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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.)

RCMP executives and the Canadian government promoted community justice forums (family group conferences) in the late 1990s. They did so because CJFs offered a process consistent with the national community-policing strategy. When this strategy changed, executives cut their support for the program. This paper argues that this “rise” and “fall” was a function of the program's theoretical and procedural alignment with shifting strategies of national governance. This raises a question about the role of restorative forums in Canadian governance. If such programs remain desirable, multi-agency forums (police, public schools, child welfare, immigration) may well align with the nascent governmental framework of public safety interoperability. The paper also considers another possibility: non-state local peacemaking forums. The conclusion discusses potential benefits and limits of these possibilities. It also offers general theoretical observations on the role of alignment in governmental programming. [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.)

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.)

At a time in which private security is becoming more and more ubiquitous, questions as to the adequacy of security officers’ training for their positions become more relevant as well. However, calls for increased or improved training are rooted in abstract concerns with legality, governance, and accountability, and not in actual analysis of how useful extant training regimens are for actual security officers. Utilizing a grounded, ethnomethodological analytic perspective, this paper explores recollections of training in open-ended interviews with 29 shopping-mall-based security officers and then considers whether and how officers found their training useful in emergency (or otherwise unexpected) situations. Despite patchwork standards for training, this study finds that the security officers interviewed manage emergencies by marshalling not only their formal training but also resources from security experience outside their current positions and even outside the realm of private security entirely. This study does consider efforts to improve security training; however, with its focus on officers’ own descriptions and understandings of their work, it also suggests that security officers are more adaptable than might be expected. Based on these findings, suggestions for security practice and research are offered in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are conflicting claims about whether women's imprisonment in Canada has followed the trend toward increasing punitiveness observed in a number of other western nations. This paper provides a detailed description of the scope of women's imprisonment in Canada since the early 1980s to adjudicate between these claims. Using different measures of imprisonment and data from federal and provincial prisons for women, the paper shows that we do not have convincing national evidence that there has been substantial growth in women's imprisonment Canada over the past few decades. There are however, some important gaps in the existing data that make it impossible to describe the full extent of the imprisonment of women and, more importantly, trends in the size of the population of women in prison. At the same time data from one province – Ontario – describe an important and disconcerting shift in the nature of women's imprisonment that has gone largely unnoticed by scholars: a large and growing proportion of the imprisoned female population is made up of women who are not serving sentences. The paper concludes with a call for more attention to the increase in the remand population and to what it means for theories of punitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian federal government has promised legislation that will decriminalize the simple possession of cannabis by the summer of 2003. This paper will first review the socio-historical context as it pertains to the criminalization of cannabis use in Canada. Specifically, it will discuss the numerous (unsuccessful) legal and political attempts at cannabis-control reform in the past 30 years, called "the saga of promise, hesitation and retreat" by Giffen, Endicott, and Lambert (1991: 571). It will then review some distinct forces in the current cannabis law reform debate, namely a series of high-profile court cases, patterns of public opinion, and the recommendations of two federal inquiries, all of which contribute to the momentum for reform. After summarizing the diverse landscape of cannabis-control regimes in other Western countries, this paper will examine more closely the actual options that exist for cannabis decriminalization in Canada and their possible effects and implications. Specifically, making simple cannabis possession a civil offence, as suggested, would provide for both discretionary interpretations and net-widening effects in law enforcement and would, in addition, leave the cannabis supply question unresolved. [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.)

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.)

The article presents professor Troy Riddell's insights on a study about evidence exclusion and the judicial system in Canada. Topics discussed include Riddell's definition of judicial activism, the decisions issued by the Canada Supreme Court regarding police power, and the relationship between terrorism and criminal law. The impact of the Court's language and decision making on social change was also discussed.

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.)

