...confinement in Grand Valley Institution for Women in 2007. Smith was being supervised by prison guards at this time who were given orders not to intervene even though they saw Ms. Smith attempting to commit suicide. After her successful attempt, Ms. Smith was the headline of many major news stations, all of which painted Ms. Smith to be a “troubled” and “disturbed” young woman. This paper will discuss how the labelling theory causes stereotypes that are deeply rooted into our history and maintained today through mass media. I will be using this theory to show how one’s basic human rights can be stripped and justified by Canadian Law in the name of security. I will be using...
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...for longer sentences than non-Aboriginal offenders. The over incarceration, over representation and criminalization of Aboriginal women within the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is attributable to a legacy of colonialism and sexism which placed them at a vulnerable place within society. Canada’s public policy post WWII regarding, social welfare, education and the labour market, exhibit how colonialism and sexism have created unfavorable cultural and socio-economic conditions for Aboriginal women, which make them more susceptible to be victims/survivors of violence, poverty and behaviours or circumstances in conflict with the law. As a result of these conditions, Aboriginal women are more likely to meet deplorable conditions while in prison, and the laws do not seem to accommodate Aboriginal methods of rehabilitation, restitution and justice. In order to understand the plight of Aboriginal women within the CJS, the issue will be approached from a feminist perspective. Further, the evidence will be sourced from secondary sources, mainly text and government reports. First a landscape of Canada’s colonial past’s impact on Aboriginal women; starting post WWII will be advanced. This will demonstrate the links between Aboriginal women’s experience with poverty, violence in all forms, and the CJS. Then a critique of current programs and sanctions within the criminal justice system will provide insights into how Aboriginal women are presently treated. Lastly potential solutions will...
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...given, it is clear that, there is more to health than the physical attributes. Mental health is important just like physical health because no individual is considered healthy if their mental health is deranged even if they are normal physically. The mental aspect of an individual coordinates other body systems, and for this reason, every human being needs to be mentally fit. Mental illnesses have been around for centuries, and they continue affecting every citizen in Canada, just like in various parts of the world. There is growing interest by researchers on issues of mental health and how these have impacted on society. As it is an important health topic, researchers have done extensive research and now, there is diverse knowledge on health illnesses in Canada. This paper analyzes mental illnesses in the Canada by dwelling on the history of mental illnesses, statistics of mental illnesses and impact of mental illnesses on Canadian population and government as a whole in terms of managing the condition. Statistics Mental disorders are common conditions internationally, and this is the same in Canada. Estimates reveal that 26.2 million Canadians over 18 years suffer from Schizophrenia mental illnesses. In any particular year, 1 in 4 adults are diagnosed with a Schizophrenia mental condition. The problem is so major that currently, mental disorders are a top disability cause in Canada for ages between 16 and 44. These are very alarming statistics. Even though the figures are high...
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...More common than not, the horrid implications of the actions of Canadian citizens are overlooked, and their consequences are similarly revoked to an unjust standard. With the lack of punishment as severe as the death penalty, the astonishing number of criminals that walk the streets after serving their short sentences are a risk to not only our current generations, but future justice systems as a whole. In turn, I propose the implementation of the death penalty in the Canadian justice system. The death penalty is a form of punishment one convicted of a serious crime receives which results in the ending of the offender’s life. These executions are primarily conducted through the use of lethal injections or hangings, often leaving the choice to the condemned. Introducing this form of punishment is a necessity for the Canadian justice system. Canada has always taken pride in its “just” society, but is this truly the case? According to dictionary.com “Just” refers to being or behaving accordingly to what is fair. A just society requires the death sentence as the punishment an individual receives for their action must be fair and according to the crime they have committed. In the case of a murder, jail time would not be seen as a fair consequence in comparison to the event the victim was forced to overcome. The only appropriate retribution for the disorderly conduct would be equally taking the offenders life. It is not to say that the death penalty must be used in every conviction...
