July 2016
Volume 58, No. 3 | Go to abstracts
Articles
Page 291
Mentorship: A Missing Piece to Manage Juvenile Intensive Supervision Programs and Youth Gangs?
Michael Weinrath, Gavin Donatelli, Melanie J. Murchison
Page 322
Race, Street Life, and Policing: Implications for Racial Profiling
Steven Hayle, Scot Wortley, Julian Tanner
Page 354
Looking at Penalty Scales: How Judicial Actors and the General Public Judge Penal Severity
Chloé Leclerc, Pierre Tremblay
Page 385
L’enchâssement social et la délinquance des pairs
Carlo Morselli, Audrey Gariépy, Claudine Gagnon
Page 415
Victims’ Reflections on the Protective and Proactive Approaches to the Offer of Restorative Justice: The Importance of Information
Tinneke Van Camp, Jo-Anne Wemmers
Research Note
Page 443
Public Opinion towards Cannabis Control in Ontario: Strong but Diversified Support for Reforming Control of Both Use and Supply
Benedikt Fischer, Anca R. Ialomiteanu, Cayley Russell, Jürgen Rehm, Robert E. Mann
Abstracts
Mentorship: A Missing Piece to Manage Juvenile Intensive Supervision Programs and Youth Gangs?
Michael Weinrath, Gavin Donatelli, Melanie J. Murchison
Intensive supervision probation (ISP) has proven generally ineffective for youth. In this article we argue that mentorship, an intervention with increasing empirical support in the literature, is a missing treatment component. We test this proposition with results from the Spotlight Serious Offender Services Unit, an urban-based Canadian ISP program that targets high-risk gang youth. Unique to Spotlight is their adoption of street mentors to work with youth in the community. Our study incorporated quantitative and qualitative approaches: client interviews and researcher observation of street mentors coupled with comparison of recidivism outcomes between a comparison group (N = 85) of high-risk young offenders and Spotlight (N = 57) clients, matched via a propensity score matching (PSM) procedure. Spotlight cases did significantly better than the comparison group on all recidivism outcomes examined. Qualitative interview and observation data supported mentorship efficacy. Given the lack of effectiveness of other ISPs observed in the literature, we argue that mentorship makes a difference.
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Race, Street Life, and Policing: Implications for Racial Profiling
Steven Hayle, Scot Wortley, Julian Tanner
Scholarship is divided over whether youth from marginalized populations are stopped and searched by police primarily due to their illegal behaviours (functionalism), marginalized status (conflict theory), or both. We address this debate by comparing the police interactions experienced by a sample of high school students (N = 3,393) living at home with a sample of youth (N = 396) who have left home and are residing in shelters or on the streets of Toronto, Ontario. Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that after controlling for demographic and behavioural factors, black high school students are more likely than white high school students to report being stopped and searched by the police multiple times; this indicates that they are the victims of racially biased policing. In contrast, black and white street youth are equally likely to report being stopped and searched by the police on multiple occasions. We suggest that this is because all street youth, regardless of race, take part in high levels of deviant behaviour, which attracts police attention. We conclude that consensus theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of street youth, whereas conflict theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of black high school students.
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Looking at Penalty Scales: How Judicial Actors and the General Public Judge Penal Severity
Chloé Leclerc, Pierre Tremblay
This article focuses on penal severity judgements made by judicial actors (118 defence attorneys, 48 crown prosecutors, 36 probation officers, and 33 judges; N = 135) and the general public (N = 297), who were asked to estimate the severity of a range of penalties using the magnitude-scale technique, developed by Stevens (1975). A group-based approach developed by Nagin (2005) was applied to discover the diversity in penalty scales. Results reveal that while there is reasonable consensus about penal severity for prison sentences, neither members of the public nor judicial actors agree on the underlying metric of severity scales for custodial sentences. Penal equivalencies derived from each penalty scale are used to determine their relative quality. Results show that judicial actors are no better than inexperienced citizens at producing penal severity judgements that seem reasonable and feasible.
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L’enchâssement social et la délinquance des pairs
Carlo Morselli, Audrey Gariépy, Claudine Gagnon
Analyzing the characteristics of social embedding is an essential part of the overall understanding of delinquent behaviour. Researchers have often drawn a line between the conventional and delinquent contexts that surround an individual. However, it is impossible for a youth, delinquent or not, to totally distance him- or herself from the conventional world. This study examines the overlap between conventional and delinquent relationships surrounding a sample of youths in order to assess social influence patterns in their lives. These social networks are not limited to friends but also include family members, classmates, and colleagues, all of whom can have an influence on behaviour. This analysis focuses on 237 youths between the ages of 14 and 24 who attend community organizations in Québec. Results show that: 1) the presence of contacts with delinquent/criminal backgrounds across multiple relational spheres making up a youth’s social network generates a dispersion index that reflects the youth’s level of criminal embeddedness; and 2) this dispersion index increases the likelihood of participation in delinquent behaviour.
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Victims’ Reflections on the Protective and Proactive Approaches to the Offer of Restorative Justice: The Importance of Information
Tinneke Van Camp, Jo-Anne Wemmers
Independent studies reveal that when done properly, restorative justice (RJ) practices outperform criminal justice proceedings in meeting victims’ concerns for insight, voice, and fairness and, as a result, can have therapeutic value. However, only a small number of cases are referred to RJ, and victim-initiated RJ remains exceptional. Not every victim is interested in RJ, but many victims are unaware of it and hence miss out on its potential benefits. Introducing RJ to victims of crime should be done responsibly, and, therefore, it is important to understand whether and how victims want to be informed about RJ. We interviewed 34 victims of serious crime in Belgium and Canada and asked them what they had thought about being invited to participate in RJ. We categorized their experiences into what we labelled a “protective” and a “proactive” approach. A protective approach is characterized by an individualized offer and lack of systematic information about RJ, while a proactive approach favours a systematic offer and informed choice. Our findings indicate that victims of violent crime prefer to be proactively informed about their restorative options as long as the offer respects certain conditions. These include a guarantee of voluntary participation and RJ that is a complementary approach to criminal justice proceedings.
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Public Opinion towards Cannabis Control in Ontario: Strong but Diversified Support for Reforming Control of Both Use and Supply
Benedikt Fischer, Anca R. Ialomiteanu, Cayley Russell, Jürgen Rehm, Robert E. Mann
In Canada, cannabis control has long been controversially debated, yet recreational cannabis use and supply remain criminally prohibited. Recently, there has been an increased “normalization” of cannabis use as well as debates about how cannabis should best be controlled under public health approaches; increasing proportions of Canadians have indicated support for liberalizing cannabis control. The present study is based on the 2014 CAMH Monitor, an annual representative, cross-sectional, telephone interview–based survey of Ontario adults aged 18 years and over. In 2014, the CAMH Monitor assessed public opinion on several items related to the control of recreational cannabis use, production, and distribution among a sample of 2,004 respondents. Results indicate that the majority of Ontario adults support reforming the – currently criminal – control of recreational cannabis use. However, preferences for how this control should be reformed are split between decriminalization with a fine, legalization with mandatory education and/or treatment, and categorical legalization. Further, the strongest support was expressed for production and distribution regimes that are tightly regulated by the state. More liberal preferences regarding control were observed, in some instances, among male and younger respondents. Current public opinion among Ontario adults overall supports liberalizing cannabis control, yet concrete reforms would require choosing among options that are not universally supported by the population.