October 2021
Volume 63, No. 3-4 | Go to abstracts
Articles
Page 1
Understanding the Sexual Victimization of Children by Juveniles: Identifying Criminal Event Patterns
Julien Chopin, Eric Beauregard
Page 23
Exploring the Canadian Judiciary’s Experiences with and Perceptions of Gladue
Jane Dickson, Kory Smith
Page 47
Sources of Public Confidence in the Canadian Criminal Justice System
Jean-Denis David
Page 69
Choosing Prison over Parole: Factors Associated with Prisoners’ Decision to Waive Their Conditional Release Hearing
Stéphanie Lord, Chloé Leclerc, Marion Vacheret, Marianne Quirouette, João Velloso
Page 89
Networked Architectures of Crime Prevention: Community Mobilization in Manitoba
Kelly Gorkoff, Nadine Bartlett, Mehmet Yavuz, Rebeca Heringer, Natassia D’Sen
Page 112
Incarcerated Girls’ Early Life Experiences and Their Influence on Serious Offending in Emerging Adulthood
Kelsey Gushue, Evan McCuish
Abstracts
Understanding the Sexual Victimization of Children by Juveniles: Identifying Criminal Event Patterns
Julien Chopin, Eric Beauregard
The purpose of this study is to explore the crime-commission process involved in the sexual victimization of children perpetrated by juveniles. Specifically, this study aims to explore the interconnectedness of pre-crime, crime, and post-crime phases with victimological characteristics using a criminal event perspective. The sample used in this study consists of 185 cases of child sexual abuses perpetrated by juveniles. The first step of this study uses latent class analysis to explore the relationship between each step of the crime-commission process. As a second step, additional variables were used to test the external validity of our model. Results suggest that there are three different criminal event patterns: familiar sexually non-intrusive, familiar sexually intrusive, and stranger sexually non-intrusive. Moreover, we found that specific victimological characteristics were associated with each of the patterns. Practical implications in terms of situational crime prevention and victim assistance are discussed.
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Exploring the Canadian Judiciary’s Experiences with and Perceptions of Gladue
Jane Dickson, Kory Smith
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Sources of Public Confidence in the Canadian Criminal Justice System
Jean-Denis David
This study examines factors associated with public confidence in the Canadian criminal justice system. It further examines whether interaction with this legal authority leads to varying bases for this confidence. Using data from the 2009 Canadian General Social Survey, this study found that satisfaction with sentencing severity was among the least important sources of confidence. Instead, satisfaction with the extent to which the Canadian criminal justice system provides justice quickly and its ability to determine guilt were the most prominent bases for public confidence. Satisfaction with the extent to which the justice system helps victims and ensures a fair trial for accused persons were found to be intermediate sources of confidence. However, these factors’ relative importance differed to some extent based on previous interactions with this legal authority. This study argues for a need to better inform the public on the workings of the Canadian criminal justice system.
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Choosing Prison over Parole: Factors Associated with Prisoners’ Decision to Waive Their Conditional Release Hearing
Stéphanie Lord, Chloé Leclerc, Marion Vacheret, Marianne Quirouette, João Velloso
Parole review waivers have serious implications on correctional systems, prisoners’ rehabilitation, and public safety. However, studies on this topic are scarce, have limited scopes and methodologies, and lack in-depth analysis about women and Indigenous people. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of prisoners who forgo parole review. Quebec’s correctional services provided us with the correctional records of all parole-eligible prisoners in the province in 2014–15 (N = 3,675). A sample of men, women, Indigenous people, and non-Indigenous people assessed with the LS/CMI (n = 2,595) was selected. Hierarchical logistic regressions showed that recidivism risk and parole officers’ recommendations for release have a strong statistical relationship with waivers. In addition, Indigenous people are more likely to waive a parole hearing. Moderation analyses also showed that sex and Indigenous ethnicity each moderate the effect of one factor. Results suggest that the combination of statistically significant factors, as represented by recidivism risk, explains waivers better than the specific effects of these factors viewed separately.
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Networked Architectures of Crime Prevention: Community Mobilization in Manitoba
Kelly Gorkoff, Nadine Bartlett, Mehmet Yavuz, Rebeca Heringer, Natassia D’Sen
Crime prevention programs in Canada have increasingly adopted community mobilization frameworks – a process in which individuals, groups, and organizations in a community come together to address particular social issues associated with individual risk, health and safety, crime prevention, and community development. These initiatives intend to address systemic issues that are strongly correlated with criminal activity and with community safety and well-being. Twelve community mobilization (CM) initiatives have been established in Manitoba. CM is often considered an innovative way to deal with high-risk individuals who are best served by an approach that activates communities to act on their behalf and, by doing so, increases community safety. CM is also considered a networked form of crime control that activates groups not normally involved with crime control. Although intending to mobilize communities to act, some of these programs have been critiqued as being state-centric and promoting a police agenda. We have found preliminary evidence that Manitoban initiatives have avoided these problems and retained autonomy and local governance in their design and operation. Using the theoretical concept of nodal networks (organizational sites that bring together institutions to shape a flow of events), we argue that models of CM in Manitoba have maintained local leadership and resisted standardization, which gives them the potential to meet the original goals of CM: to co-produce community-grounded definitions and practices of public safety. We introduce indicators to verify these nodal networks and discuss the possibilities for reimagining public safety.
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Incarcerated Girls’ Early Life Experiences and Their Influence on Serious Offending in Emerging Adulthood
Kelsey Gushue, Evan McCuis
Warr (1989) conceptualized offence severity as the intersection of the harmfulness and wrongfulness of an act, which overlaps with how Canada’s justice system makes decisions about sentencing. The current study used this logic to move beyond static indicators of crime severity (e.g., history of violent offending) to examine risk factors for longitudinal patterns of offending severity over the life course. Data on girls (n = 284) from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study were used to examine the impact of self-reported risk factors on trajectories of offence severity between ages 12 and 23 (i.e., amount of time spent in custody at each year of age). Overall, 40% of incarcerated girls were associated with serious offending in emerging adulthood; however, it was rare for offending severity to escalate during emerging adulthood (ages 18–23; n = 25, 8.8%). Early-onset illicit substance use and frequent involvement in physical altercations during adolescence predicted serious offending that escalated between adolescence and emerging adulthood. A much wider range of risk factors in adolescence distinguished between participants who demonstrated frequent offending of a less serious nature, which slowly declined in adulthood, and those who were rarely, if ever, involved in frequent or serious offences in adulthood. Substance abuse treatment strategies may be especially important for disrupting incarcerated girls’ pathway to escalation of the severity of offending during emerging adulthood.