Suchergebnisse

RésuméLa prolifération de périodes relativement courtes d'emprisonnement, de 30 jours ou moins, au Canada est un sujet peu traité. Une analyse des données de determination de la peine suggère que les infractions contre l'administration de la justice sont le plus souvent reliées à des périodes d'emprisonnement de un à 15 jours. Les données suggèrent que les tribunaux répondent à la sévérité des infractions, ou selon un modèle de proportionnalité. Au-delà de l'analyse quantitative cependant, très peu est connu des objectifs et significations que ces sentences revêtent pour les procureurs de la Couronne et les juges. L'analyse se penche sur ces acteurs, qui forment ce que Eisenstein et Jacob ont appelé uncourtroom workgroup, en tant que producteurs de discours et de significations, dans le cadre de la littérature existante, des theories de determination de la peine et des contraintes organisationnelles. Je suggère que la valeur explicative des theories existantes – notamment celles voulant que la Couronne et les juges réagiraient à la sévérité des infractions contre l'administration de la justice, et visent la dissuasion générale et la dénonciation – est limitée. Les entrevues et l'observation des négociations de culpabilité, révèlent que la gestion du risque ainsi que le travail sur le caractère sont des objectifs importants tant pour les procureurs que les juges. L'étude démontre aussi que que le processus de plea bargaining ne devrait pas être analysé séparément du résultat de la determination de la peine.

Authors have pointed to multiple dimensions of crime and punishment, and in particular, the need to understand both the roles of instrumental and expressive elements. The latter dimension - the expressive or symbolic purpose of punishment - has been viewed as a specific reason for the relatively low success rate of decreasing the use of imprisonment, particularly with respect to public acceptability. I argue that in addition, there has not been adequate attention paid to the roles of factors such as the nature of the offence and the age of the offender. The purpose of this article is to offer a lens through which to think about penal equivalents, and the nuances of various connections among multiple dimensions of punishment. What is lacking from criminal justice literature and legislation is a broader framework for understanding the relationship among purposes of sentencing, sanctions, offences and offenders - how a specific sanction is seen as accomplishing specific purposes only with respect to certain offences and offenders. The present analysis draws on a random sample of residents in Ontario, Canada about their views of the acceptability of fines and community service orders as penal substitutes for custodial sentences across different offence and offender scenarios.

This article examines issues regarding legal capacity and criminal responsibility relating to persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). We examined the case of a 28-year-old male identified as having the mental age of an 8-year-old, accused of four counts of possessing child pornography in Ontario, Canada. If convicted, the offenses carried a minimum mandatory sentence of 1-year imprisonment. The defense attorney argued that since persons are not criminally responsible when they are chronologically less than 12 years old, the same ought to be extended to those with a mental age of less than 12. The Crown prosecutor asserted that the defense's connection of disability to a lack of capacity reverts our conceptualization of persons with IDD back to a time when they were infantilized. Using therapeutic jurisprudence as a framework, we examined whether problem-solving courts (e.g., mental health court) could be used to address the needs of a person with IDD and offer a different understanding and potential solution to nonjudicial decision makers that satisfies the principles of both criminal responsibility and public safety.