“Prosecution Provides Disclosure Right Away On The Spot?”

I was at the prosecutor's office filing the standard disclosure form. I thought they are going to take the form in and ask me to pick up the disclosure in a couple of weeks when they get it from the police officer. But to my surprise they were able to give me disclosure right away. They searched for the ticket number in their computer, and was able to print the officer's notes right there on the spot. The officer's notes are written just on the back of the ticket. Looks like it's something new, that when the tickets are filed with the court, the notes are already in the hand of the prosecutors.

Is that something new?

Here in Toronto it isn't overly new. The Part 1's were changed to include a carbon copy of the notes which are submitted with the ticket and both are turned into a PDF that the Prosecutors have access to. Also starting on November 5th digital tickets started where the ticket is printed off a printer in the car and the evidence is typed directly into the in car computer which the Prosecutors will also have access to for immediate disclosure.

Electronic disclosure is probably going to become more and more common in all jurisdictions. The MTO has started a big push to make everything electronic. Starting next year, they will only accept electronic copies of accident reports. Im sure theyll start requesting more and more from police in an electronic format.

While paper tickets probably wont go away completely, digital tickets will start becoming the norm. I know locally traffic officers and some of the patrol officers are getting printers installed in their cruisers. The initial cost of the software/printers is recouped fairly quickly since it cuts down on wasted time spent preparing disclosure and also helps prevents tickets getting quashed from errors.