Volume
39, No. 1
January 1997
The
getting of wisdom: The ideology and experience of graduate education
among students enrolled in anglophone Canadian criminology programs
Dorothy Chunn and Robert Menzies
Equivalency
and interchangeability: The unexamined complexities of reforming the
fine
Voula Marinos
Why
are crime rates going down? A case study in Edmonton
Leslie W. Kennedy and David Veitch
Current
Research
Book
Reviews
GRAHAM and BENNETT: Crime Prevention Strategies in Europe and North
America
Brandon C. Welsh
McCORMICK
and VISANO: Canadian Penology: Advanced Perspectives and Research.
DUMONT: Pénologie: Le droit canadien relatif aux peines et
aux sentences
Pierre Landreville
MARS
and NELKEN: The International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice
and Penology
André Normandeau
LAPLANTE:
Psychothérapies et impératifs sociaux. Les enjeux de
la connaissance de soi
Candido de Agra
BROCHU:
Drogue et criminalité
Line Beauchesne
TRÉPANIER
et TULKENS: Délinquance et protection de la jeunesse: Aux sources
des lois belge et canadienne sur l'enfance
Renée Joyal
NORMANDEAU
et DOUYON: Justice et communautés culturelles?
Georges Kellens.
McCORMICK:
Constructing Danger: The Mis/Representation of Crime in the News
Aaron Doyle
McCORMICK:
Constructing Danger: The Mis/Representaion of Crime in the News
John Anderson
ASSOCIATION
SCIENTIFIQUE POUR LA MODIFICATION DU COMPORTEMENT: La violence chez
les jeunes
Gilles Gendreau
CHAPLEAU:
Cris de détresse, chuchotements d'espoir
Gilles Gendreau
SHICHOR:
Punishment for Profit: Private Prisons/Public Concerns
Maeve McMahon
Books
received
Coming
Events
Memo
to Author
Abstracts/Résumés
Only abstracts of full articles are contained in these Web pages.
Research notes and commentaries are usually not summarized into abstracts.
Readers who need the complete texts should contact the CCJA and subscribe
to the Journal. They can also purchase single copies of back issues
that are still in stock.
The
getting of wisdom: The ideology and experience of graduate education
among students enrolled in anglophone Canadian criminology programs
Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies
School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.
Based
on survey data, this paper canvasses the sociodemographic and academic
profiles of 175 current and former M.A., M.C.A., and Ph.D. students
in criminology at Simon Fraser Fraser University and the Universities
of Ottawa and Toronto, and elicits experiences and opinions concerning
their graduate education, the content and contributions of academic
criminology, and various criminological issues and controversies pertaining
to criminality, law, order, and social justice. Among our main findings
were the following: (1) Graduate respondents exhibited a wide diversity
of personal attributes, professional interests, ideologies, and activities;
(2) Women were consistently more inclined than men to challenge traditional
criminological ideas and practices; (3) Critical perspectives prevailed
over conservative ones, particularly among current enrollees; (4)
Participants endorsed criminology as a socially relevant enterprise,
and considered the promotion of social justice and change to outweigh
crime prevention as its principal mandate; and (5) Students generally
assessed their educational experience positively, although some concern
was expressed about lack of graduate-faculty parity, unavailability
of research assistantships and exposure to academic exploitation and
harassment. The paper considers these and other survey results in
the context of contemporary writing on the sociology of academic criminology,
and offers some possible avenues and priorities for future theory
and research.
Equivalency
and interchangeability: The unexamined complexities of reforming the
fine
Voula
Marinos
Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
Reform
proposals in Canada and the United States have called for the increased
use of fines as a substitute for imprisonment and have assumed that
sentences of fines can be made equivalent to imprisonment in severity.
This study examines the Canadian public's perceptions about the appropriate
use of fines, and examines the cultural ideology of punishment and
money. Members of the public generally accepted the substitution of
fines for imprisonment for property offences. No matter how severe,
fines were not seen as appropriate for minor violent or sexual offences.
This paper suggests that when denunciation is desired, fines are not
viewed as appropriate to accomplish this goal in sentencing. Both
the severity and the social and cultural contexts of penalties need
to be explored. These findings suggest that we must think of sanctions
as multi-dimensional when making attempts at sentencing reform.
Why
are crime rates going down? A case study in Edmonton
Leslie W. Kennedy
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
and
David Veitch
Edmonton Police Service, Edmonton, Alberta
This
paper examines the precipitous drop in crime rates in Edmonton reported
over the past two years. Previous analysis shows that the major reasons
for changes in crime rates include: reduction in the numbers of the
at-risk population; deterioration in the social and economic climate;
changes in laws; alterations in access to police; and changes in the
proactive nature of policing. The results of analysis of data drawn
from official files and community surveys from one city indicate that
the drop in crime rates are a function of declines in property crime
reporting; administrative decisions taken to alter the access to police
resources for the public; and a shift towards community policing with
an emphasis on problem solving and crime prevention.
