CRAM SET CRCJ 2200

W1 | How does Merry connect criminalization to social control and the potlatch ban?

Merry argues that states can redefine everyday or cultural practices as crimes to impose their preferred social order. Canada's 1884-1951 potlatch ban tried to suppress Indigenous governance, ceremony and redistribution as part of assimilation.

W1 | What three questions does Merry use to study criminalization?

Ask how lawmakers define conduct as crime, how officials enforce that definition, and whether people accept it as legitimate (popular legal consciousness). Apply all three to Canada's potlatch ban or public-space bylaws.

W1 | What is racialization according to Murdocca, and how does it connect to crime?

Racialization is the process of attaching racial meaning to people or behaviour through law, media and institutions. Murdocca argues these representations can make certain groups appear naturally threatening and legitimate their regulation.

W1 | How can Ottawa drug-possession enforcement illustrate Murdocca's ideas?

Week 2 lecture data showed Black residents were about 8% of Ottawa's population but around 18% of drug-possession arrests in the cited period. This disparity invites analysis of racialized enforcement rather than assuming arrests simply mirror drug use.

W1 | How do Merry and Murdocca explain the same criminalization cycle?

Merry explains how power defines and enforces offences; Murdocca explains how racialized representations shape perceived threats. An apparent rise in arrests can reflect targeted policing and then be used to reinforce the original stereotype.

W2 | What does 'Decriminalization Done Right' require beyond removing jail time?

The Civil Society Platform argues for eliminating punitive fines, confiscation and coerced treatment, limiting police stops, clearing past possession records and providing voluntary health and social supports. Otherwise criminal control can just be replaced with other coercion.

W2 | What was the B.C. decriminalization pilot, and why was it criticized?

The lecture describes a 2023-2026 pilot allowing adults to possess up to 2.5 g of certain drugs for personal use. Critics challenged the low threshold, exclusions and continued policing, showing that a partial reform can leave criminalizing structures in place.

W2 | How does the DULF Compassion Club illustrate safer supply and criminalization?

The lecture describes a Vancouver drug-user-led club that tested substances to offer a known supply, while organizers faced trafficking charges. It illustrates conflict between harm-reduction aims and prohibition law; it is not proof that every safer-supply model works.

W2 | What is Bahji et al.'s main finding about involuntary treatment?

Bahji et al. (2023) reviewed 42 studies with 354,420 participants and found insufficient high-quality evidence to confidently support OR refute the effectiveness of involuntary substance-use treatment.

W2 | What were the 22 comparative studies' results in Bahji et al.?

Among 22 studies comparing involuntary and voluntary treatment, 7 reported favourable outcomes, 10 negative outcomes and 5 no significant difference. Designs and outcome measures varied, limiting firm conclusions.

W2 | How does Pivot/Mannoe challenge involuntary treatment in B.C.?

Pivot calls compulsory treatment 'criminalization by another name' because confinement, surveillance and loss of consent can reproduce carceral control. A competing view stresses intervention during dangerous crises; a strong essay evaluates both using Bahji's evidence limitations.

W3 | How does Corntassel define Land Back?

Land Back means regenerating Indigenous laws, jurisdiction, community responsibilities and relationships on Indigenous lands and waters, not merely transferring real estate. It challenges settler-state assumptions that Canadian law is the only legitimate authority.

W3 | How does Wet'suwet'en resistance show a conflict over jurisdiction?

Wet'suwet'en hereditary governance asserts authority over unceded ancestral territory, while Indian Act band councils administer reserve affairs and some supported Coastal GasLink agreements. Corntassel asks whose law and consent should govern the pipeline route.

W3 | How did injunctions and RCMP enforcement become a criminalization issue at Coastal GasLink?

Courts issued injunctions protecting construction and police enforced them against land defenders. This let settler law frame Indigenous territorial defence as disorder or contempt while treating resource development as legally authorized.

W3 | How do Cunneen and Tauri challenge mainstream Indigenous crime explanations?

They argue Indigenous overrepresentation cannot be reduced to individual deficits or 'risk factors' while ignoring colonial dispossession, racism and state institutions. Indigenous criminology centres colonial history, Indigenous knowledge and self-determination.

W3 | What are Corntassel's four reconciliation dead ends?

Economic and political certainty for development; a mythical past to 'restore'; a historical reboot that treats colonialism as finished; and risk management that contains resistance without changing power. All can sidestep actual Indigenous land and jurisdiction.

