Issue 39.4
Nancy Wright Editor
A Student’s Eye View of CCJA’s 39th Biennial Congress on Criminal Justice: Banff 2024!
By MIRANDA HENDERSON
Mira Henderson qualifies the Canadian Criminal Justice Association’s 39th Congress, held in October at the Banff National Centre for Arts and Creativity, as an amazing event for everyone, including students. Henderson acknowledges the Canadian Criminal Justice Association and co-host Alberta Criminal Justice Association, as well as the conference’s sponsors, organizers, and presenters for such a high-quality conference. Carrying out her role as an assistant with the Justice Report, Miranda Henderson greatly appreciated the friendliness and consideration of presenters and attendees, including CCJA staff and board members. Henderson, offering a recap of the plenary sessions and keynotes as well as a good many of the Concurrent Sessions, concludes by encouraging everyone to read the many presentations from this Congress now available at www.ccja-acjp. She sends a strong message to students: don’t be nervous or on the fence about attending a CCJA conference; it represents a great opportunity to learn, not only from the keynotes and presentations but also by mingling with people working in the fields of criminology and criminal justice from around the country and maybe even lining up a publication in the Justice Report.
The Virtuous Briefing Circle: A safety net for those who protect
By CHRISTINE WELSH and BOB CHRISMAS
The sharing circle permanently integrated into the office of Winnipeg’s new Community Safety Team makes proper briefing and debriefing part of the daily protocol. Our sharing circle is configured in line with sharing circles in the traditions of many Indigenous peoples in North America. It is a peer circle, where everyone has a say and learns daily from each other. It represents an important shift away from the stereotypical stoic mindset that simply does not meet the mental health needs of frontline emergency service personnel, many of whom routinely face deteriorating social conditions (poverty, addiction, mental illness) at almost every turn. For most frontline workers, these experiences have traditionally been unpacked in debriefings, if at all, because there have been no formal critical incident management (CISM) processes for ‘uncritical’ repetitive traumatic incidents. It is now known that cumulative post-traumatic stress can easily evolve into a full-blown disorder, which is why we have implemented a sharing circle for trauma-informed public safety delivery.
Writing for Justice: Envisioning a World Beyond Incarceration Through Prisoner Correspondence
By STEPHANIE LATTY and NAOMI BERLYNE
Condemning the retributive nature of the carceral system and calling for “non-reformist reforms” with the goal of prison abolition, Stephanie Latty and Naomi Berlyne discuss Write On!, a volunteer group founded in 2018 in Ontario that provides vital access to information for people incarcerated in Canadian prisons. Aiming to help counteract the damaging effects of incarceration, Write On!’s work addresses incarcerated peoples’ isolation and immediate needs for information and is grounded in a transformative justice approach that emphasizes community care and the rejection of retributive punishment.
A Treatment-First Approach to Prison Reform
By JIM DODGE and DAVE REDEMSKE
Prison design is integral to the growing trend of prison reform centred on a treatment-first approach ensuring outcome-focused, trauma-responsive facilities that can holistically address the root causes of criminal behaviour and offer individualized patient-centred services for incarcerated people. Least-restrictive environments operating by way of direct supervision and having respite rooms for staff and residents combine with other design factors to also make prisons and jails feel safer and be more secure for both residents and staff alike. Healing environments foster rehabilitation, but extensive follow-up prioritizing post-release integration with community-based agencies/treatments to prevent recidivism are also key to penal reform.
Situational Crime Prevention and its Theoretical Application to the Canadian Correctional System
By MEGAN DAVIDSON
MRes Criminological Research, University of Liverpool, BA – Criminal Justice (Honors),
The reactive narrative of necessity around Canada’s penitentiaries has remained much the same since the opening of our first official correctional facility, Kingston Penitentiary in 1835 (Correctional Services Canada [CSC], n.d.). However, there is a growing shift away from the punishment approach to corrections. Situational crime prevention space (SCP) considerations underly many current restorative models outside prisons, such as transformation of decimated urban spaces, the use of healing lodges, and changes to the way police intervene. Unfortunately, the conversation rarely extends to the architectural shift needed to create more rehabilitative environments ‘inside the walls’. It is time to change the narrative. The application of SCP to correctional facilities has yet to be fully explored, but growing evidence shows that a reduction in aggression and violence could be achieved through broader application of SCP, DS, and CPTED (Davidson, 2023).
From Prevention to Reintegration: The Social and Economic Imperative of Closing Educational Gaps in Canada from a Criminological Standpoint
By MARTIN SPIELAUER
BA Economics and Political Science, University of Ottawa (Class of 2027)
Most federal prisoners in Canada have no high school education, and only about one quarter of those who try to get one while serving their sentence succeed. Spending almost none of its budget on education, the Correctional Service of Canada offers little supervision or support to students, uses outdated materials, and provides the educators dealing with this high-need population minimal professional development or support. At the same time, funding gaps for Indigenous public schools, which cost more to operate due to remoteness, make it difficult to improve educational achievement in certain communities, which may contribute to Indigenous overrepresentation in the Canadian criminal justice system. Emphasizing that educational attainment is effective for crime prevention and offender reintegration, Martin Spielauer highlights the need for increased public awareness of this considerable and costly service gap in Canada’s correctional institutions.
Overview of the Need for Special (Drug) Courts in India
By PROF. DR. PURVI POKHARIYAL, MR. AKHILENDRA SINGH, and MS. MRADUL SINGH
The Supreme Court of India has recognized drug addiction as a crime representing social ill that erodes the economy, thus also posing a risk to public safety. Drug trafficking is a global phenomenon that has reached epidemic proportions. It not only affects India’s economy but is corrupting the system and fostering a sick society and harmful culture. Drug courts in the USA, Australia, and Canada, among others, handle traffickers with punitive sanctions but take a more lenient, rehabilitative approach to drug abusers. In India, however, both groups are treated the same, as the law does not have any strict rehabilitative provisions for victims caught up in the criminal justice system by virtue of drug addiction. Pokhariyal, Singh, and Singh explore India’s need for a Special (Drug Treatment) Court.
Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the Association’s views, but are included to encourage reflection and action on the criminal justice system throughout Canada.