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...national origin History of Racial Profiling & Police in Canada Policing over the Past 40 Years * extends from systematic issues debated in court processes to prison practises and routine aspects of policing outside of legal institutions * aallegations that the Canadian criminal justice system is racially biased, were made at various junctures by different groups over the past several decades * Since the early 1900’s, racial profiling by the police has been highly dominant. Public complaints, legal actions, empirical research and a number of high-profile incidents had brought several police practices to the forefront of the debates on racial bias of policing in Canada Stereotypes Associated with Racial Profiling Stereotyping becomes a particular concern when people act on their stereotypical views in a way that affects others. This is what leads to profiling. Although anyone can experience profiling, racialized persons are primarily affected. Typically, but not always, profiling is carried out by people in positions of authority, and can occur in many contexts involving safety, security and public protection issues. Some examples of profiling presented include: * law enforcement official assumes someone is more likely to have committed a crime because he is African Canadian * school personnel treat a Latino child’s behavior as an infraction under its zero tolerance policy while the same action by another child might be seen as normal...
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...risks we should credit for them? Hypothesis/Working Thesis: Considering the reduced liabilities, rights, and public outreach of prisoners in the past, using prisoners as test rats was viewed as highly unethical and forceful by many. Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010. Print. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot not only argues her point, but also does a great job at informing and teaching her readers the vast risks prisoners were susceptible to while being used by doctors as human guinea pigs. Skloot makes many references to different potentially deadly diseases that were injected into prisoners for further research. The public’s opinion on this happening was shocking; many thinking it was highly unethical and forceful of the doctors. Skloot makes claims about how prisoners were viewed as vulnerable inmates who were unable to give informed consent. Regardless of how the treatment was viewed, prisons and doctors did what they wanted to do in those days ranging from diseases, to chemical warfare agents, to deterring how X-raying testicles affected sperm count (Skloot 129). Throughout her study of how HeLa cells have expanded, and where they originally came from, Rebecca Skloot stumbles upon many unethical and blatantly abusive periods in this countries past of the exploitation of prisoners rights. De Jong, Greta. Sentenced to Science: One Black Man's Story of Imprisonment in America. The Historian...
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...mandatory minimum sentences and the proposition of the bill we will look at the challenges that will be faced and met. The bill also introduces eliminating conditional sentences and eliminates double credit for time already served as well as introduces changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act to impose harsher sentences for young offenders. This essay will delve into information that will bring the various issues to light. Firstly an explanation of Bill C-10 will be provided to understand what changes will be made to the Criminal code and who it affects. The dissection of the Bill will open the dialogue for this essay for appropriating topical issues with the concept of progress in a manner that reflects the trouble that this Bill brings to Canadian society. Bill C-10 was introduced by the Minister of Justice on the 20th of September 2011. The Act includes the enactment of the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and amendments to the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other relevant legal documents (parl.gc.ca). Bill C-10 is also titled the Safe Streets and Communities Act but many critics say that this title is very misleading. The first Part of the Bill is the creation of the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act which introduces a cause of action for victims of terrorism, allowing...
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...implications on psychological research of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971. Ethics will be defined and the concept of risk/benefit ratio will be discussed. The Stanford Prison Experiment will be described. Finally, the impact of the Stanford Prison Experiment on psychological research will be evaluated. Ethics Defined Ethics is concerned with the principles of right conduct. In the philosophical use, ethics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the study of morals and how it is that moral decisions are made. Ethics also has a stricter use when dealing with the rules or standards that govern conduct and right behavior (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). Risk/Benefit Ratio Ethical approaches to research take into account the risk/benefit ratio. This simply means that the amount of benefit that comes from a study or research clearly outweighs any adverse risks to the subjects involved in the study or research. A study or research is only considered to be ethical if there is favorable risk benefit ratio (Wikipedia, 2008). Background on the Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was created by Professor Philip Zimbardo who led a team of researchers at Stanford University in 1971. The study was designed to observe and study the human responses to captivity by both the inmates and the authority figures. In order to carry out the experiment, a mock prison was created in the basement of the Stanford psychology...