Due to the growing concern with motorists driving under the influence of drugs, the Canadian government has recently implemented legislation to tackle this issue. The new legislation compels drivers to submit to a series of tests, by a police officer, if/when a motorist is suspected of drug impairment. The aim of this paper is to present a review of scientific studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of three methods to detect cannabis use in motorists. These methods include the Drug Evaluation and Classification (DEC) Program, on-site oral fluid screening devices, and on-site urine screening devices. Only studies that included appropriate measures of reliability (i.e., sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy) were included in this review. Given their increasing reliability, on-site oral fluid devices appear to show the most promise for the detection of cannabis use in motorists. Despite the promising results, however, there is still a need to establish standard levels of impairment for cannabis, like the blood alcohol content (BAC) cut-off levels for alcohol, before these devices can be meaningfully utilized and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-custody deaths have garnered considerable attention in recent years, both within Canada and internationally. This study represents the first examination of death-in-custody cases across three provinces - Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario - between 2000 and 2009. To provide context, the article reviews deaths in custody in several international jurisdictions. The objective of this project was to identify baseline indicators of the nature and extent of custody deaths in Canada. Using all completed cases from the offices of Medical Examiners and Coroners, this paper compares and contrasts the manner and causes of death by type of custody (provincial vs. federal) and further compares the mortality trends (natural vs. non-natural) between the provinces. The results and findings from this comparison are then examined and the implications for policy makers are identified. Most of the recommendations relate to improved intake and more sophisticated pre-screening strategies for inmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthony Doob's career as a criminologist has been distinguished by his commitment to evidence-based policy development and to making criminological research relevant not just to other scholars but, perhaps more importantly, to policy makers, criminal justice practitioners, and the public. This paper provides an overview of the underdeveloped state of evaluation research on crime prevention and policy in Canada and discusses some of the obstacles to conducting rigorous evaluations. Fortunately, these obstacles - which include a tendency to rely on ideology and intuition as opposed to empirical evidence and a lack of sufficient resources for evaluation studies - have not discouraged Doob in his efforts to improve our criminal laws and justice system so that they reflect the fundamental Canadian values of justice, fairness, and humanity. Through his own research and his promotion of others' research - through, for example, Criminological Highlights - he has worked tirelessly to promote interventions by the criminal justice system that are informed by these values as well as by sound empirical evidence as to their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is frequently suggested that Canadians would have more confidence in the courts, in criminal sentences, and in the justice system more generally if sentences were harsher. Taking advantage of the fact that there is variation across provinces in sentencing practices, this paper demonstrates that there is essentially no relationship between the punitiveness of a province's courts and that province's residents' views of courts, sentences, and the justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crime mobility triangle summarizes the spatial divergence of three locations: the offender's residence, the victim's residence, and the location of the delinquent act itself. The further these three locations are from one another, the greater the area covered by the mobility triangle. The original mobility triangle was not designed for cases with multiple offenders or multiple victims. Accordingly, the current paper defines the crime mobility polygon for such a crime and its corresponding area. We calculate the areas contained within mobility polygons for 26,476 index crime incidents. These calculations demonstrate the influence of extra-crime participants upon the area an incident covers. We find that not all crime classifications have substantial increases in their mobility area as the number of individuals increase. [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]

The article discusses the author's views on the debate on racial profiling by scholars such as Frances Henry, Carol Tator, Vic Satzewich, and William Shaffir. He attempts to answer the important question about racism and the practice of racial profiling. The author focuses on the broader policy implications of the debate by briefly reviewing the study presented by the scholars.

