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This brief article reviews the principal sentencing provisions of the new Youth Criminal Justice Act, and explores their relationship to sentencing at the adult court level. As well, a number of normative issues raised by the YCJA are addressed. It is clear that a central goal of the act is to harmonize sentencing at the adult and youth court levels. However, several important differences remain, including the following: (1) the statement of purpose of sentencing in youth justice courts lays more emphasis on rehabilitation; (2) although the utilitarian sentencing objectives of deterrence, denunciation, and incapacitation are relevant to the sentencing of adults, they are not stated objectives for sentencing juveniles; (3) while important, proportionality plays a lesser role in the sentencing of juvenile offenders, although the influence of the principle will increase with the age of the young person; (4) courts should resort to the incarceration of the offender less often when sentencing juvenile offenders; (5) when considering the principle of parity in sentencing, the frame of reference for youth courts should be the region in which the individual is being sentenced; there is no such statutory direction at the adult level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high rates of Aboriginal admissions to custody have been noted by Commissions of Inquiry, all levels of government, and Corrections texts in Canada for some time. In the most recent year for which data are available (2000-2001), Aboriginal offenders accounted for 19% of provincial admissions and 17% of federal admissions to custody. This article examines provincial custodial sentenced admissions for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders since 1978, when national statistics including the ethnicity of the offender were first published. Particular emphasis is paid in this analysis to recent trends during a period in which Parliament and the Supreme Court have tried to address the problem, the former by statutory recognition of the unique nature of Aboriginal offenders, the latter by judgments interpreting Criminal Code sentencing provisions introduced in 1996, The findings suggest that little progress has been made in reducing the number of Aboriginal sentenced admissions over the past few decades. Although the volume of Aboriginal admissions to custody has declined since 1993-1994, non-Aboriginal admissions have declined at an even faster rate, suggesting that specific policy changes are not responsible for the Aboriginal decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on a study on the effects of administrative segregation reported by Ivan Zinger and his colleagues in the January 2001 issue of Canadian Journal of Sociology. The article by Zinger and his colleagues provides a review of the quantitative literature, reports the findings from an empirical study testing the effects of administrative isolation, and concludes that segregation for 60 days does not negatively prisoners' mental health and psychological functioning. The article makes a useful contribution to the debate by presenting fresh research on an important correctional issue, and also by focusing readers' minds on some of the methodological problems confronting researchers working in this area. Prisoners of correctional isolation are doubly outcast, and represent the ultimate in social exclusion: involuntary committals are first sequestered from the general population (in prison) and then isolated from the inmate community (in isolation). This paper explores some methodological and statistical problems and evaluates the validity of Zinger and his colleagues' conclusions about the effects of administrative segregation. Throughout this paper, the commenters use the phrase isolation interchangeably with segregation.

This article provides historical context for sentencing research in Canada. Research on sentencing has tended to come in waves. The first major study of the sentencing process focused on data from 1955 and was published in 1963 by Stuart Jaffary. Almost a decade later Sentencing as a Human Process was published by John Hogarth. These studies belong to a wider international tradition of exploring the phenomenology of judicial decision-making. The next wave of research emerged in the middle of 1980. Studies on all aspects of sentencing were conducted by the Canadian Sentencing Commission as part of its mandate. The Commission's research reports comprise the most systematic research initiative in the area ever conducted in the state. Two special issues of scholarly periodicals and an edited volume of articles also made an important contribution to research and scholarship in the area of sentencing. The first was a special issue of Criminologie, La determination de la peine, which appeared in 1987. The second special issue was published by the Canadian Journal of Criminology in 1990 and contained a number of important research articles which are still highly relevant. Thereafter, there was less research activity until the federal government introduced its response to the Sentencing Commission and Daubney Committee reports.

Sentencing statistics are not routinely published in Canada. In this article, we summarize the principal findings from a data-base recently created by Statistics Canada. The sentences derive from provincial courts in nine jurisdictions across Canada over the period 1993-1994. These are, accordingly, the most systematic sentencing data collected in decades. The sentencing data-base contains information on 551,682 individuals and over one million sentences. The findings reported here are restricted to single charge cases, in which one charge is associated with a case. A fine was the most frequently imposed sanction; fines were imposed in over half the cases. A term of imprisonment was imposed in one-quarter of the cases. Sentences of imprisonment were frequently accompanied by a period of probation to be served at the conclusion of the term of custody. Sentencing patterns at the trial court level bore little relationship to the maximum penalty structure, thereby underlining the importance of a comprehensive revision of the maximum penalties currently found in the Criminal Code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]