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.
As with most things in life, context matters when examining criminal justice policy. Canada’s conditional sentence of imprisonment is no exception. Introduced in 1996, it was a reflection of the ...time. While the dramatic increase in America’s imprisonment (particularly contrasted with Canadian trends) is now known well beyond those studying sentencing patterns and trends, less known are the similarities between Canada and the United States in the early 1970s. At that point in criminal justice history, Canada had enjoyed a relatively stable incarceration rate for at least two decades (if not since the late nineteenth century).2 Similarly, the American imprisonment rate had shown relative stability for many decades, though the rate (per 100,000 residents) was likely about 50% higher than that of Canada.3 More importantly for our current purposes, both countries witnessed growth in their imprisonment rates starting in the mid-1970s.
In contrast with many Western nations, the structure of Canadian sentencing and its overall effects on imprisonment did not change dramatically over the past century. To a large extent, Parliament ...left sentencing to judges. Broadly speaking, imprisonment was seen as a necessary evil to be used sparingly. Sentencing principles legislated in 1996 largely reflected the status quo. However, the period 2006–15 reflected a dramatic break. The Conservative government in power repeatedly attempted to restrict judicial discretion. Prison was touted as the solution to crime. Scores of politically motivated modifications were introduced to sentencing legislation. Perhaps surprisingly, few of these changes had large effects on large numbers of people. There were no appreciable changes to imprisonment rates by the time of the Conservatives’ electoral defeat in October 2015.
From the mid-19th century until 2006, Canadian official policy statements (from both Liberal and Conservative governments) made it clear that offending was seen as largely socially determined and ...that it was the state’s responsibility to try to reintegrate those who offend back into mainstream society. In this context, imprisonment was seen as a necessary evil, to be avoided wherever possible. The era since 2006 looks considerably more American than Canadian. The policy elite in Canada has taken the position that those who commit offences are inherently ‘bad’ people and qualitatively different from ‘ordinary law abiding’ Canadians. Exclusionary responses are privileged as those who commit offences are seen as having chosen to forfeit their rights of full citizenship. Several broader (cultural and political) ramifications of this punitive shift in the normative orientation expressed by policy-makers in Canada are discussed.
To fulfil a political promise to eliminate the provincial fiscal deficit, the (conservative) Premier of Alberta cut all budgets by roughly 20 per cent in 1993–1994. As an unanticipated by-product, ...this political solution to a political problem resulted in a 32 per cent decrease in provincial imprisonment between 1993 and 1997. Economic imperatives created the catalyst for changes in imprisonment policies. However, the types of change and the mechanisms for achieving them reflected Canada’s specific history, culture and politico-legal structures. Decarceration was consistent with core Canadian values rooted in the long-standing belief in the need for restraint in the use of imprisonment and a lack of faith in its effectiveness as a crime control strategy. On the surface, this case study is yet another example of decarceration. However, the interactive and multi-factorial explanatory model underlying Alberta’s reduction in its prison population raises questions about not only single factors or simple additive models as explanations for changes in penal policies but also uni-dimensional solutions to jurisdictions in need of fiscal restraint. The historical and cultural embeddedness of Alberta’s decarceration alerts us to its country-specific nature and the need to situate imprisonment in a broader set of concerns.
Are people dissatisfied with the courts as well as the police when they perceive high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods? Consistent with previous research, this study, using a representative ...sample of Canadian adults, demonstrates that people are significantly more negative about the police when they perceive high levels of disorder. They are not, however, more negative toward the courts when confronted with these social problems. It is possible that they have heard the police rhetoric—namely, that the police form the “thin blue line” between order and chaos. Although the public holds the police and the courts responsible for increasing rates of crime, victimization, and fear, they do not see the courts as being responsible for neighborhood disorder, which they see as being the sole responsibility of the police.
Comments on Michael Tonry's article 'Remodeling American Sentencing: A Ten-Step Blueprint for Moving Past Mass Incarceration' (same journal issue). Adapted from the source document.
Public confidence in the police is obviously important and is likely to vary across racial/cultural groups and across Canada. However, when national data are being used, differences in views are ...generally examined through the lens of visible minorities as a composite group compared to non-visible minorities. Using data from the 2009 General Social Survey on Victimization, we argue that it is an oversimplification to talk about the views of visible minorities in relation to the police. Such broad categories of people hide the more nuanced manner in which some groups differ from others on some questions in some locations.
In this paper, I will argue that many of the difficulties -- political and practical -- with sentencing exist because sentencing (broadly defined) has been neglected as a serious policy area. ...Sentencing has, instead, simply been used as a political resource with little, if any, concern about its overall coherence. The report of the Canadian Sentencing Commission (1987) outlines a set of problems with sentencing that existed in the mid-1980s, none of which have been addressed in any coherent way. This paper will begin by reviewing the problems with sentencing that were identified by the Commission. The Commission made specific recommendations about how to approach the incoherent state of sentencing. I will then examine the extent to which, if at all, these problems have been addressed in the intervening years, suggesting that it is the seemingly eternal incoherence of the Canadian sentencing system that has made possible the flurry of incoherent legislation recently introduced into Parliament by an opportunistic government. I will then briefly review what might loosely be termed "Canadian criminal justice culture" with respect to sentencing, arguing that, in fact, there is (at least, until recently) an implicit understanding of the limited value, to Canada, of high-imprisonment policies. Finally, on an optimistic note, I will suggest that the unprincipled manner in which sentencing matters have been addressed recently, together with the acknowledgement by a highly respected Court of Appeal that sentencing is an unprincipled and unpredictable mess at present, may give us the opportunity to move forward in a manner that allows us to revisit the issues raised by Jean-Paul Brodeur and others in the 1980s. Adapted from the source document.
