We have a lot of data showing that Indigenous and Black people are the subjects of unfair treatment throughout the criminal justice system, from contact with police to sentencing and parole. That evidence is well summarized in a recent (2014)...
Read MoreThere is much evidence that the likelihood of being arrested for or charged with a crime is affected by skin colour, location, and other factors. This post illustrating that inequality is drawn from a Toronto Star feature on July 6,...
Read MoreAnnamaria Enenajor The colossal failure of Canada’s “war on drugs” is a key reason that the federal government has proposed to replace prohibition with legalizing and regulating the production, distribution and sale of cannabis (Bill C45 and Bill C-46). The...
Read MoreIn the media coverage of the recent attack in Edmonton on a police officer and several civilians, questions were asked about why this man was able to commit such a crime given that he had been questioned by police several...
Read MoreSisyphus gets a sidekick I.M. Grenada This is the first of many posts we plan to publish by current and former prisoners about their experiences in the criminal justice system. “Why a cat?” I looked up at the weathered wisp...
Read MoreThe Supreme Court of Canada has recently ruled twice, most notably in the 2016 Jordan decision, that it is a violation of Canadians’ rights when criminal cases are not completed in the courts in a reasonable period of time. These rulings...
Read MoreBy Melissa Hamilton Troubles arise when a society has too many laws, a sort of legal inflation or legal creep. When the situation regards too many criminal laws, the more specific term is overcriminalization. It is worse than other forms...
Read MoreJails and prisons are out of the public eye; what goes on there tends to get very little scrutiny unless something very dramatic occurs. However there is much evidence (for example the famous Stanford Prison Experiments) that in places where...
Read MoreA criminal conviction is much more than the sentence It’s commonly believed that the consequence of being convicted of a crime lies in the sentence imposed by a judge. “Do the crime, do your time”, one often hears. But as...
Read MoreMajor changes in Ontario corrections recommended On January 1, 2017, following a series of media stories involving prisoners held in segregation or solitary confinement for long periods, the Ontario government commissioned Howard Sapers, former federal Correctional Investigator, to do a...
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