Post #154 950 words; 4 minutes to read Many discussions of crime treat so-called ‘violent crimes’ as a special subset that deserves a different, and harsher, response. But there are compelling reasons to be dubious about this distinction. Many of...
Read MoreA new report on the response of Canadian prisons to court rulings on the illegality of segregation shows that these ‘special intervention units’ (SIU) do not appear to be meeting the minimum standards set by the government. The full report...
Read MorePost #153 650 words; 3 minutes to read The majority (about 60%) of people held in provincial jails in Canada have not been found guilty of anything and this pattern has been getting worse in recent years. They are being...
Read MorePost # 150 About 100 words; 5 minutes to read. This post is adapted with permission from a longer article by the same authors posted by The Niskanen Centre, a US policy organization. This is an issue in which the...
Read More760 words; 3 minutes to read One of the alternatives increasingly considered – and used – instead of jailing people is the use of electronic monitors. These can be an alternative for bail; people charged with a crime can return...
Read More960 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...
Read More830 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...
Read More900 words; 4 minutes to read The annual reports by Canada’s Correctional Investigator (CI) provide a unique lens into conditions in Canada’s federal prisons. Both the current Investigator, Ivan Zinger, and his predecessor, Howard Sapers, along with their staff, have...
Read More850 words; 4 minutes to read The previous post discussed white collar crime generally; this one focuses on Canada. We lack good information about the extent of white collar crime and prosecution in Canada. Still, according to federal Criminal Intelligence...
Read More900 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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