Few studies have investigated law enforcement agencies' motivation and capacity to integrate video surveillance of public places into patrol- and criminal-investigation practices or the extent to which that motivation and capacity are constrained by independent regulatory agencies. In this paper, we assess the impact of a law-enforcement experiments in video surveillance in Montreal during a five-year period (2004 to 2008). Two strategies are compared. The first strategy made use of CCTV as a proactive and integrated element of a problem-solving initiative targeting an open-air drug-dealing market. The second strategy was essentially passive and CCTV cameras were spread along a street known for its nightlife, bars scene, and clubs. Findings show that video surveillance is, in fact, effective when closely linked to traditional police strategies and focused on a specific, recurrent, and localized problem. CCTV did manage to have an impact on the incidence of drug-dealing transactions as well as a collateral impact on the incidence of other offences, especially violent crimes. The second and more common approach, however, had no impact on crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the literature examining media depictions of crime and the criminal justice system, very little attention has been paid to the ways in which harms to the environment and human health have been constructed. This is not entirely surprising, given that the discipline of criminology has been reticent in addressing environmental harm more generally. This gap in the criminological imagination is beginning to be addressed within the growing field of green criminology, which seeks to focus attention on environmental harms as an important area of criminological investigation. Using a green criminological lens, this paper examines the case of mercury-contaminated fish as depicted in the Globe and Mail and New York Times from 2003 through 2008. Through qualitative content analysis, we examine the construction of responsibility for mercury contamination and for mitigating the attendant risks. We find that, in explaining the contamination of fish, both newspapers problematize the regulation of mercury-releasing industries by the state and pay a great deal of attention to the responsibility the state has to inform the public about the risks. However, little attention is paid to the responsibility of the mercury-releasing industries, the commercial fish industry, and restaurants and supermarkets to protect consumers. Furthermore, media attention is mainly directed at the responsibility of individual consumers – particularly those deemed most at risk of being harmed by mercury contamination – to limit the amount of mercury-rich fish they consume. These media depictions simultaneously foster a sense of individualized responsibility and normalize the risks posed by this environmental hazard, which is made to appear virtually inevitable, something that requires management, partly by the state, but mostly by vulnerable consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of hegemonic masculinity is a useful tool for critiquing and understanding narrow cultural constructions of masculinity, the diversity of men's real experiences, and the trajectory of power relations among men. One important tenet of the concept is that masculinities are often constructed, maintained, and restructured according to particular social networks in a given environment. Research that has been conducted on the impact of masculine prison environments has tended to focus on traditional adult male prisons. This paper offers a qualitative account of the lived experiences of 350 incarcerated Canadian male youth. It explores how everyday minor acts of subversion, assertions of youthful identity, and masculinity are used to contest and recast the meanings, directions, and restrictions imposed by the institution. We draw attention to the various ways in which these youth resist the experience of power, discipline, and formal social control. We highlight the ways in which masculinities and subcultural norms intersect to provide the psychological resources and frameworks within which these young people actively resist the experience of captivity, their captors, and the correctional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop an approach for normative engagement by academic criminologists through the test case of international policing-reform assistance. By examining some of the known controversies and difficulties associated with international policing-reform assistance, I illustrate the practical policy utility of Foucauldian genealogical analytic inquiry. I argue that the insights and capacities for lateral thinking opened up through this approach are usefully “brought to bear” by taking a page from Jürgen Habermas to institutionalize discursive space and thereby democratic experimentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the militarization of security and police forces occurring in Canada vis-à-vis regulation of the nuclear industry. Based on analysis of access to information requests, we investigate the operations of Nuclear Response Forces (NRFs) on nuclear sites in Canada, including the structural features of these NRFs, and their connections to local as well as national security and policing agencies. Our research explores the post–11 September 2001 impact of “design basis threat” assessment and counterterrorism policy on policing operations. Design basis threat assessment organizes security and policing practices according to adversarial models of military operation. We argue that the literature concerning militarization of policing must be extended to account for how the coordination of private and public security agencies as well as intelligence agencies at critical infrastructure sites facilitates the distribution of military technology and strategy across numerous scales of policing. Commenting on how militarization of security vis-à-vis nuclear proliferation in Canada is affecting some rural police forces, we contend that the design basis threat model of counterterrorism is transforming the strategy and operations of some local police forces working in jurisdictions near nuclear sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, the number of pre-trial detention cases in provincial/territorial custody has soared dramatically. The traditional proportion of sentenced to remand in the inmate population, 75% sentenced to 25% remand, has now become a 50/50 split, and this trend has been accelerating. This paper explores possible reasons for this dramatic shift, focusing particularly on the two-for-one time served credit available to offenders upon conviction. Using content analysis of open-ended survey responses, we provide a “convict” perspective both on explanations for the rise in remand rates and on potential solutions to the problem. The formal position of justice officials on use of the two-for-one policy is compared and contrasted with inmate perceptions. Study findings indicate some consistency between official and inmate explanations, but also show considerable divergence, particularly in whether or not the accused or the prosecution seek to delay the trial process. We conclude with suggestions for policy development and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Youth Criminal Justice Act (2003) was enacted with the intent of decreasing the use of courts and restricting the use of custody for adolescent offenders, while improving the effectiveness of the responses to serious violent youth offenders. This paper assesses the impact of the act in its first five years. It reviews salient provisions of the act dealing with sentencing and diversion, discusses Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence interpreting the act, and presents statistical data on the impact of the YCJA on diversion and sentencing of youth and on youth court and custodial caseloads. The Supreme Court has narrowly interpreted the provisions of the YCJA that allow for the use of custody, contributing to a reduction in use of custody. The Court has also emphasized that youth are to be treated differently from adults and ruled unconstitutional