the same token, no sane person wants a guilty person freed on a technicality. Marian Andrzejewski, Byron Sonne and Michael Rafferty all made headlines for their less-than-usual cases.

This week, Americans cheered as Amanda Knox was acquitted and her family closed the book on years of grueling uncertainty. Miss Knox's acquittal has been lauded as the achievement of justice in a fraught Italian legal system. But my family still struggles with the injustice of that system.

I am groggy with disbelief at the London Financial Times' suggestion that British justice should now, having preserved its virtue and a reasonable facsimile of due process for centuries, adopt the American plea bargain, at least in corporate matters.

Suggesting that the existence of worse offenders precludes a rights organization from questioning the actions of Canadian officials, or other 'lesser offending nations,' is tacit acknowledgement of belief that there should be a double standard in international human rights.

The transference of the dark, hidden prejudices within our society is often a subtle process and in Canada these realities are never obvious on the surface. We are all subject to the same prejudices and preferences that permeate the social ether at large.

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- OTTAWA - The crime rate continued a 20-year decline last year, dropping five per cent from 2009 and hitting the lowest level sin...

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has left open a legal loophole that could see spouses get out of paying divorce settlements...