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This paper explores restorative justice for Aboriginal offenders in Canada as a contested terrain key to the promise of self-government. There are two key strands in this paper. Firstly, I consider the theoretical double-meaning of "self-government", both as Foucauldian technologies of the self and as an expression fundamental to liberal rights discourses. The second strand of this paper considers restorative justice as a kind of "case study" of self-government's double meaning. Restorative justice is an important site to contemplate self-government for two reasons. On one hand, restorative justice itself has increasingly been critiqued in the scholarly literature as a mode of governmental regulation of a "risky" population, which involves the inculcation of technologies of self. On the other hand, restorative justice is discussed as an expression of "authentic" and "traditional" Aboriginal law. Liberal discourses of self-government name law as a central site of self-determination (e.g., self-legislation). It appears, therefore, that discourses of restorative justice and self-government contain the seeds of both governmentality and liberalism. This discursive matrix is further complicated by the Canadian state's tenacious interest in managing Aboriginal affairs. My "case study" considers how the Canadian state insists that restorative justice measures operate within the Canadian state's justice system, threatening to render restorative justice a mere chimera of autonomous law. Therefore, while governmentality and liberalism tensely co-exist in restorative justice and self-government discourses, the colonial state and the First Nations struggle over the operationalization of these discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of the always potentially politicized nature of criminal law and the fragile premises of criminal procedure and criminal process were among the animating hallmarks of Dianne Martin's work. The cases I have selected for this paper were tried in her home city of Regina when it was still a small dusty territorial capital. While acknowledging that homicide prosecutions form a minute fraction of the criminal cases involving Aboriginal accused persons in the nineteenth-century Canadian Plains, the two case studies in this paper address issues near to her heart: the role of defence counsel, the fragilities and complexities of evidence in criminal trials, the plight of marginalized persons in criminal prosecutions, and the political processes that impact upon those who have been convicted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at discussing the heterogeneity of the institutional forms of conflict resolution in administrative justice systems, especially immigration law, and their relations to the rule of law and to the criminal justice system. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the Immigration and Refugee Board (the largest administrative tribunal in Canada), my paper focuses in particular on the role of discretionary power and punitive practices in the regulation of immigration. I argue that new forms of conflict resolution (in non-criminal justice systems) do not necessary lead to the implementation of more inclusive models of social control and/or to the adoption of a liberal and republican-oriented agenda in which non-citizens would be included in the already established rule of law (whether it is democratic or not). To the contrary, the available data suggest the configuration of a continuous state of exception within the rule of law in Canada where immigrants are often rather being ruled by law in an exclusive and punitive manner without the protection of the most basic civil rights or procedural guarantees generally available to citizens. The rule of law model offered by Western States to developing countries may not be as universal and democratic as it says it is. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime control has featured prominently in the 39th Parliament of Canada as politicians left and right aim to 'tackle' a phantom menace. To absorb the influx of new prisoners as a result of the passage of 'tougher' sentencing laws, the Government of Canada has set aside $245 million to build two additional federal penitentiaries and upgrade existing facilities. In this paper, I will argue that researchers need to draw from Marxist and Foucaultian understandings of crime control and punishment to address where these prisons will be built and why. To illustrate the need for theoretical complementarity in the study of penal geography, I will analyze an economic development strategy created and tabled by the gouvernement du Québec in January 2007 that recommends that the mayors of the comté du Pontiac actively lobby the federal government to construct a new federal penitentiary in the area. The author of the strategy argues that such a project would address local unemployment and the needs of prisoners who wish to be close to their families in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Based on existing literature on prison construction in the United States, I will discuss the potential economic benefits and pitfalls of constructing a federal penitentiary in Pontiac, while also discussing possible impacts for prisoners and their loved ones. This paper will conclude with a discussion of the merits and limitations of the configuration of penal geography deployed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug Treatment Courts (DTC) in Canada integrate drug treatment services with the structures of the criminal justice system in attempts to reduce criminal behaviour and disease prevention, create better use of jail facilities and to ensure public safety. Upon admittance to the program clients must plead guilty, vocalize their addiction in court and consequently are forced to comply with several bail conditions, including but not limited to a curfew and spatial boundaries. These boundaries, which are the main focus of this paper, are allocated by the Crown and designate which neighbourhoods clients may or may not enter. Transgressing these boundaries leads to a violation of bail conditions and potential expulsion from DTC. The spatial and racial implications of these boundaries are the focal point of this paper. What precisely is the purpose of these spatial boundaries? Do they help addicts avoid drug use or do they further criminalize racialized poor neighbourhoods? Using court observations from DTC's in Toronto and Vancouver from 2004-2006 I will question the purpose of these boundaries and explore how urban spaces are affected by these bail conditions. This paper will examine how DTC boundaries reinforce the colonial violence of law in space, how they further displace already visible and marked bodies and how they reinforce 'zones of degeneracy'. Overall, this paper will develop an understanding of the post-colonial territoriality of seemingly progressive treatment programs within Canada's Criminal Justice System. