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Introduction The last fifteen years of the twentieth century have witnessed fundamental changes in approaches to addressing youth prostitution in Canada. Beginning primarily with the work of the Committee on [...], The last fifteen years of the twentieth century have witnessed fundamental changes in approaches to the issue of youth prostitution in Canada. During this period there has been a growing recognition that young prostitutes should be treated as victims in need of protection, not deviants requiring punishment. The most recent and controversial policy response to this victimization framework has been the introduction of secure care legislation in the province of Alberta. Discussions around the possibility of introducing similar legislation has taken place in British Columbia and Ontario. This paper argues the secure care movement in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia represent neo-liberal responses to the (re)conceptualization of youth prostitution as a form of sexual abuse and exploitation. Of particular interest is how secure care advances neo-liberal forms of governance by supporting what Garland refers to as `responsibilization' strategies. In the process, the youth prostitution `problem' is governed at a distance, the onus for combatting the youth sex trade is placed upon the individual prostitute, community and family, and the meaning of `success' in addressing the youth prostitution phenomenon is redefined. At the same time, relations of power that give rise to the youth sex trade remain unchallenged. The paper concludes by suggesting ways of challenging neo-liberal strategies of controlling the youth sex trade.

Since the early 2000s, a number of Western capitalist states, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, have enacted criminal laws aimed at holding corporations to account for negligently killing workers or members of the public. In the United States, however, the existing respondeat superior(vicarious liability) regime remains intact. Drawing insight from semistructured interviews with corporate lawyers, nongovernmental representatives, union/labor leaders, and academics, I argue the relative impunity for corporate killing in the United States has its roots in corporate power and related beliefs in law and economics scholarship. This article documents how corporate offending is downplayed through hegemonic ideals that corporations are inherently good and law-abiding and any “bad apples” can be dealt with through existing law and market forces. In this respect, the recent rollback of various social protections is not simply a result of Trump’s presidency but instead a product of the neoliberal political, economic, and moral order.

This paper explores the symbolic dimension of corruption in the print media, or the rhetoric deployed that reproduces a particular discursive order. Employing an abductive materialist analysis and drawing insight from the political-economy and critical anti-corruption(ism) literatures, we examined over 2300 news items on corporate corruption in five prominent Canadian newspapers. In addition to finding differing and contradictory notions of corruption, we identify three phases of (anti)corruption rhetoric that represent notable moments in the struggle over the meaning of corruption and how to curb it. The paper concludes that Canadian newspapers have reproduced the language and claims of powerful voices emanating from the international realm rather than scrutinizing these claims, resulting in an incoherent Canadian popular discourse on corruption.