SOC 327 CRIMINAL JUSTICE FINAL

Conditional Release

Release from prison prior to warrant expiry

• Life sentences/indeterminate sentences: no warrant expiry, therefore supervision lasts until death 

• Reduction of recidivism by addressing risks and needs of offenders, setting them up with various services for reintegration to be easier 

• Gradual release and reintegration with supervision and support

• offenders have to comply with whatever conditions apply to their release

• Temporary Absences

• Parole

Temporary Absences

• Escorted or unescorted (unescorted require time served first)

• Eligible upon admission

• Reasons

  • Complete community service 

  • Access medical treatment/rehabilitation community organizations

  • Family 

• Problems are reduced 

  • Likelihood of unemployment upon release

  • Violations of conditions once released 

  • Recidivism rates 

• The more absences, the less likely they are to have a negative experience in the community upon release

Day Parole

• Eligibility depends on sentence length 

• Before given full parole 

• Return to halfway house or institution at night

Full parole

Eligible after ⅓ of sentence served, or 7 years, whichever comes first

Living in the community

Remission

• time off for good behavior: reduce sentence by almost ⅓

• Problem: End date comes sooner, no time for treatment

• Every 30 days served, 15 off their sentence

• Does not involve parole board decision, described as “administrative release”

• CSC can recommend to the parole board if they don’t think someone is a good candidate for release

• Provincial Offenders: available

• Federal Offenders: replaced with statutory release

Statutory Release

• Release of deferral offenders after ⅔ of time served 

• Indeterminate sentence, difficult to calculate ⅔, so only parole

Probation

conditions will change over time: relaxed or removed completely

Indigenous offenders

• Highest involvement in offences, arrest and incarceration of any ethnic group

• Higher rates of segregation, high risk and high needs classifications, released later in their sentences, serve their full sentence, and have conditional release revoked 

Gladue

Reaffirmed something that already existed in legislation: courts must consider colonialist actions targeting indigenous peoples, incarceration as a last resort

Ipeelee

Gladue applies to all cases involving involving indigenous offenders

Correctional and Conditional Release Act

indigenous involvement in the development of correctional services, policing and programs

Creating Choices: The Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women 

• Key principles that should guide women corrections 

  • Empowerment, meaningful and responsible choices, respect and dignity, supportive environments and shared responsibility 

• Lack of specific interpretation

• Did not recognize that there are violent women that need more controlled environments 

Str8 up

work with those living on the street in a criminal lifestyle, and help them transfer out.

First Nations Policing Program

communities determine how they will be policed

1. Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA)

• Welfare Model

• Treatment, not punishment

• Broader scope of behaviour (state of delinquency)

  • Status offences: Behviour that is only criminal because of age

• Open ended sentences: until they’re rehabilitated

• Minimum age: 7

• Didn’t work: increase in adult crime, many had been youth offenders

2. Young Offenders Act (YOA)

• Justice Model

• Rights and responsibilities

• Minimum age: 12

• Max age across the country: 17

• Eliminate status offences and indeterminate sentences

• High youth incarceration rates

  • Short sharp shocks of imprisonment

  • Administrative sentences: incarceration after breaking parole conditions

3. Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA)

• Emphasis of accountability

1. First time offenders: Diversion

2. Repeat offenders: discretion of judges

• Accountability

• Proportionality

• Meaningful consequences

• Rehabilitation and reintegration and long term protection of the public

• Extrajudicial Measures

Extrajudicial Measures

Keeping youth out of the formal system

• Police

  • Nothing

  • Caution

  • Referral

• Not a sentence

  • Community services

  • Attend counseling

  • Restitutions

  • Write an essay

Judicial Reprimand

• stern warning from the judge, no criminal record

• (Not available to adults) 

Absolute discharge

Free to go

Conditional discharge

conditions must be met before case is dropped, no criminal record

Fine up to $1000

• not rehabilitative, youth often can’t pay, not used often 

Probation

 Most common for young people, max 2 years

Intensive support and supervision

 middle ground between community and incarceration: more intensive form of probation for youth with mental health issues, max 2 years

Non-residential Centers

supervised by probation officer and attends community center for treatment

Deferred custody and supervision order

serves sentences in the community, but returned to custody if conditions are not met

Intensive rehabilitative custody and supervision order

serious violent offence and mental illness, requires consent, intensive rehabilitative programming, alternative to an adult sentence

Lavallee (controversial) ruling

• Battered women kill their abusers

• Admissible based on witness testimony

• Domestic Violence: Threat does not have to be imminent

• Battered women = something wrong with them

• Legitimate vs. Illegitimate cases

• Some women don’t fit battered woman stereotype: criminalized

• Eventually got rid of “battered woman syndrome”

