Countering Punitiveness: Understanding Stability in Canada's Imprisonment Rate

Canada's imprisonment rate has not changed appreciably since 1960. This stability contrasts with the increased imprisonment rates experienced by Canada's most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. We examine this divergence and propose several interrelated explanations for Canada's anomalous pattern. While Canada is shown not to be immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, it has been able to counter or balance these trends with other more moderating forces. In particular, we suggest that Canadians have largely been able to escape several of the wider forces or "risk factors" at the root of higher incarceration in other countries. Further, we suggest that certain protective factors of a historical, cultural, and structural nature can also be identified that have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales.     

Understanding ‘The Panty Shanty’: off-campus house signs as cultural texts on gender and sexuality

Students at a large, prestigious, public university in the Midwestern region of the USA have a long-standing tradition of naming their rented houses off campus and communicating those names to the student body through displaying prominent and eye-catching house signs. Examples of signs names and visual characteristics are: ‘Betty Ford Clinic’ (featuring an image of a martini glass); ‘Morning Wood’ (referencing male sexual arousal and depicting a tent with a man's legs sticking out); ‘Time Well Wasted’ (written in pink over a beach scene and a martini glass); ‘Fox Den’ (images of a fox tail and a well-known sorority symbol); ‘Tequila Mockingbird’ (a play on words); and ‘Down on U’ (the sign references a sexual act for a house located on University Avenue). Through a socio-feminist and social constructionist perspective, the researchers use content analysis to explore how these house signs serve as cultural texts on gender and sexuality norms in the American undergraduate college setting. Based on our data, house signs reinforce dominant forms of gender ideologies, including hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, both of which are associated with upholding and promoting institutionalized patriarchy (Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005 Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859. 10.1177/0891243205278639.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859). These house signs are also shown through the data to promote a campus culture of heteronormativity where partying, drinking, and casual sex are standards for social belonging, and where high rates of sexual assault persist. As opposed to viewing house signs as simply manifestations of student wit and harmless humor, the researchers critically evaluate if and how these visual displays serve as a mechanism through which gender and sexuality-related inequalities are perpetuated within a higher education institutional setting. Implications for students and their college campuses are discussed.     

Auckland,New Zealand – fair game for central party politics

This paper explores the influence of central party politics in Auckland local government, in New Zealand’s largest city, following the 2010 amalgamation. Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in European representative democratic local government, throughout the 20^th century. Not so, however, in New Zealand and Australia, where citizens have ‘flocked to the banner “Keep Politics out of Local Government”. Our analysis of the self-declared party accreditation status of candidates and elected members demonstrates that political affiliation, at least in the main centre Auckland, is on the rise, counter to assumptions that New Zealand local government is largely removed from central politics.     

Substance use,health, and mental health: problems and service utilization among incarcerated women

This article profiles self-reported substance use, health, and mental health problems among a sample of incarcerated women in Kentucky as well as lifetime service utilization. Findings indicate that a high percentage of women reported use of alcohol, cocaine, and multiple substances during the month before incarceration. In addition, participants reported common health problems such as dental, female reproductive, physical injuries, and mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Participants reported moderate use of emergency room and mental health treatment but limited substance abuse treatment utilization. Implications for criminal justice programs and linkages with community-based aftercare services for women are recommended based on findings that health and mental health problems are associated with service utilization before incarceration.     

What Role for Human Rights in Business?

The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011, following the six‐year mandate of the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The SRSG developed a framework comprised of three pillars: (1) States have a duty to protect against human rights abuses committed by third parties, including business enterprises; (2) business enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights; and (3) victims of business‐related human rights abuses need access to effective remedies. In particular, guiding principle (GP) 11 provides that business enterprises should respect human rights, that is, they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved. This article considers the implications of the Guiding Principles' framework for business; the continuing role of conventional accountability mechanisms in providing access to remedy for victims under the third pillar of the framework; and developments in ‘hard law', with a particular focus on the approach by the UK, since the introduction of the UNGPs, before turning, briefly, to the future for business and human rights.     

The dimensions of dangerousness revisited

In this article, we extend our previous study on clinical predictions of violence using the Dangerous Behavior Rating Scale by increasing follow-up interval from 2 to 6 years and supplying new data on prediction-outcome correlations for multidiscipline assessors. A total of 162 accused persons remanded for evaluations at METFORS were assessed using three criterion measures: subsequent violence, criminality, and general incidents. Statistical analyses revealed a range of predictive performance, contingent on several conditions including the identities of evaluators, categories of subjects, and length and context of follow-up. Even prognostications yielding the highest magnitude coefficients, reaching 53 in the case of psychometric forecasts of behavior in psychiatric hospitals, failed to account for more than 28% of the prediction-outcome covariance. Implications of the results are considered for the future role of the dangerousness construct.The research project described in this article was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation, the Solicitor General Canada, the LaMarsh Research Program on Violence and Conflict Resolution, the Ontario Ministry of Health, Simon Fraser University, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, and the psychopathy project supported under the sustaining grant provided by the Solicitor General, Canada, to the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. Thanks for their perceptive commentaries to Ronald Roesch and the two anonymous reviewers ofLaw and Human Behavior. Acknowledged as well are the contributions of the many research assistants and representatives of mental health, police, justice, and correctional agencies who collaborated in the compilation of these data. Research assistance was provided by Michelle Grossman, Simon Hanbury, Lily Keoskerian, Ed Tymosiak, and Cheri Wilner. Bill Glackman offered technical help with the data analysis. A version of this paper was originally presented at the 1991 Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco.Clarke Institute of Psychiatr     

Assessing treatability in mentally disordered offenders

The research literature on the treatability of forensic patients is sparse and fragmented. Employing available studies, we argue for a radical rethinking of treatability within the criminal justice system as a complex predictive task that tests the very limits of clinical competence. Issues that must be addressed in examining treatment needs of mentally disordered offenders include (a) making crosssituational predictions, (b) determining the relationship, if any, between the mental disorder and criminal behavior, and (c) estabilishing the likelihood of treatment compliance, favorable treatment response, and the availability at some future date of recommended interventions.     

The dimensions of dangerousness

Law and Human Behavior - Treatment of dangerousness in both sociolegal research and clinical practice has neglected to consider the multidimensional nature of the construct. An attempt was made to...