October 2016

This study explored the explanatory power of the interaction model between individual and contextual risk, in comparison to the additive model, to explain delinquency. It was conducted with 235 offenders, who completed self-report questionnaires regarding antisocial traits and attitudes, criminal entourage, lifestyle, and delinquency. Multiple linear regression analyses (additive combination) and regression trees (interaction combination) were produced. In general, the factors favouring the formation of criminogenic situations (personal characteristics, criminal entourage, and deviant lifestyle) all significantly contributed to the explanation of the frequency and variety of crimes. However, the regression tree results suggested that it is necessary to understand the level of both individual and contextual risk to adequately explain delinquency. Our results suggest abandoning the additive approach currently used in the assessment of recidivism risk in favour of an interactional approach because it better reflects reality.

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Self-Control, Social Consequences, and Street Youths’ Attitudes towards Police

Stephen W. Baron

Data from a self-report survey of 400 homeless street youths are used to explore the relationship between self-control and negative orientations towards the police. The study examines whether the relationship is direct and/or mediated through its association with deviant attitudes, criminal peers, police contacts, criminal behaviour, and homelessness – factors found in past research to have been linked to young people’s attitudes towards police. Findings reveal that self-control is directly associated with negative attitudes towards the police. This relationship is mediated by deviant attitudes, criminal peers, police contacts, and criminal participation. The study shows the importance of recognizing both the direct and the indirect relationship of self-control with attitudes towards police in marginal populations as well as specifying the continued importance of various street life factors in understanding the way youth perceive the police.

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Public Support for Conducted Energy Weapons: Evidence from the 2014 Alberta Survey

Temitope B. Oriola, Heather Rollwagen, Nicole Neverson, Charles T. Adeyanju

This paper examines support for the use of conducted energy weapons (CEWs) by police in Canada using data from the 2014 Alberta Survey (N = 1,204). Support for CEW use is measured using four Likert-scale questions, capturing different dimensions of CEW use: (1) “less-lethal” weapons such as Tasers should be made available to police officers; (2) Tasers are a safe policing tool; (3) the use of Tasers reduces levels of confidence in the police; and (4) official explanations regarding injuries and casualties in Taser-related incidents are satisfactory. Results of a logistic regression indicate that race, age, and gender are key predictors of perceptions of CEW use by police in Canada. Specifically, women, young people, and racialized minorities are least likely to be supportive of CEW use by police. Individuals identifying as white are over three times more likely to support CEW use by police, compared to those identifying as Aboriginal or members of another racialized group. Having a low household income, living in an urban area, and education are not statistically significant predictors of support for CEW use by police.

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L’impact des expériences d’impunité sur les risques de récidive penale

Yanick Charette

Given the fact that the probability of being punished varies between individuals, deterrence theory needs to be adapted to consider both punished and unpunished criminal experiences. Omitting this parameter from the decision model can lead to considerable biases and an overestimation of failure in the course of a criminal career. Studies in the prediction of recidivism that rely only on penal data are prone to this bias. In our study, self-reported offending data from an inmate sample (n = 199), in conjunction with penal data, allowed us to assess individual penal avoidance ability. When taking into consideration penal avoidance, past penal experiences appear to be an indicator of failure faced by offenders during their criminal career rather than its true continuation, creating the illusion of the efficient prediction of recidivism using past penal experiences. The intensity of past penal costs as well as legitimate opportunities are two factors that reduce the probability of the continuation of the criminal career. The benefits of crime increase this probability.

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Comment on Estimating the True Rate of Repeat Victimization from Police-Recorded Crime Data

Simon Demers

The Recorded Repeats Adjustment Calculator (RRAC) methodology introduced by Frank, Brantingham, and Farrell (2012) doesn’t consider the entire probability mass function associated with the binomial distribution. Although the authors recognized and documented this as a limitation, the implications are significant because some of their key findings are not internally consistent with their explicit underlying assumptions or the available empirical data. This article proposes revised estimates, based on a Bayesian treatment of the empirical data and underlying assumptions stated by the authors themselves. According to the initial RRAC estimates they reported, repeat burglary victims would have represented 47.1% of all burglaries or 22.0% of all burglary victims. The proposed revisions suggest instead that repeat burglary victims represent approximately 30.8% of all burglaries or 15.9% of all burglary victims. By comparison, based strictly on the police-recorded data, repeat victims account for 19.8% of all reported burglaries or 10.0% of all burglary victims. While these findings tend to temper the empirical findings and original conclusions of Frank, Brantingham, and Farrell (2012), they provide renewed support for their insight that raw police-recorded crime data are likely to underestimate the true rate of repeat victimization.

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Human Rights and Federal Corrections: A Commentary on a Decade of Tough on Crime Policies in Canada

Ivan Zinger

The present commentary documents how correctional authorities can capitalize on law-and-order politics, find new ways to advance their own agenda, and enjoy a certain degree of immunity from public scrutiny. It examines the impact on federal corrections of a decade of tough on crime policies in Canada, reviews correctional and conditional release statistics, and analyses trends that shaped federal corrections over that period. It also highlights how law-and-order politics can influence the internal culture of correctional authorities and human rights compliance.

July 6, 2020
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