Domestic Violence and Criminal Law

• Recognizances/peace bonds

• Consider domestic violence when considering bail

• Firearms legislation

Domestic Violence and Civil Law

• Emergency Protection Orders

• Exclusive home possession orders

• Civil restraining orders

• Tort Law: claim damages

• Compensation

• Family law

Clare’s Law

In specific cases, allows people to obtain info about a partner's history of domestic violence (Provincial piece of legislation)

• Right to Ask

• Right to Know

• Right to Privacy

Canadian Bill of Rights: Federal Piece of Legislation

• Right to information

• Right to protection

• Right to participation

• Right to Restitution

• Right to a Complaints Process (If they feel their rights have been infringed upon)

Retributive Justice (Legal Justice):

What is dictated by law 

• Should be applied equally and fairly to everyone: rule of law

• What law has been broken? Who did it? What do they deserve?

• Technical orientation to justice

Restorative Justice (Social Justice)

What is socially and morally just

• Everyone’ perspective matters

• What harm has been done?

• What needs to be done to make it right?

• Who is responsible?

Victim offender mediation

After working individual with victims and offender, bring them together to enter into a dialogue

Restitution Programs

Offender pays back for the harm they’ve caused

Sentencing Circles

 Everyone sits in a circle, share their own perspective on an appropriate sentence, no one has more authority over another

Restorative justice can happen at any stage

• Used as an alternative to retributive justice 

• Used in conjunction with convention court 

• Used after time in prison

Occupational Crime

• Someone using their privileged position to engage in crime for personal gain

• Eg. accountant embezzling money from the company, lawyer overbilling clients 

  Corporate/Organizational Crime

• Committed for the benefit of the corporation 

• Done with the support and encouragement of the corporation

Financial Corporate Crime

money at stake: price fixing, insider trading

Social Corporate Crime

Having unsafe work conditions, harms to the environment from improper waste disposal

Executive Disengagement

those as the top are insulated from the day to day operations of what their subordinates are doing, so they claim ignorance

Limited Liability 

• Corporation seen as legal person: Own property, enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own human beings 

• Those that have financial stake in the money, they are only responsible for the money they invested in the company 

• If something goes wrong, the only money at risk is the money they invested, not their personal assets, not responsible for wrongdoing on the part of the company

Identification Doctrine

• Common law 

• Criminal responsibility to a corporation by tracing the crime to a senior employee 

• Problems: alluded to high decision makers, difficult to link them to offence

Bill C-45 (Westray Bill) 

• From only focusing on corporations to all organizations

• Officials must take reasonable steps to ensure safety of workers and public

• Hold organizations criminally liable

Unconscious Transference

witness gets confused about people they’ve seen in different situations

Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted: AIDWYC/Innocence Canada

• Pro-bono case

• If review is granted: Criminal Conviction Review Group: Comprised of lawyers 

• Pass on assessment to minister of justice 

• Minister of justice cannot decide if the person is innocent (no acquittal) 

• If they believe the person is wrongfully convicted, they can order a new trial/appeal 

• Not used very often (less than 20 per year)

2023: Legislation that created a commission that would take over for the CCRG (MJRCA)

Minister of justice determined if a miscarriage of justice likely occurred

In new commission, they determine if a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and wether its in the public interest to pursue

Commissions of Inquiry

• Given a specific mandate (thing they need to investigate) 

• Conduct an investigation/inquiry

• Submit a final report containing findings of facts of what they deem to have happened, and recommendations 

• Cannot find criminal or civil responsibility 

• Recommendations don’t have to be implemented, most often not

Faulder

lethal injection in Texas - murdered old woman in 1975 during robbery

Smith

currently on death row in montana

• From Red deer

• 1982 in Montana while drunk and high, shot and killed 2 indigenous men 

• Requested death penalty, but has since changed is mind and fights his death dates

Canadian Quakers (1981)

First religious system to advocate for the abolition of prison 

• “Prison is both a cause and result of violence and social justice”

• Prison continues the cycle of harm

Prisoners Justice Day - August 10th, 1975, Millhaven Penitentiary 

• Eddie Nalen by suicide in solitary confinement 

• Robert S Clark died protecting a guard from getting stabbed

• Prisoners will go on hunger strikes on this day to bring attention to injustice in prisons 

• Forces people to recognize the humanity of the people within the walls of prison and the inhumanity of the walls themselves.

Center Lived Experience (Non negotiable)

“Nothing about us without us”

• Have to be led by those who have been criminalized and imprisoned

• Not just the recipients of policy but the architects of a different future