provisions of the YCJA that created a presumption of adult sentencing for the most serious offences by young offenders, limiting the effect of provisions of the act directed at serious violent offenders. The YCJA has succeeded in significantly reducing the rates of use of court and custody, without increasing recorded youth crime. There continue to be significant regional variations in rates of use of youth courts and custody. Although regional differences in the use of court have declined under the YCJA, variation in the use of custody has not been significantly affected by the new act. Youth crime remains a contentious political concern in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the meaning of police denials of racial profiling. Based on interviews with members of Hamilton Police Service, we suggest that the concept of a police subculture offers the most credible backdrop for understanding what is commonly termed racial profiling. When contextualized in this manner, racial profiling is perceived by the police as one in a series of activities that define their work. We argue that, when seen in the context of police subcultures, such profiling occurs even in the absence of officers who may be inclined to prejudice or discrimination against members of visible minorities. As well, that subculture provides police with a powerful and convincing deflection rhetoric to neutralize claims that the policing institution has failed to root out the racist practices of its officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2003, in an article published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice , Fischer, Ala-Leppilampi, Single, and Robins wondered whether Canada's long “saga of promise, hesitation, and retreat” in cannabis law reform was coming to an end, after 30 years of inertia. Their optimism was rooted in the federal government's apparent determination to decriminalize cannabis possession and in an existing socio-political context favourable to reform. Indeed, the government had recently tabled legislation that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis, making it a ticketable offence. However, this bill died before it could be passed into law. Two later versions of this legislation also failed to pass through the House of Commons. This paper picks up where Fischer et al. (2003) left off, by updating and reviewing developments in Canadian cannabis policy between 2003 and 2008. It reviews the provisions proposed by Bill C-38 and its successors, tracing the bills’ movements through Parliament and then delineates the positions of key interest groups regarding the decriminalization of minor cannabis possession. It concludes by reflecting on the contemporary period to show that Canada's “saga of promise, hesitation, and retreat” in cannabis law reform continues unabated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees to all Canadians the right “to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.” Decisions regarding this section of the Charter are typically made in the context of charges against an accused, and the accumulation of these decisions defines the boundaries of the privacy interests of Canadians vis-à-vis governmental action. But while the court is focused on the privacy interests of particular individuals who have been accused of contravening the law, it is also determining the privacy rights of all Canadians. This paper explores the judgmental biases that arise naturally in such a situation. The evidence from psychological literature suggests that the degree to which government actions are viewed as intrusive (and thus compromising privacy) will be reduced to the extent that the decision maker takes a third-party perspective (search of others, not oneself) and to the extent that there is knowledge of irrelevant situational information, including the results of the potential search (i.e., whether evidence was produced) and indication of the guilt or innocence of the subject of the search. In deciding the typical section 8 case, judges find themselves in exactly these positions, and they thus run the risk of attenuated perceptions of intrusiveness. Analysis of the empirical literature suggests strategies for minimizing this bias, including considering intrusiveness from a first-person perspective and adopting an explicitly analytical stance on the specific question of whether the actions in question constitute a search or seizure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed that self-control and informal social control are compatible with their direct influence on adolescent misconduct. It is also frequently assumed that informal social control theory can account for ontogenetic influences, like self-control, and sociogenic influences in a manner consistent with both perspectives. And finally it is assumed that processes of informal social control have been shown to have the strongest effect on adolescent delinquency while at the same time mediating ontogenetic influences like self-control. These misconceptions can be traced to the original presentation of informal social control theory. This paper represents the first step of a direct re-examination of the role of informal social control in the genesis of adolescent delinquency as presented in [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a small residential private security program in an affluent Ontario neighbourhood in which individual residents hired a private firm to provide security patrols. Drawing primarily on in-depth interviews with program subscribers, this exploratory study examines consumers’ imaginings of the private security program and its context. Four key aspects of subscribers’ discourse – exclusivity, security, public and private patrols, and responsibility – are discussed. Through analysis of consumers’ understandings of these issues, we argue that the consumption of private security may be more complex and private security's purchase on the consumer imagination weaker than earlier theory and research has acknowledged. Based on these findings we suggest more research into private security consumption is required and that neighbourhood-initiated private security programs, especially those without state endorsement or support, are unlikely to proliferate in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Azmi Jubran was subjected to homophobic harassment throughout his high school experience. In 1996, he filed a human rights complaint against the Vancouver School Board alleging discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. His case was the first in Canada to deal with the issue of school responsibility for peer-to-peer harassment. It also makes a significant contribution to the jurisprudence in the realm of sexual orientation harassment and discrimination. This is because Jubran did not identify as homosexual. Using a critical feminist analysis, this paper analyses the decisions and opinions of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Superior Court, and Court of Appeal regarding the relevance of sexual orientation identity and the recognition of harm in the case. Drucilla Cornell's concept of sexual shame, Gail Mason's linking of sexuality harassment to visibility and naming, and Judith Butler's discussion of the power of words to injure are discussed in relation to the case as to whether it would qualify as harassment under these conceptualizations. It is argued that while the precedent carries the possibility of eliminating homophobia in schools, there are significant concerns with the legalistic human rights mechanism that potentially undermine efforts to eliminate oppression and achieve social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the risk assessment and sentencing released in the special issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. According to the author, offenders can be differentiated in terms of their risk to re-offend basing on the corrections developed by Burgess in 1928 regarding the issue of giving parole. It is the author's view that the common issue raised on the three papers featured in the special issue is whether or not risk instruments play a significant role in pre-sentencing decisions.

