Supervised injection sites: Minister of Health ready to review applications for pilot research projects

Since 1 January 2003, Health Canada has been prepared to receive proposals for pilot supervised injection sites (SISs). Vancouver has already indicated that it will submit a proposal within a few months. Other cities that have expressed an interest in opening SISs include Montréal, Québec, Winnipeg, and Victoria.     

Predicting Property Crime Risk: an Application of Risk Terrain Modeling in Vancouver,Canada

Research on the spatial dimension of crime has developed significantly over the past few decades. An important aspect of this research is the visualization of this dimension and its underlying risk across space. However, most methods of such visualization, and subsequent analyses, only consider crime data or, perhaps, a population at risk in a crime rate. Risk terrain modeling (RTM) provides an alternative to such methods and can incorporate the entire environmental backcloth, data permitting. To date, the RTM literature has dominantly focused on violent crime in the United States. In this paper, we apply RTM to property crime victimization (residential burglary) in Vancouver, Canada. We are able to show that not only does RTM have applicability in a Canadian context but provides insight into nonviolent victimization.     

Health Canada commits to strengthening efforts with respect to injection drug use and HIV/AIDS

On 31 August 2001, over 20 months after the release of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network's report on Injection Drug Use and HIV/AIDS: Legal and Ethical Issues, Health Canada responded to the report by making a commitment to both "strengthening and expanding efforts with respect to injection drug use."     

Supervised, Supported and Indirect Contact Orders: Research Findings

Child contact with non-resident parents has become a key issuein family law and policy. Within the substantial and growingbody of research into how legal systems deal with child contactdisputes, there is little empirical data on the use courts makeof orders for supervised, supported or indirect contact. Thisarticle presents empirical research findings focusing on theuse of these sorts of contact orders in England and Wales. Theresearch involved an examination of 343 court records, 60 follow-upinterviews with parents and ten interviews with judges responsiblefor making the orders. Use of orders for supervised or supportedcontact was relatively common as a short-term measure, whileorders for indirect contact were made only as a matter of lastresort. On the basis of the post-court developments in contactwithin the families in the sample and the parents' largely negativeexperiences of the court system, we conclude that future policydevelopments ought to focus on finding alternatives to court,which would aim to provide assistance rather than adjudicationto the families in dispute.     

Establishing safe injection facilities in Canada: legal and ethical issues

In the face of an ongoing and escalating health crisis among injection drug users in Canada, calls are coming from many quarters to initiate safe injection facilities as a way to reduce overdoses, the spread of bloodborne diseases, and other health and community problems associated with injection drug use. This article summarizes a paper on safe injection facilities released in early 2002 by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. The paper contributes to the policy discussion in Canada and sets out why and how the law should support the introduction of safe injection facilities.     

Portugal: report recommends needle exchange or safe injection sites

A report released in late 2003 by Portugal's Justice Ombudsman (Provedor de Justi?a) recommends that Portugal set up needle exchange programs or safe injection sites in prisons.     

Health care in Canada: patterns of funding and regulation

During the 1970s the share of health care expenditure in Canadian GNP remained roughly stable, in the range of 7-71/2 percent of GNP, in marked contrast to its escalation in most other countries (the U.S. in particular) and to previous Canadian experience. The shift to a stable pattern coincided with the completion of the Canadian system of universal comprehensive public hospital and medical care insurance. This paper explores how and why the public insurance system served to contain cost escalation. It then discusses the inadequacy of expenditure experience per se as a basis for health system evaluation--the same data will support claims of both "underfunding" and "spiralling costs." More serious questions involve the influence of alternative patterns of health care funding and delivery on the effectiveness and efficiency of care provision, and the resulting distributional patterns of care and income. A brief sketch is given of the present situation and future possibilities of Canadian health care under these heads.     

Sexual offenders with serious mental illness: prevention, risk, and clinical concerns

Individuals with serious and persistent mental illness who have also engaged in illegal sexual behavior present a unique challenge for our legal and clinical systems. Frequently, these individuals may engage in problematic sexual behaviors which result in hospitalization rather than incarceration, and an overburdened and resource-deficient public community mental health system is ill-equipped to address the seriousness of these sexual behaviors. We have a rather limited understanding of how prevention programs, intervention strategies, and risk assessment would work with this population. Here we evaluate data from a sample of 245 inpatient psychiatric sexual offenders in a forensic mental health setting and compare these with what information has already been presented in some of the literature. Through an examination of seriously mentally ill sexual offenders and their clinical presentation, legal history, and risk management concerns, we illustrate a variety of tertiary prevention needs. Future directions in the area of prevention and risk management for seriously mentally ill sexual offenders are also discussed.     

The Supreme Court of Canada and the Right to Bargain Collectively: The Implications of the Health Services and Support case in Canada and Beyond

In June 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada expressly overruled20 years of jurisprudence that interpreted the freedom of associationas excluding collective bargaining. This about-face by the SupremeCourt was unexpected. What gave rise to this remarkable decisionand what does it portend for the role of the courts in labourrelations in Canada and beyond? The recent successes beforecourts have led some observers to suggest that it may now bea propitious time for a coordinated and proactive litigationstrategy to vindicate labour's collective rights. This articleoffers some preliminary answers to these broader questions andissues by focussing on the Supreme Court's decision in the HealthServices and Support case.     

Deradicalization: not soft,but strategic

The present article considers deradicalization programs. It is observed that deradicalization is primarily a strategic tool, that it was already used in the 1970s, that it can occur spontaneously, and that is should be differentiated from physical disengagement. An evaluation of existing deradicalization programs lead to the propositions that 1) deradicalization programs in the area of right-wing extremism primarily focus on changing behavior not thoughts, that 2) currently there is insufficient insight in what motives people to deradicalize, and 3) that insights from psychology are still insufficiently used to increase effectiveness of deradicalization. Research can make an important contribution to optimize efficiency of deradicalization for counterterrorism purposes.     

The legal implications of student use of social networking sites in the UK and US: current concerns and lessons for the future

This paper provides a comparative snapshot of the current state of the law in the US and UK with respect to potential liability of university and college students for use (and misuse) of social networking sites. It reviews the limited case law on this topic, highlights the differences in the two nations’ laws of defamation and the various possible legal claims available to individuals allegedly harmed by postings on these social networking sites, and concludes that neither country currently offers a satisfactory legal or quasi-legal model for resolving these disputes.     

Canada: new report on HIV,HCV, and women prisoners

In March, 2003, the Prisoners' HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) released Unlocking Our Futures: A National Study on Women, Prisons, HIV and Hepatitis C, a qualitative, evaluative study investigating the perceptions and lived experiences of federally incarcerated women regarding HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C (HCV).