criminal justice
The pandemic has offered a look at prison reform possibilities
Our Editorial: A quarter of all adult inmates in provincial prisons have been released since March and there’s been no noticeable crime uptick in said provinces. So, why not adopt these policies permanently?
What could reform look like, after the fury over the Stanley acquittal?
Opinion: The trial over Colten Boushie’s death has re-exposed raw wounds. Is Indigenous self-determination over criminal justice the way forward?
A panel gives 17 reasons Robin Camp shouldn’t remain a judge
Breaking down the judicial inquiry committee’s reasons for concluding Justice Robin Camp should lose his job
Land of the free? The U.S. has a prison problem
In a gridlocked political system, there’s one thing most lawmakers agree on: It’s time to fix America’s justice system
An award-winning prosecutor on trial delays, mandatory minimums, and drug crime
Robert Gillen, who retired last spring after a 33-year career as a Crown prosecutor in British Columbia, isn’t what you’d call soft on crime. Among the many bad guys he put behind bars is, for example, John Horace Oughton, the so-called “paper bag rapist,” convicted in 1987 for a string of sexual assaults in B.C., and still serving an indefinite prison term as a dangerous offender.
Keeping tabs on the baby-shooters
Christie Blatchford is doing an amazing job of describing the social problems in the four-cornered Indian town of Hobbema, Alberta—such an amazing job, indeed, that one is almost lulled into forgetting she is there because of a crime. It was not alcohol, poor governance, or residential schools that shot a five-year-old child in the head while he was sleeping last week. Some specific person, still at large, had to pull the trigger.
On chain gangs, Hudak wins. Deal with it
How serious is the Ontario PC leader?
BQ amuse-bouche
If you can read French or figure out Google Translate, you may enjoy the counterintuitive spectacle of the Bloc Québécois criticizing the Conservatives because their sissified lassitude on criminal sentencing guidelines has allowed a highly destructive criminal to go free.
On truth in $enten¢ing
The debate over the net costs of the government’s Truth in Sentencing bill is of the kind that makes me want to throw up my hands and whine “Aw, I don’t knowwwww…”. On the one hand, the Parliamentary Budget Office has presented an estimate of the costs that makes the bill seem demented. Kevin Page’s numbers don’t factor in the benefits of any potential deterrence effect; they admittedly rely, at many points, on wild assumptions; and they were assembled with the help of a lot of the sort of “independent” expert who sees prisons as inherently barbarous and would happily blow them all up if someone presented them with a big red button that would do it instantly. But as Page himself has pointed out, this is a fight between questionable evidence and no evidence. The government hasn’t really shown any good-faith sign of a serious effort to cost out the elimination of two-for-one credit for time in remand.