Is crime about the individual or the society?
1000 words; 4 minutes to read. Many of the debates in criminal justice eventually come down to the question of how we understand wrongful behaviour. For most of human history, we have seen wrongdoing as lying in the individual who...
Read MoreElection issue 2 – Why ‘tough on bail’ is bad policy
940 words; 4 minutes to read Several political leaders have recently made statements calling for making it harder, if not impossible, for people charged with certain kinds of offencss to get bail. The Conservative Party platform specifically calls for no...
Read MoreCreating more criminal law is not the answer
This post is about 1000 words and can be read in 5 minutes. One of the major problems in criminal law that rarely gets enough attention is the question of what should count as a crime in the first place. ...
Read MoreHow to have a more informed debate on criminal justice policy
This post is about 1060 words and can be read in 5 minutes. Under the Harper Conservatives Canada experienced a considerable toughening of criminal justice laws.These included many more mandatory minimum sentences, restrictions on parole, much more restrictive rules for...
Read MoreThe Hidden Epidemic of False Guilty Pleas
By Caroline Erentzen, York University and colleagues (more information at the end of the post) This post is just under 1000 words and can be read in 4-5 minutes. In the late 1980s, a series of DNA-based exonerations shook the...
Read MoreThe many harms of remand
This post is 600 words and can be read in 3 minutes. Jailing people after arrest – the process called remand – creates many harms. Previous posts have commented on this issue, but new research by Holly Pelvin details some...
Read MoreThe limits of forensic evidence
This post is about 770 words and can be read in 3 minutes. Many of the popular crime dramas on television give prominence to forensic evidence. Corpses are identified and murderers caught through analysis of hair, clothing fibres, fingerprints, bite...
Read MoreRethinking violent crime
This post is 900 words and can be read in 5 minutes. “We must punish violence. Or so it seems until we discover that we are not always sure what counts as violence, and the criminal law doesn’t always punish...
Read MoreThe best interests of the child: Criminal sentencing in Canada
This post is about 600 words and can be read in 3 minutes. “Children of incarcerated parents, including parents detained in relation to immigration, are a vulnerable population that experience complex long-term psychological, social and economic disadvantages.” So begins a...
Read MoreHelping to rehabilitate sex offenders is controversial – but can prevent more abuse
This post is 800 words and can be read in 3-4 minutes. This is an edited and modified version of a paper written by Prof. Belinda Winder and Prof. Nicholas Blagden which appeared in The Conversation. The original paper had...
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