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.)

This paper seeks first to show that persons who are convicted of crimes can be perceived as either remorseful or as lacking in remorse. This division establishes a moral hierarchy that has profound implications for the characterization and disposition of persons who are so designated. Second, using both Canadian and American cases, it looks at how inclusion in the category of the unremorseful affects the characterization and disposition of those who have been wrongfully convicted. Finally, it suggests that remorse is a major site of conflict between persons who are wrongfully convicted and officials within the criminal justice system, conflict that involves the use of institutional pressure to encourage the expression of remorse, on the one hand, and the mobilization of individual resources to resist those expressions, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-control and strain perspectives are widely viewed as independent and contrasting explanations for crime and delinquency. This paper re-evaluates the competing paradigms approach by considering the two theories as potentially complementary in explaining participation in delinquency based on Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) assumption that self-control acts as a barrier to criminal behavior. If such a claim is valid, one would hypothesize that individuals with high self-control would be able to mediate the effects of strain and refrain front engaging in delinquent activities. In contrast, adolescents with low self-control may not be equipped with the necessary constraints to abstain from delinquency and would therefore exhibit the greatest criminal propensities. A significant interaction term would support such claims. Data from a sample of over 2,000 adolescents attending junior and senior high schools in a western Canadian city were analysed to determine the independent and contextual effects of self-control and strain on involvement in delinquent behaviour. Results suggest that both self-control and strain are important contributors to delinquency, bat in an additive and not an interactive way. Such results do not seem to provide support for claims made by control theorists, who would no doubt argue that the effects of strain should be conditioned by low self-control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale cohort studies suggest that offenders are more likely to experience premature death. We argue, in this paper, that strain, self-control, and differential association theories would all predict higher fatality rates among offenders but rely on different processes in order to account for differential outcomes. Whereas low self-control theory holds that higher offender mortality rates are accident driven and unrelated per se to criminal activities, strain theory emphasizes the significance of suicides and overdoses as critical factors underlying offenders' excess mortality rates. Co-offending research, on the other hand, would predict that offenders' higher mortality rates will incorporate a significant, crime-related, occupational-hazard component. [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.)

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.)