Tag Archive: alternative policies

The disappearing trial

May 21, 2020

960 words; 4 minutes to read The right to a fair trial is perhaps the most central aspect of criminal justice.  Yet, as shown in a recent report by Fair Trials, an international organization committed to human rights in criminal...

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How science calls into question sentencing practices

May 10, 2020

830 words; 4 minutes to read Our criminal justice system goes back well before the advent of the social sciences and the development of reliable knowledge about human behaviour.  But because it is so firmly based on precedents and past...

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Is everyone a criminal? Looks like it…

April 4, 2020

900 words; 4 minutes to read Most of us think about ‘criminals’ as being a small subset of the Canadian population – people who are dangerous and need to be punished, locked up or kept away from the rest of...

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Predicting recidivism is hard to do

March 30, 2020

680 words; 3 minutes to read Part of the response of the criminal justice system to COVID 19 has been to release people from prison since jails and prisons are hotbeds for disease given crowded conditions.  Some provincial governments in...

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German prisons better and cheaper

March 6, 2020

Post #126  830 words; 4 minutes to read   Canada’s Correctional Investigator recently released yet another annual report drawing attention to some of the terrible conditions in Canada’s prisons, and the seeming indifference, if not outright opposition, of the government...

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Expunging criminal records

February 26, 2020

600 words; 3 minutes to read Last year Senator Kim Pate introduced a bill that would provide automatic expungement of criminal records in Canada.  Under this bill, criminal records would automatically be sealed after a certain amount of time had...

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