Jane B. Sprott

Toronto Metropolitan University

When compared to studies examining racialized people’s perceptions of police in North America, studies of immigrants’ views of police are quite rare and they often conflate the views of immigrants with those of racialized people. Yet, we know racialized people are not necessarily immigrants and immigrants are not necessarily racialized. Research th...

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 decarcera...

Relationships between police and minority groups have been shown to be strained with members of these groups often viewing police in a more negative light. Distinguishing between minority group and immigrant populations, more recent work has shown that foreign-born individuals are more likely to view the police in a more favourable light than nativ...

Research consistently finds that while the public expresses concerns about sentence leniency in the abstract, when presented with a specific case, people are typically not particularly punitive (Hough and Roberts 2012). While Canadian studies have further explored the effect of various social-structural factors on sentencing preferences, absent is...

Within the Criminal Code, and more recently the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the legislated goals of bail release conditions appear to be focused on the grounds for detention; in particular, to help ensure court attendance and to reduce the risk of reoffending. While Canadian research has explored the impact of multiple conditions on the likelihood...

Il est clair que la confiance du public envers les policiers est un facteur important et elle risque de varier selon le groupe culturel/racial et la région canadienne. Par contre, lorsque les données nationales sont utilisées, les différences de perception sont examinées du point de vue des « minorités visibles » en tant que groupe mixte comparé au...

Ce numéro de la Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale souligne les contributions à la recherche de Anthony N. Doob, l’un des criminologistes les plus prolifiques du Canada. Il est impossible d’étudier la criminologie au Canada sans tomber sur ses recherches, lesquelles sont impressionnantes tant dans leur portée que leur envergure....

This issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice marks the scholarly contributions of Anthony N. Doob, one of the most prolific criminologists in Canada. One cannot read about criminological issues within Canada without discovering some of his scholarship. His research is as impressive in breadth as it is in depth. Not surpris...

Il est souvent suggéré que les Canadiens auraient généralement plus de con-fiance envers les tribunaux, les sentences criminelles et le système juridique si les sentences étaient plus sévères. Cet article profite du fait qu'il y a une variation d'une province à l'autre en matière de sentence pour démontrer qu'il n'y a essentiellement aucun lien ent...

Résumé La Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents (LSJPA) a réussi à retirer les affaires relativement peu graves de la procédure officielle des tribunaux pour adolescents. On a réduit considérablement le nombre de cas, que ce soit en relation avec la politique d’inculpation par la police, les verdicts de culpabilité en...

RésuméOn impose aux jeunes contrevenants des conditions de mise en liberté sous caution afin de s'assurer qu'ils reviennent devant les tribunaux et de réduire les risques pour le public en restreignant leurs actions dans la collectivité.Toutefois, ces conditions ont parfois une conséquence imprévue : l'ajout d'accusations au criminel lorsqu'...

RésuméPour ceux qui doivent passer en cour, de nombreux aspects de l'atmosphère de la salle d'audience pourraient sembler désagréables. Des problèmes généraux comme des retards, de la confusion et des comportements non professionnels pourraient mener à des évaluations plus globales de l'ensemble du système de justice, peu importe si les g...

RésuméDepuis longtemps, les filles, beaucoup plus que les garçons, se sont vu imposer des mesures de réadaptation par le système de justice pour les adolescents. Même si ce recours à la réadaptation selon les lois sur la justice pour les adolescents a diminué au cours des dernières décennies, on s'inquiète encore du fait que les filles r...

It is assumed that legitimacy of the legal system is important, yet almost nothing is known about how young offenders view this institution. A sample of youths were interviewed at their first appearance in court and asked about their feelings regarding how they have been treated (procedural justice) by their lawyer, by the crown attorney, and by th...

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 a...

For over a century, as women have fought for and won greater freedoms, concern over an epidemic of female criminality, especially among young women, has followed. Fear of this crime wave—despite a persistent lack of evidence of its existence—has played a decisive role in the development of the youth justice systems in the United States and Cana...

Résumé: Selon un examen de la variation observée d’une province à l’autre pour les crimes violents ou contre les biens signalés par les intéressés, de jeunes Canadiens et Canadiennes, il y considérablement moins de variation que pour les taux des contacts enregistrés entre les policiers et les jeunes et le recours aux tribunaux pour adolescents pou...

Dans un numéro récent de la Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale, Latimer et Foss (2005) affirment que les peines de placement sous garde imposées, en vertu de la Loi sur les jeunes contrevenants, aux jeunes Autochtones de cinq villes canadiennes étaient de plus longue durée que celles imposées aux jeunes non-Autochtones habitant l...

Throughout the 1990s there were increases in bringing "failing to comply with a disposition" cases into youth court and sentencing them to custody. This study investigated how the nature of these cases affected their sentencing. All cases in Canada that were disposed of in 2002/2003 and had a conviction (or convictions) for "failing to comply with...

