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 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 MorePost #148 720 words; 3 minutes to read In most social policy systems, having experience in the system is held to be an advantage for those who study it. In some fields, such as medicine, virtually all those who teach...
Read More450 words; 2 minutes to read Issues of inequality and racism are at the very forefront of the news in Canada. The criminal justice system is often cited as a place where these problems are notable. These issues have been...
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 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...
Read More680 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...
Read More600 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...
Read More580 words; 3 minutes to read Many previous posts on this blog continue to be highly relevant. The problems they addressed remain as prevalent as ever. These posts show how many of the issues in our system are well known...
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