Race, Crime and Justice in Canada

October 19, 2017

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)...

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Inequality in Who Gets Arrested

October 17, 2017

There 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,...

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The New Cannabis Laws: Good and Bad News

October 10, 2017

Annamaria 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...

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Prisoners’ Stories: Sisyphus Gets a Sidekick

October 1, 2017

Sisyphus 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...

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Delaying Justice is Denying Justice

September 29, 2017 |

The 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...

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Overcriminalization

September 28, 2017

By 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...

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The OCI: Insight into Canada’s prisons

September 26, 2017

Jails 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...

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Lifetime Effects of a Criminal Record

September 22, 2017 |

A 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...

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