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.     

'The disenchantment conference': Frustration and humour at the world disarmament conference, 1932

A parody of the work of the Air Commission of the World Disarmament Conference of 1932-34 reveals the cynicism and boredom, as well as the personality, of the officials in the British delegation. In doing so, it demonstrates something of the futility of trying resolve the question of disarmament when bureaucrats and military experts are given free reign.     

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.     

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...     

The Will to Change: Lessons from Canada's Successful Decarceration of Youth

In 1997, Canada's youth custodial facilities held 3825 sentenced youths. Eighteen years later, this number was 527—an 86 percent reduction. Overall youth imprisonment (sentenced + pretrial detention) decreased by approximately 73 percent. This paper uses Canada's successful decarceration of youths to understand what might be learned about decarceration more broadly. By examining the reforms that transpired in Canada's treatment of young offenders since the 1960s and the political/cultural shifts that occurred since the 1990s, we demonstrate that the decline resulted from changes occurring in various parts of the system. Finally, we contrast this decarceration with more than 60 years of relative stability of Canadian adult imprisonment rates as well as Canada's failure to substantially decrease youth pretrial detention in order to identify those factors seemingly necessary to reduce imprisonment more generally.