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadians have been confronted in recent years with the reality of wrongful convictions, along with efforts to redress and avoid them. Such attention is long overdue and the names of the exonerated men are well known: Milgaard, Morin, Marshall, Sophonow, and others. Recognizing the importance of identifying miscarriages of justice, this paper seeks to broaden the scope of inquiry. It asks whether dominant conceptions of "wrongful convictions", as well as their commonly cited causes, might be gendered and racialized in a manner that does not capture the experience of women convicted of murder or other serious crimes who might have a valid claim to the label "wrongfully convicted". Aboriginal women who take responsibility for a violent act done by another person in their home or who use lethal violence in self-defence after years of abuse are just some of the examples of women not commonly listed among those wrongfully convicted in Canada. This paper is a preliminary look at whether and how dominant conceptions of the nature, causes, and scope of wrongful convictions might be reconsidered, and what might be at stake in expanding the scope of inquiry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juvenile false confessions are a serious problem throughout the world. In the context of the American criminal justice system, this paper looks at the connections between adolescent psychological development, police interrogation and the juvenile false confession phenomenon. It examines the psychological research on adolescent development and the impact this development can have on an adolescent's decision to waive his or her Miranda rights and on his or her ability to withstand the techniques used by police to obtain confessions. The paper looks briefly at how other Common Law countries such as Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom deal with juvenile interrogation and concludes that in order to minimize juvenile false confessions, states should 1) ensure adequate comprehension of the Miranda warnings, 2) change the police procedures for interrogating juveniles, and 3) videotape all interrogations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 10 years have seen extensive reforms to the law of criminal dispositions in Canada and in 2006, the House of Commons is once again considering a new set of reforms. Despite their apparent disparate nature, these reforms have all focused on less imprisonment for non-violent crime and more imprisonment and more long-term imprisonment for violent crime. The reforms were intended to reduce the rate of imprisonment and the rate of overincarceration of first nations people. The reforms have achieved neither goal. They failed on their first goal because prisons are increasingly filled with remand prisoners, so while the rate of sentenced prisoners is decreasing, this decrease is almost completely compensated for by higher remand incarceration rates. They failed on their second goal because the focus on violent crime has had a differential and discriminatory impact on aboriginal offenders. This discriminatory impact is exaggerated for prisoners at the intersection of multiple grounds of discrimination, such as aboriginal women or aboriginal youth. The paper argues that any further sentencing reform will have to consider the human rights impact on first nations people and require some serious rethinking of the violent/non-violent offences divide. This can only be done if a systemic human rights approach is brought to bear on the analysis of appropriate dispositions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now well established globally, Drug Treatment Courts (DTC) are increasingly prominent in Canadian criminal justice. The DTCs are framed as harm reduction initiatives designed to >close the revolving door on crime= by curing drug addiction. As such, the courts work through risk management practices designed to curb criminality by arresting drug use. The courts' risk management schemes are similar to the phenomenon of iatrogenicity (causing a disease or medical malady unintentionally as a result of medical intervention) found in medicine. The courts create risks for the people enrolled in them. This is especially true for the women involved in the court. This paper explores the risks constituted for women by virtue of their DTC involvement (such as losing custody of children, having to participate in co-ed treatment etc.) and also considers how it is that women work to manage those risks within the day-to-day theatre of the DTC. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a shift has occurred in the criminal justice response to infant death. Mothers in Australia and Canada are increasingly likely to be charged with murder after a suspicious death - a trend that seems in contradiction with developments in this field in England. Newspaper accounts form a primary source of the knowledge that most people possess about the criminal justice system and especially about specific criminal cases. In this paper, I compare the newspaper reports about the murder trials of mothers with the transcripts of those trials. These newspaper accounts provide some insight into the ways in which infant death and maternal responsibility are being (re)constructed within Canadian and Australian public discourse as moral issues that fit legitimately within the purview of the criminal justice system. I consider the extent to which feminist critiques of the neo-liberal tendency to over-criminalisation and of the increasingly punitive normative conceptions of mothering in contemporary western society have the potential to counter this reconstruction of moral responsibility. