I went through the fingerprinting, court for "theft under $5000 "(ontario, CA)
THIS IS NOT A QUESTION, BUT A PLACE SOME PEOPLE MIGHT WANT TO REFER TO TO ANSWER THEIR OWN QUESTIONS SINCE IM NOT SURE WHERE ELSE I SHOULD POST THIS
All right guys so I'm fron ontario, canada and just wanted to share my experience I stole from and HBC store, about $10 worth. I was leaving the store and was caught red-handed with the merchandise. They brought me to the back room and then the police were brought in a while ago. I was told that I had to attend a fingerprinting and court date. My fingerprinting was 2 days ago. It was a very simple procedure that only took about 10 minutes. My court date was today. I went a bit early and was asking a lady about diversion but they gave me a form for that anyway, and as well, the other people with me who had committed the same crime (first offence of theft under $5000) also received that form. So there were 4 of us and we were sitting in the court room. The procedure was that a probation officer had a talk with us; it was like a lecture I guess. Then we saw a short video. This was our diversion program apparently. It was only an hr long. After the talk and the video, the crown attorney talked to us for a bit while we waited for the judge, talking nicely with us, and even cracking a few jokes. She explained to us that when the judge came (justice of the peace), all our charges would be dismissed. At this time the probation officer had left, and a clergy member had arrived. Finally, the "JP"(judge) arrived. We were called up one by one to stand at the podium and say our name. Then the crown attorney said we completed this diversion program, the judge said the charges were dismissed, and that we were free to go. I don’t have a criminal record. I asked a lot of questions about this going on a record and everything. What happened for me is that there is no criminal record at all, and that I wasn’t charged/convicted of anything. The only thing is that if I ever commit this crime again the charges will be severe. Also the only people that will know about this are the police. If background checks are done by employers, nothing will turn up. The crown attorney said also that after a yr, we can write a letter to the arresting officer, asking for our fingerprints to be destroyed, and after this they will be destroyed. I didn't have to do community service, write an apology letter, nothing. Also, a couple of people had a lawyer, which was pointless. We didn’t even have to talk at all. The only thing I had to say during the whole process was my name, when the judge asked me to do so. We all were treated the same, with or without lawyers. The whole time when we were there, the 2 people that had lawyers, their lawyers weren’t even there. For all of us, since it was our first offence the charges were dropped so getting a lawyer in my case wasn’t too important. Imp supposed to be getting a letter in the mail about paying to HBC I assume it will be a few hundred dollars. Overall this experience wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I made a stupid mistake just like you and I know now to never ever commit this crime again because if I do, next time, the consequences will be greater.