W4 | What is green criminology according to Nurse?

Nurse expands analysis beyond conventional legal offences to environmental harm, ecological justice and the victimization of humans and nonhuman beings. A Canadian case is mercury contamination affecting Grassy Narrows First Nation.

W4 | How does Lynch explain political-economic green criminology?

Lynch connects ecological destruction to production, profit, capitalism and state-corporate power. Grassy Narrows and corporate water pollution show why studying isolated offenders alone misses structural causes of environmental harm.

W4 | Environmental crime vs environmental harm: why does the distinction matter?

Environmental crime violates an existing law; environmental harm damages people or ecosystems whether legal or illegal. Nurse, Sollund and Lynch argue criminology must examine both, because some large-scale damage remains permitted or under-enforced.

W4 | How does Grassy Narrows apply green criminology and colonialism?

The lecture links mercury discharged into the English-Wabigoon River system from 1962-1970 to lasting ecological, health and livelihood damage for Indigenous communities. It illustrates state/corporate accountability and environmental injustice.

W4 | How does the Just Stop Oil 'Sunflowers' case illustrate selective criminalization?

Mathiesen (2024) reports activists were jailed over a protest in which the painting was protected by glass but its frame was damaged. Green criminology asks why protest damage is criminally punished while some larger ecological harms remain legal; competing views stress property and public order.

W5 | What is the 'dual nature' of encampments according to Flynn et al.?

Encampments reveal a failure to provide adequate housing AND are residents' attempts to secure shelter, community and autonomy. Flynn et al. argue removing tents does not resolve the underlying housing-rights violation.

W5 | How do historical vagrancy laws connect Merry to neo-vagrancy?

Merry shows laws criminalizing unemployment and mobility to control poor people's behaviour. The Week 5 lecture describes modern bylaws regulating survival in public space, a continuity in social control even when the legal tools differ.

W5 | What does the Saskatoon 301 Avenue K South case illustrate?

The lecture describes a municipal emergency safety notice connected to an encampment. Analyze competing claims: authorities cite fire and health risks, while housing-rights analysis asks why the safety response focuses on removal instead of viable housing and basic services.

W5 | What is Principle 6 of the encampment rights protocol?

Ensure basic needs in encampments, including water, toilets, sanitation, waste removal and fire safety. Week 5 lecture explicitly flags Principle 6 for the midterm; connect it to Flynn et al.'s rights-based approach.

W5 | What is Principle 8 of the encampment rights protocol?

Respect Indigenous peoples' distinct rights and self-determination, including treaty and constitutional interests. Week 5 lecture flags Principle 8 for the midterm and links disproportionate Indigenous homelessness to ongoing colonialism.

W6 | What are 'crimes of the powerful' according to Rothe and Friedrichs?

They argue powerful states, corporations and institutions can cause widespread harms yet influence which acts count as crime and attract enforcement. Study wage theft or environmental pollution as examples that get less criminal attention than street offences.

W6 | Occupational crime vs organizational, corporate and state-corporate crime?

Occupational crime primarily benefits an employee personally; organizational or corporate crime advances an institution; state-corporate crime arises from overlapping or cooperating government-business activities. Rothe and Friedrichs warn the boundaries often overlap.

W6 | What does Buckley mean by wage theft?

Unlawfully withheld or reduced wages or entitlements, such as unpaid overtime, illegal deductions, false hours and delayed or missing pay. Buckley's GTA construction cases show how this can be treated as an employment dispute despite major harm to workers.

W6 | What evidence comes from Buckley's study, and what can't it establish?

Buckley interviewed 22 foreign-born men in informal GTA construction/renovation work, with 19 reporting wage-related violations. These interviews reveal mechanisms and experiences but do NOT estimate wage theft prevalence across all Canadian workers.

W6 | What is self-securitization in Buckley's wage theft analysis?

Workers track hours, pay, messages and employer identity to protect against a future wage dispute. It shifts employers' record-keeping burden onto workers, and evidence gathering cannot prevent theft by itself.

W6 | How do Buckley and Rothe/Friedrichs connect wage theft to crimes of the powerful?

Buckley shows how employers exploit weak, worker-driven enforcement; Rothe and Friedrichs explain why institutional economic harms receive less attention than street crime. Their shared issue is how power structures wrongdoing and accountability.