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ADOLESCENT DELINQUENCY AND HEALTH
Terrance J. Wade
Department of Community Health Sciences and
Child and Youth Studies
Brock University
David J. Pevalin
Department of Health and Human Sciences
University of Essex
Do risks experienced by adolescents in their socio-structural environment cascade to create individuals who are more susceptible to a multitude of adverse outcomes? From a control theory perspective we examine whether risk factors predict a broad range of delinquent and health outcomes over time and examine to what extent these outcomes are temporally related to one other. We use data from the first two waves of the publicly available National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=4,834). Results indicate that delinquent behaviours such as violence, aggression and property damage are similarly predicted by the same risk factors as are depression and perceived health, and tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and hard drug use. Most outcomes were associated with one another, suggesting they may be comorbid manifestations of risk exposure. We identify temporal associations between tobacco use and depression, between tobacco and marijuana use and hard drug use, between perceived health and alcohol, marijuana and hard drug use, and between nuisance delinquency and both alcohol and marijuana use.
OPEN-STREET CAMERA SURVEILLANCE AND GOVERNANCE IN CANADA
Kevin Walby
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Carleton University
Rather than relying on an undifferentiated version of Michel Foucault’s panopticon or conceptualizing surveillance as a straightforward top-down measure, in this paper I contend that the open-street closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance is generated from numerous and overlapping social positions. As a regulatory project within the overarching context of governance, open-street CCTV can be generated from above, the middle, and/or below. By above, what is meant is some hierarchal political or administrative body. Business entrepreneurs constitute the middle. By below, it is meant that citizens themselves seek out regulatory measures for their own communities through moral entrepreneurship, often in collusion with local news media. But the inverse is also true: power moves through populations, and thus citizen’s groups have the power to contest regulatory measure in their communities. I substantiate these theoretical claims with media, questionnaire, and interview data regarding the proliferation of open-street CCTV in Canada. Drawing from the sociologies of governance, of risk, and of critical media studies, and offering a more nuanced theoretical trajectory than theories which reproduced top-down conceptualizations of power, politics, and communication, I challenge the reigning theoretical models pertaining to open-street CCTV surveillance so to demonstrate how regulation through camera surveillance can be generated from any number of social positions.
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE “CORPORATE ADVANTAGE” IN ROUTINE CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
Jean-Luc Bacher, Martin Bouchard, and Pierre Tremblay
École de criminologie,
Université de Montréal
Julie Paquin
Sûreté du Québec
If corporate actors are more likely than other offenders to evade punishment, they should also be more successful, as victims, in getting offenders punished when brought to court. This argument was explicitly elaborated and submitted to empirical testing by John Hagan (1982). In this paper we analyzed all fraud cases against businesses investigated by police officers in Montreal from January to June 1991. Initial findings indicate that fraud cases were more likely to be cleared by charge when offenders defrauded large business establishments and less likely to be prosecuted when they targeted small businesses. The paper explores the extent to which reliance on private security agencies, fraud characteristics, repeat player effects, differential responsiveness of police investigators and criminal courts, or other potentially confounding factors, account for this apparent corporate advantage effect.
PROBATION SENTENCES AND PROPORTIONALITY UNDER THE YOUNG OFFENDERS ACT AND THE YOUTH CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT
Jessica E. Pulis
University of Waterloo
Jane B. Sprott
University of Guelph
This study investigates whether judges attempt to craft proportionate probation sentences under the
Young Offenders Act (YOA) and the
Youth Criminal 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 the offence on probation sentence lengths was investigated. The results suggest that youth court judges are more influenced by the nature of the most serious offence in the case under the YCJA than they were under the YOA. This could be seen as preliminary evidence of the effect of Section 38(2)(c) of the YCJA which directs judges to craft sentences that are proportionate to the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.