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's Equality and Civil Domestic Violence Legislation in CanadaSince the mid-70s, legal efforts to combat domestic violence in Canada have largely focused on reforms to the criminal justice system, primarily pro-charging and mandatory prosecution policies. In the 1990s, influenced by initiatives undertaken in the US and elsewhere, provincial governments across Canada adopted legislation offering civil redress for victims of violence by cohabitants. This type of initiative was generally represented as an effort to be more responsive to the needs of victims by providing more immediate and accessible remedies than were available under criminal or pre-existing civil law. Saskatchewan was the first province in Canada to implement such legislation in 1995 and The Victims of Domestic Violence Act has since served as a model for similar legislation in many other provinces. This paper will examine the benefits and limitations of this approach to violence against women, drawing broadly on the experience of claimants in the prairie provinces. While the legislation has the potential to increase the options and material resources available to women, many of the benefits have been short-term, restricted by narrow judicial interpretations of emergency, and vulnerable to constitutional challenge. The legislation does reinforce the message that domestic violence is unacceptable but, as with the criminal justice response, it maintains a focus on crisis intervention and on acts of violence between individuals. This type of response is consistent with the basic tenets underlying economic and political restructuring in Canada in the 1990s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research project was to develop insight into factors that influence jury interpretations, perceptions and understanding of DNA evidence within the Canadian criminal justice system. The methodology used consisted of a four-step process, including ocus groups; interviews with Court of Queen's Bench Justices; surveys; and a scripted mock murder trial. This paper is a summary of the survey results, which shows that learning-style is an important component in jury comprehension of DNA evidence. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), youth can only be sentenced to custody, or be remanded to custody, for violent crimes. The Act prescribes a bifurcation in sentencing: serious crimes demand serious consequences, while relatively minor deviations should be governed as such. Two problems have arisen from this legislative direction. First, not all crimes of a serious nature are violent. To wit, serial car theft does not fall under the rubric of violent crime. However, judges and the public have demanded these offenders be sentenced to detention. Second, although this call to reserve the most serious forms of punishment for the most serious offenders is laudable in the face of high youth incarceration rates, the Department of Justice and the YCJA are silent concerning what constitutes violence. In this light, I interrogate the meaning and definition of violence through and in young offender law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, over 90 empirical studies have been conducted in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, and Australia on the handling of sexual assault cases by police and courts. Research has centred on two areas: rates of attrition at different stages of the legal process and the set of factors associated with prosecution and conviction. We have conducted a systematic meta-review of this research, addressing these questions. What is the overall conviction rate of cases reported to the police, and the rate at which cases proceed through each node of the legal process? Does the rate of conviction vary over time, by country, by age of victim, or victim-offender relation? What are the key factors associated with case prosecution and conviction, and do these vary by decision node (that is, by police or court decisions)? We find differences by country and time in rates of conviction. Over a 30-year period, the overall rate of conviction has stayed the same in the United States, but it has decreased in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Implications are drawn for the variable impact of 30 years of legal reform across four countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1955, Willimae Moore was charged with indecently assaulting a woman with whom she worked in the typing pool of a government office in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. Willimae Moore's prosecution appears to have been the first lesbian criminal trial in Canada. The sexual overture, an attempted kiss, was almost laughably trifling in comparison with the sexual acts of men typically accused of indecently assaulting women. However, the apprehensions of the Cold War era played out in unusual ways in the sexually-charged environment of the far north. Zealously prosecuted, the case resulted in a conviction at trial, but divided the appellate court, which wrestled with the concepts of coercion and consent as they affected sexual assault victims, and how rules shaped for male assailants and female victims should be applied in same-sex situations. Astonished legal authorities struggled with the definitions of "homosexuality" and "lesbianism," as they sifted through the remarkable testimony of the alleged victim, the accused, and Willimae Moore's illustrious traveling companion, Beatrice Gonzales. The third woman in the triangle, Beatrice Gonazles orchestrated Willimae Moore's defence and jousted with government managers, the RCMP, and lawyers as she insisted upon the innocence of her friend. The case provides an excellent venue for examining ways in which female sexuality was negotiated in the workplace, the plight of lesbians in Cold War culture, and the role of the state in enforcing female heterosexual conformity through criminal law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the recent election campaigns that took place in Canada, we heard many times the representatives promise to increase the number of police officers in order to reduce crime. In this presentation, we looked at the implications that this increase could have on the reduction of crime and victimization rates, on cost-effectiveness, on reactive versus proactive policing as well as on the fear of crime. In order to examine these aspects, we looked into the for and the against of an increase from the literature on the topic and from case study. To conclude, we discuss the relevance of a smarter policing as an effective way to reduce crime and victimization rates in Canada. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]