Okanagan judge opts for rehabilitation in 18-month conditional sentence

Okanagan judge opts for rehabilitation in 18-month conditional sentence

Published 7:00 pm Monday, September 21, 2026

A South Okanagan man’s efforts to keep sober and recover after a life spent regularly before the courts received a conditional sentence for five separate cases.

Derek Ryan Baptiste appeared in Penticton Provincial Court on Sept. 21, after he received extra time to continue his rehabilitative efforts following an appearance in May.

He pleaded guilty to three charges of breaching his probation, two charges of theft of a motor vehicle, and two charges of theft under $5,000 at his May appearance.

However since May, and as part of the defence’s submissions, he has continued to reside in the care of the Fraser Region Aboriginal Friendship Centre Association’s Night and Day Recovery program where he has worked to rehabilitate himself.

Baptiste’s defence said that in addition to the programming and courses that have already been completed, the Night and Day Recovery program confirmed that it would continue to have space for Baptiste for some time into the future.

Following his defence’s submissions, Baptiste also took the chance to speak before the court to express his commitment to change.

“I’ve been in and out of the courts over half my life, and I’m trying to do my best to change that,” said Baptiste. “For the first time in my life, I’m actually happy to be sober and clean and be with you. I completed the Red Path program, and there are other programs, other cultural things I’m doing there, and I do work with landscaping to keep myself busy as much as I can, so I’m not getting sidetracked and falling back into the same lifestyle of drugs and crime.

“I would like to say I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.”

Judge D. Isaac Ferbey found that, between the guilty pleas in the five cases, the lack of any concerns about breaching his release order and the significant progress he had made in recovering, the interests of the public were best served by allowing Baptiste to continue on his journey while under a conditional sentence order.

“On the one hand, pulling in one direction, we have Mr. Baptiste’s record; on the other hand, we have my assessment of his moral culpability, which is reduced,” said Judge Ferbey. “In my view, we have an opportunity here. When I consider the progress that Mr. Baptiste has made, I’ve decided that I have to give more weight to the objective rehabilitation at this time. It’s appropriate that I do so in the interests of long-term public safety.”

The probation he breached in 2025 was issued when he was sentenced in 2018 for a domestic violence incident, but despite the order only set to last for two years, it hadn’t become active until 2024, as his time in jail was extended due to further convictions, including fleeing from police and possession of a stolen vehicle and being unlawfully at large.

The charges that brought Baptiste before the court on May 22 included breaching his probation in 2025 by being in possession of alcohol, which he had stolen. He then repeated this three days later.

Several weeks later, he was arrested after being recognized by police as part of a group using drugs in an alleyway, after which he was released once he managed to gather the $100 bail.

About 11 days after being released, Baptiste was seen on security footage at a gas station getting into a truck that had parked at the pumps, which the owner had left the keys in, and driving away. The truck was later found without the keys and with a broken taillight.

A similar incident then occurred in Oliver, where Baptiste was turning in bottles at the local bottle depot when another individual parked their truck to bring in their own bottles, while leaving the keys inside and the truck unlocked. CCTV again captured Baptiste entering the truck and driving off, however, this time it was recovered after police spotted the vehicle with Baptiste behind the wheel and had tailed him to a different bottle depot.

In July 2025, he was released on bail, requiring electronic monitoring and to reside at a treatment facility in the Lower Mainland. Since that time, he has moved to second-stage housing and has had his strict house arrest terms relaxed to a curfew, while remaining under electronic monitoring.

The Crown was seeking a jail sentence of 26-months-in-prison, in part due to Baptiste’s extensive criminal record, which Judge Ferbey also acknowledged.

“Mr. Baptiste has what I would describe as a terrible criminal record,” said Ferbey. “He’s received federal sentences on four separate occasions, and these reflect serious or severe sentences for serious offences.”

Baptiste’s criminal record dates back to 1997 and includes youth convictions, with a total of 75 convictions over the last 29 years. Out of his adult convictions, Crown noted there were six robberies, an aggravated assault, nine firearms offences, six break-and-enters, additional thefts and breaches of court orders.

Judge Ferbey also recognized, as noted in the presentencing, psychological and Gladue reports on Baptiste, that he struggled with the impacts of fetal alcohol syndrome disorder and ADHD, growing up as the child of residential school survivors, and that he had begun consuming and misusing alcohol and substances from a very young age, although he could not recall how early that started.

Under the conditional sentence, Baptiste will spend the next 18 months under house arrest with electronic monitoring, the same as his current release order, with the possibility of easing the curfew if his good behaviour continues.

After the conditional sentence order is complete, he will serve another 18 months of probation.

As part of the order, he was also placed under conditions barring him from consuming any substances and requiring him to continue completing programming as directed by his parole officer.