Volume
41, No. 3
July 1999
Editorial
Peter Julian Roberts.
Justice
for Canadian girls: A 1990's update
Marge Reitsma-Street
Public
perceptions of the courts: An examination of attitudes toward the
treatment of victims and accused
Catherine Kaukinen and Sandra Colavecchia
Commentary
Trends in youth crime: Some evidence pointing to increases in the
severity and volume of violence on the part of young people
Thomas Gabor
Book
Reviews
FOURNIER: Fondation et fondements de la criminologie - Entretiens
avec Denis Szabo. CUSSON: Criminologie actuelle. CHALOM: La police
et le citoyen. NORMANDEAU: Une police professionnelle de type communautaire.
LESTER: Enquête sur les services secrets. TREMBLAY: Le métier
de policier et le management
Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle
KELLENS
et PÉREZ-DIAZ: Le contrôle de la circulation dans les
pays de la CEE
Pierre Landreville
EASTON:
Privatizing Correctional Services
David Shichor
WEISBURD
et McEWEN: Crime-Mapping and Crime Prevention
Marc Ouimet
CECI et
BRUCK: L'enfant témoin - Une analyse scientifique des témoignages
d'enfants
Diane Casoni
HAGAN and
McCARTHY: Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness
Cynthia J. Benjamin
BERNHEIM:
Criminologie. Idées et théories. De l'antiquité
à la première moitié du 20e siècle
Raymond Gassin
ANDERSON:
A Dance With Death: Canadian Women on the Gallows, 1754 - 1954
Stephanie Cowan
MOSHER:
Discrimination and Denial: Systemic Racism in Ontario's Legal and
Criminal Justice System 1892 - 1961
David Cole
Canadian
Books
André Normandeau
Books Received
Coming
Events
Instructions
to Authors
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.
Justice
for Canadian girls: A 1990's update
Marge Reitsma-Street
Human and Social Development
University of Victoria
Victoria, B.C.
Six critical
issues in delinquency research and youth court statistics on girls
are examined. The issues are: discriminatory practices despite equality
under the law; the prosocial behaviours of girls despite their devaluated
status; girls' conformity despite the high socio-economic costs they
pay for that conformity; high public fear of girl crime despite actual
low rates; unjust variations in practices despite a common national
law; and profound, but invisible racism in justice for girls. The
first three issues are examined in some detail, raising questions
for the current debates on a new youth justice statute for Canadian
youth.
Public
perceptions of the courts: An examination of attitudes toward the
treatment of victims and accused
Catherine Kaukinen
and
Sandra Colavecchia
Department of Sociology
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Research in
both Canada and the United States indicates that the public has become
increasingly critical of the criminal justice system. In particular,
recent research has pointed out that Canadians feel that court sentences
are too lenient and that there exists racial discrimination within
the criminal justice system. Researchers also point out that the public
is becoming more punitive and perceives the sentences given out by
the courts as too lenient. In this study, we examine Canadians' attitudes
towards two specific aspects of the criminal justice system: it's
ability to help victims and it's ability to protect the rights of
accused individuals. Our findings indicate that socio-economic status
is an important predictor of public attitudes. Specifically, dissatisfaction
with the ability of the courts to help victims of crime, reflecting
the issue of protection of society, was most often expressed by educated,
higher income respondents. Conversely, dissatisfaction with the ability
of the courts to protect the rights of accused individuals was most
often expressed by respondents belonging to lower socio-economic groups.
