Volume 44, No. 3
July
2002
Memo
to readers and authors
Policing
the abstract: Some observations on policing cyberspace
Laura J. Huey
The
relational dynamics of illegal firearm transactions
Carlo Morselli
Group
crime in Canada
Peter J. Carrington
When
protection is punishment: Neo-liberalism and secure care approaches
to youth prostitution
Steven Bittle
Research
Note
Canadian homicide rates: A comparison of two data sources
Thomas Gabor, Kwing Hung, and Catherine St-Onge
Books
Received
Coming
Events
Book
Reviews
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.
POLICING
THE ABSTRACT: SOME OBSERVATIONS ON POLICING CYBERSPACE
Laura J. Huey
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia
Cyberspace
continues to pose significant challenges to policing. The paper's
author argues that some of the problems raised are conceptual in nature
and stem from habitus: that the police culture is grounded in a perceptual
schema tied to understandings of the policing function as being linked
primarily to physical/geographical notions of what constitutes territory
to be policed. Cyberspace, by contrast, is seen as being fundamentally
different or abstract, and thus not a space where normal policing
strategies are easily applied. It is suggested that this perceived
incompatibility offers a partial explanation for the unwillingness
of many local policing agencies to investigate online crimes.
THE
RELATIONAL DYNAMICS OF ILLEGAL FIREARM TRANSACTIONS
Carlo Morselli
École de criminologie, Université de Montréal
Montréal, Québec
The illicit
channelling of firearms has been consistently described as an informal
process. Guns are characteristically circulated through private transfers
between individuals who are generally connected to each other within
some social context. Through qualitative data emerging from face-to-face
interviews conducted with 21 inmates who succeeded in acquiring firearms
illicitly in the Montreal region, this article explores the qualities
of the social ties between individuals involved in illicit and consensual
gun transactions. A personal network approach serves as the main framework
in arriving at an understanding of the kinds of contacts which prove
to be most useful in such circumstances and the ways in which transactions
are initiated.
GROUP
CRIME IN CANADA
Peter J. Carrington
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Group crime
is an important but unexplored topic in Canadian criminology. A descriptive
profile of crime committed by groups in Canada in the 1990's, and
of the offenders involved in group crimes, is presented. The study
utilizes police-reported data from the Revised Uniform Crime Reporting
Survey on a large number of criminal incidents in Canada in the 1990's,
involving alleged offenders aged from 3 to 80+ years. The relationships
between group crime and the age and gender of the offender and the
type of crime are analyzed. The form of the age-group crime curve
over the entire life span, and how it varies with the gender of the
offender and the type of crime, are described. Two explanations -
functional and developmental - for the age- group crime curve are
explored.
WHEN
PROTECTION IS PUNISHMENT: NEO-LIBERALISM AND SECURE CARE APPROACHES
TO YOUTH PROSTITUTION
Steven Bittle
Law Commission of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
The last fifteen
years of the twentieth century have witnessed fundamental changes
in approaches to the issue of youth prostitution in Canada. During
this period there has been a growing recognition that young prostitutes
should be treated as victims in need of protection, not deviants requiring
punishment. The most recent and controversial policy response to this
victimization framework has been the introduction of secure care legislation
in the province of Alberta. Discussions around the possibility of
introducing similar legislation has taken place in British Columbia
and Ontario. This paper argues the secure care movement in the provinces
of Alberta and British Columbia represent neo-liberal responses to
the (re) conceptualization of youth prostitution as a form of sexual
abuse and exploitation. Of particular interest is how secure care
advances neo-liberal forms of governance by supporting what Garland
refers to as "responsibilization" strategies. In the process,
the youth prostitution "problem" is governed at a distance,
the onus for combatting the youth sex trade is placed upon the individual
prostitute, community and family, and the meaning of "success"
in addressing the youth prostitution phenomenon is redefined. At the
same time, relations of power that give rise to the youth sex trade
remain unchallenged. The paper concludes by suggesting ways of challenging
neo-liberal strategies of controlling the youth sex trade.
INTERROGATING
JUSTICE: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POLICE INTERROGATION AND ITS ROLE
IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROCESS
James W. Williams
Department of Sociology,
York University, Toronto, Ontario
In recent years
the Canadian criminal justice system has been plagued by a number
of high profile wrongful convictions. While each of these cases has
raised serious questions concerning the justice process as a whole,
particular attention has been directed towards the police and their
ability to satisfy their dual mandate of investigating crime while
protecting the interests, rights, and freedoms of the accused. One
notable aspect of police operations that has come under increasing
scrutiny in this regard is the police interrogation, a practice which
is both upheld by police officers as a crucial means of gathering
information and disposing of cases, and denounced by civil rights
advocates as a serious threat to the standards of fairness and due
process. In adopting the police interrogation as its object of study,
this paper will argue that each of these characterizations are severely
limited, and ultimately, misrepresentative of the more subtle functions
of interrogative practices. Specifically, drawing upon the research
literature in Britain, the United States, and Canada, the police interrogation
will be conceptualized as an interactional medium in which commitments
are fashioned to particular criminal identities and renditions of
events in a manner that seeks to confirm and legitimate official police
narratives. The implications of this constitutive, rather than merely
coercive, function of the interrogation will be examined with particular
attention to the issues of police accountability, and the limits of
legislative reform.
