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Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (University of Toronto Press) is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the contribution certain large Canadian cities may make to the over-representation of aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. The nine cities under study are large urban areas known in Statistics Canada terms as Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA's). The cities are located in eight provinces, and represent Western, Prairie, Eastern and Atlantic Canada. For the analyses, a variety of Statistics Canada and Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) data, as well as Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) and Correctional Services Canada (CSC) data on aboriginal offenders and over-representation and other aboriginal criminal justice research, were analysed. The paper explores a number of theoretical concepts such as social disorganization, social learning theory, and posits others to understand the urban reality for aboriginal populations and, from that, regional variation in over-representation. Prairie cities appear to contribute disproportionately to the over-representation problem and advantage and disadvantage are disproportionately distributed in urban centres across the country. The nine cities are grouped into high, medium and low “contribution to over-representation” cities based on the demographics of their aboriginal populations. The paper suggests that more research is required to understand how advantage and disadvantage are bestowed on reserve and, by implication, on urban aboriginal populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining the police's use of tasers in Canada, this paper attempts to gain some purchase on non-lethal policing: social relations created through non-lethal weapons (NLWs) and modes of force that get under the skin without breaking it. This paper maps out how discourses of "less" lethality, the Braidwood commission's recommendations, military NLW strategy and closed notions of community coalesce within Canada's national-security regime to authorize the use of non-lethal force while at the same time obfuscating the taser's non-lethal capacities, which cause people to fall down and their bodies to leak in unprecedented ways. In closing, this essay outlines what I call a non-containerizing politics of touch that challenges this national-security regime and allows new frameworks for using tasers to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a consensus that some racial groups are over-represented in their contact with the Canadian justice system, but a lack of agreement about possible reasons for this over-representation. The two dominant explanations for disproportionate minority contact (DMC) with the police are differential involvement in crime and differential treatment by the police. Differential treatment may be due to disproportionate possession by minorities of risk factors for police contact or to discriminatory policing. This paper uses data on self-reported delinquency and police contacts from a representative sample of Canadian youth aged 12 to 17 years from the National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth to test the hypotheses that DMC is due to differential involvement or to differential treatment due to disproportionate risk factors. The results indicate that there was disproportionate minority contact with the police, but no support was found for explanations of DMC in terms of either differential involvement or differential treatment due to risk factors. Distinguishing between youth who report violent delinquency and all other youth, DMC was found only for the non-violent youth; this DMC was also not explained by differential treatment due to risk factors. By eliminating other explanations, the results suggest that racially discriminatory policing may be one explanation for DMC in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years the Canadian criminal justice system has been plagued by a number of high profile wrongful convictions. While each of these cases has raised serious questions concerning the justice process as a whole, particular attention has been directed towards the police and their ability to satisfy their dual mandate of investigating crime while protecting the interests, rights, and freedoms of the accused. One notable aspect of police operations that has come under increasing scrutiny in this regard is the police interrogation, a practice which is both upheld by police officers as a crucial means of gathering information and disposing of cases, and denounced by civil rights advocates as a serious threat to the standards of fairness and due process. In adopting the police interrogation as its object of study, this paper will argue that each of these characterizations are severely limited, and ultimately, misrepresentative of the more subtle functions of interrogative practices. Specifically, drawing upon the research literature in Britain, the United States, and Canada, the police interrogation will be conceptualized as an interactional medium in which commitments are fashioned to particular criminal identities and renditions of events in a manner that seeks to confirm and legitimate official police narratives. The implications of this constitutive, rather than merely coercive, function of the interrogation will be examined with particular attention to the issues of police accountability, and the limits of legislative reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper on policing has been the most widely distributed product of a broader initiative undertaken by the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada under the direction of AndréNormandeau of the Criminology Department of the University of Montréal and Barry Leighton of the Ministry Secretariat. Its purpose has been to review current trends and likely future directions for policing in Canada. The paper is the synthesis of consultations and background reviews of issues the results of which were presented in a national workshop held in October 1990. The purpose of this exercise was strategic in nature and in its authors' words, aims to provide a single coherent view of policing in Canada as it is likely to evolve over the next decade. This view is that of community-based policing. The authors claim that community-based policing is the object of growing consensus and that, furthermore, there exist no competing views if policing. Policing approaches of the past, identified in the document only as professional policing, are relegated to the position of historical artifacts. Professional policing is viewed by the authors as no more than a momentary hiatus in the history of policing strategies which, with the advent of modern community-based policing, return to their original and purer conception.

This paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of networks of governance beyond the state through an examination of the programs of one of the institutions of security within the University of Toronto, Ontario, the Personal Safety Awareness Office (PSAO). The analysis is aimed at exploring the ways in which three themes that have been identified in the literature as crucial features of contemporary governance--a focus on community, local responsibility, and a risk mentality--operate outside of established state structures. The analysis is based on two sources of data. The first source of data is comprised of lengthy discussions with the person who established and was responsible for running the PSAO for the six years of its existence. Secondly, the authors conducted an examination of PSAO files. As both of these data sources provide limited and filtered access to what really happened, the accounts provided both in the interviews and through the case files were analyzed for evidence of the nature of the programs for governing security the PSAO sought to realize. The authors use these programs to illustrate the sort of strategies for governing security that are emerging outside of police organizations.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the precipitous drop in crime rates in Edmonton reported over the past two years. Previous analysis shows that the major reasons for changes in crime rates include: reduction in the numbers of the at-risk population: deterioration in the social and economic climate: changes in laws; alterations in access to police; and changes in the proactive nature of policing. The results of analysis of data drawn from official files and community surveys from one city indicate that the drop in crime rates are a function of declines in property crime reporting: administrative decisions taken to alter the access to police resources for the public; and a shift towards community policing with an emphasis on problem solving and crime prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the organizational demands of the native policing environment are examined to analyze their effects on native policing arrangements and the constraints and linkages that govern innovation and reform at the levels of policy and program development. It is argued that, as environmental conditions vary and change, current methods of organizing and delivering native police services will become increasingly problematic. Some of the key principles and issues that underlie policing models are discussed and examined in the native context. It is concluded that a community-based approach to policing is a promising strategy that may uniquely serve the interests and requirements of particular native communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the findings of a study of five years of Amerindian police occurrence reports. It examines the role of the police on twenty-five reserves in Quebec including police/population ratios and the service activities of police. It also examines crime rates and offender, offence, charging, and disposition characteristics of the cases. It concludes that community variation exists along a number of dimensions but that the role of police is similar in the provision of service. Charging and dispositions appear more severe than elsewhere but, without better information on prior record and how files are opened, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a preliminary description of the way in which problems of order are dealt with in three Northern Ontario Nishnawbe-Aski Nation communities. Data from interviews of community members, police occurrence reports, and court records were examined. People in the three communities differed, sometimes dramatically, in their estimates of how frequently various specific forms of disorder occurred in their communities. Similarly, they varied in their views of whether these problems should be dealt with by the community itself or by the police and courts. Not surprisingly, then, rates of various types of occurrences, as reported by the Ontario Provincial Police, also varied across communities. Official rates of charging residents of the communities varied across communities and across time. In 1988, for example, the number of charges per 100 residents was over five times as high in one of the three communities as it was in another. In 1990, however, the relative charging rates had reversed, with adult charge rates decreasing by almost 80% in one community and increasing by 187% in the other. A substantial portion of those interviewed in two communities indicated that they do not feel comfortable calling the police if there is trouble. Similarly, substantial numbers of those interviewed in two of the communities did not think that the court does what the community would like it to do. Overall. most people interviewed did not believe that most problems of order got settled in a satisfactory manner by the Euro-Canadian system. Clearly, problems of order within these communities are not being dealt with in a stable satisfactory manner. How they should be dealt with, however, is not clear. Given the variability that exists across communities, it seems likely that different solutions must be tailored to fit -- or must be made flexible enough to fit -- the needs and wishes of each unique community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary considers some important community issues related to local justice. It discusses these relevant and critical community issues since community has such a central place in the new justice discourse. The rationale for the implementation of most activities is that the community actively participates in dealing with the offender and the victim. The putative results of this participation are benefits to the community and the primary participants that last longer than those associated with the mainstream system. In short, communities are empowered by their involvement in local justice to a much greater degree than is possible in conventional criminal justice processing. In the third part of this commentary, the author explores some of the central issues and roles for the community in justice. She also reviews some of the evaluation literature on existing aboriginal community justice projects to determine if the issues raised in the first part of the commentary are valid. The author concludes by identifying some principles for the development and implementation of local projects, adjucating offences and diverting offenders, that according to her, may go some way to alleviating these problems.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Few studies have been conducted about differential public perceptions of the police in Canada. Based on the 2004 General Social Survey of Canada, this article examines the impact of belonging to the category visible minorities on citizens' confidence in the police. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, results of multivariate analyses show that members of visible minorities had lower levels of confidence than non-members of visible minorities, even after the effects of perceptions, community contexts, and crime-related variables were controlled for. The small but persistent effect of visible minorities raises questions about race relations in Canada. Other interesting significant predictors of confidence in the police are community context, perceptions, and crime experiences. The findings indicate that equal racial confidence in the police is yet to be achieved and continued reform measures are needed if the police force is to win the hearts and minds of visible minorities in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The administration of the right-to-silence and right-to-legal-counsel cautions in 126 investigative interviews (37 videotapes, 89 transcripts) was evaluated with a 78-item coding manual. We found that the right-to-silence and right-to-legal-counsel cautions were administered in 87% and 83% of the interviews, respectively. Average speech rates for both cautions exceeded acceptable levels for ensuring listening comprehension. Although the right-to-silence and right-to-legal-counsel cautions were not always read verbatim, the interviewers rarely missed rights that are contained in the cautions or incorrectly read the cautions. Interviewees almost always confirmed that they understood both cautions, but interviewers rarely attempted to verify that they actually understood them. Attempts to explain various rights in both cautions were always done correctly. Interviewees invoked their right to silence in 25% of cases and chose to speak to a lawyer in 31% of cases. The implications of these findings for improving the administration of justice in Canada are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Law & Society/Revue Canadienne Droit et Societe (University of Toronto Press) is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Law & Society/Revue Canadienne Droit et Societe (University of Toronto Press) is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)