This study investigates whether judges attempt to craft proportionate proba-tion sentences under the Young Offenders Act (YOA) and the Youth Crimi-nal Justice Act (YCJA). Using two samples of probation cases -one disposed of under the YOA and the other disposed of under the YCJA -the effect of the offence on probation sentence length was investigat...

Using longitudinal data, this study explored the protective effect of a school bond (on violent and nonviolent delinquency) across a variety of risk factors. A strong school bond protected children with early aggression from continuing on in violence 2 years later. A strong school bond also protected children with numerous environmental risks from...

Previous research has found that school and classroom climates have important effects on children's perceptions and behaviours. More specifically, there are thought to be two types of support (emotional and instrumental) provided at the level of the classroom and the school. Emotional support within the classroom has been found to be most important...

Substance abuse and its consequences have had an important impact on the juvenile justice system, but relatively little attention has been paid to assessing and treating juvenile offenders for substance-related problems. Female and minority youth have been particularly affected: Most young female offenders have some substance involvement, yet juven...

Starting in 1908 with a law based on welfare principles and finishing in 2003 with a law based on criminal law principles and proportionality, successive changes in Canada's youth justice legislation have provided additional structure in governing the key decisions involving youths. While criminal law in Canada, including youth justice laws, is a f...

This study investigates whether or not people see young offenders as a distinct group of youths who reject society's punishment norms. Specifically, views from members of the public and from young offenders on appropriate punishments in three hypothetical cases are explored. Results reveal that not only do members of the public see young offenders...

This study investigates whether or not people see young offenders as a distinct group of youths who reject society's punishment norms. Specifically, views from members of the public and from young offenders on appropriate punishments in three hypothetical cases are explored. Results reveal that not only do members of the public see young offenders...

This paper uses nine years of youth court data to understand two different trends: increases in the proportion of youth court cases (found guilty) involving girls and few changes in the rate of finding girls guilty in youth court. It appears that the increased proportion of cases involving girls (found guilty) is due more to a decrease in the rate...

The decrease in the overall homicide rate in the United States during the latter 1990s has been explained in terms of changes in various factors such as the availability of guns, crack markets, and demographics. Although these are all plausible explanations, they do not explain why Canada has experienced similar declines in homicide rates during th...

It has often been recognized that Quebec has a different approach to youth justice from that which exists in the rest of Canada. The largest difference, however, appears to be in the rate of bringing cases into youth court. Once a case arrives in youth court, inter-provincial variation in the manner in which the case is handled diminishes. When ask...

Concern about how to respond to violent acts by young children is not new. Although on a broad level there appears to be widespread public support for dealing with very young violent children in the youth justice system, that support diminishes substantially when people are given a choice of how to deal with violent children. Most people in fact pr...

This study challenged the view that public punitiveness is a simple, one-dimensional concept that can be assessed through a broad measure such as support for increasing the severity of sentences. Gender was used as a lens through which discrepancies between responses to broad questions (support for increasing sentences) and case-specific questions...

This study challenged the view that public punitiveness is a simple, one-dimensional concept that can be assessed through a broad measure such as support for increasing the severity of sentences. Gender was used as a lens through which discrepancies between responses to broad questions (support for increasing sentences) and case-specific questions...

Résumé Cet article étudie les tendances de la délinquance juvénile au Canada et aux États-Unis pour la période entre 1991 et 1996. En ce qui concerne les infractions sérieuses commises avec violence, les infractions contre la propriété et les infractions liées à l'usage de la drogue, le Canada avait, en général, un plus faible taux d'arrestations q...

This study examined the frequently reported finding that the public believes that youth court sentences are too lenient and that young offenders should be processed in the adult justice system. These beliefs, along with the view that sentences for specific cases should be harsher, were all related to one another in an Ontario, Canada, survey. Howev...

Using the rate (per hundred thousand total population) of those actually in custody serving sentences, the 1995 rates of imprisonment across the ten provinces vary from a low of 76 per hundred thousand (for Ontario) to a rate more than double that - 193 per hundred thousand - for Saskatchewan. An additional complexity is that those provinces with f...

This paper examines the assertion that the "quality" of youth violence is getting worse in that violent acts are becoming "more" violent. No evidence is found to support such an assertion. Across Canada, in the five years ending in 1995-6, the increase in the rate of violent cases in youth court is due to an increase in the number of the most minor...

In Canada, there is enormous variation in the rate at which provinces put young people, age 12 through 17, in custody. This paper examines data from five provinces in an attempt to understand this variation. Across Canada in 1993-4, there was one youth court case which resulted in a youth being put in custody for every 91 people age 12-17 in the co...

Most (94%) of the stories about youth crime appearing in a sample of Toronto newspapers involved cases of violence. Youth court statistics, in contrast, showed that fewer than a quarter of youth court cases in Ontario involved violence. The newspapers focused largely on the crime, the charge laid against the young person, and the impact of the crim...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 1999. Includes bibliographical references.