Alternatives to prison for racialized women
Post # 170 820 words; 4 minutes to read This post has a 30 second audio summary thanks to John Howard volunteer Averi Brailey. Several posts on this blog have provided evidence that prisons are ineffective and expensive ways of...
Read MoreReport: Replacement for segregation in federal prisons does not meet legal standards
A 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 MoreHarms of remand – evidence from Denmark
Post #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 MoreConvict criminology
Post #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 MoreCanadian work on criminal justice
800 words; 4 minutes to read This blog has had an emphasis on reporting Canadian work on criminal justice issues. Because of the domination of our media – whether news, entertainment or social media – by the United States, many...
Read MoreThe poor state of criminal justice in Canada
800 words; 4 minutes to read Just a year ago, in May, 2019, federal Justice Minister David Lametti released a report called “State of the Criminal Justice System”. Issued in the last few months of the government’s first mandate, it...
Read MoreThe disappearing trial
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...
Read MoreHow science calls into question sentencing practices
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...
Read MorePredicting recidivism is hard to do
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...
Read MoreExpunging criminal records
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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