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..." Give your reasons for your opinion. From a human-rights perspective, I believe it is perverse to reward alien mass murderers with the enhanced due process of civilian courts. This would afford them with the same rights as the Americans they kill. Our jihadist enemies are not entitled to the rights that U.S. Citizens are entitled to under our Constitution that was designed to protect our civilians. Also, these terrorists plot their mayhem in their overseas hide-outs where American law does not apply and American law-enforcement cannot operate. I think there are terrible downsides to using the U.S. civilian justice system to prosecute our wartime enemies because of the above issues. As a statutory matter, Congress has enacted military commissions for enemy combatants. But I think in many cases, they seem to be more lenient than federal courts. One case and point was when a military commission’s handling of Salim Hamdan, a bodyguard and confidant of Osama bin Laden. After years of helping the al-Qaeda chief run his network, Hamdan was captured in possession of missiles intended for use against American troops. Military prosecutors asked for a 30 year term. The commission instead, handed down a stunning five and a half year sentence that resulted in Hamdan’s release and repatriation, since he had already spent more than five years in custody. In the news yesterday, Omar Khadr was transferred from the U.S. terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Canada. Omar Khadr...
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...U.S. Criminal Justice System Compared To Canada U.S. Criminal Justice System Compared To Canada The United States Criminal Justice System is used by national and local governments to maintain social control and punish violators of the law with criminal penalties. The primary agents responsible for upholding the law under the United States criminal justice system are the courts, defense attorneys and prosecutors, law enforcement officers along with prisons and jails. In joint efforts these agents work together to arrest, charge, adjudicate and punish those individuals found guilty of a crime. They are also responsible for ensuring that the accused are given a fair trial and that their individual rights are protected throughout the process. By law, individuals tried through the United States criminal justice system remain innocent until proven guilty (Criminal Justice System , 2011). The carry of firearms for protection and other lawful purposes is legal in forty-nine states, either under license or as a matter of course. Washington, D.C., and the State of Illinois are the only regions that both prohibit carry by statute, and neither issue a license exempting one from the statute. Open carrying of firearms without any licensing requirement is legal in thirty-one states. There is no federal law generally prohibiting the carry of firearms by citizens for protection or other lawful purposes. Some states' statutes prohibit carry in vehicles without a license; concealment without...
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...woman who has broken its rule about appropriate sexual partners or the number of children, a pregnant widow, an unmarried girl or a girl too young, a woman who has had sexual intercourse with outsider or whose pregnancy is the result of an adulterous relationship is expected to have an abortion (Simon, 1). Abortion rights advocates argue that since the fetus develops inside of the woman’s body and since the outcome of the pregnancy will profoundly affect the woman’s life; abortion must remain a woman’s choice in some cultures (Cozic p. 52). In other cultures they believe that abortion should not be a woman’s personnel choice. People have different opinions on whether or not a fetus is consider a human being. Some culture attitudes toward abortion are different than others and they expect the decision to be made by their views on abortion. In 1992 the overall (national) abortion rate was 26 per 1,000 women ( Francome, p. 22). African American Culture The African American culture has the highest abortion rates. Most of the African American has lost their lives from being aborted. Black women who seek abortion are from the experience of other black women in the right conduction or different point of their lives. African American women who deal with different issues in their lives that may be use against their children...
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...the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under Section 15 of the Charter, all Canadians regardless of their (1)“race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability” were officially given the right to be protected by the law, and benefit from the law without discrimination. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms (2)“reflect the fondest dreams, the highest hopes and the finest aspirations of Canadian Society” and although “Sexual Orientation” is not recorded under the sections protected from discrimination, it was deemed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Egan v. Canada, 1995 case to be an equivalent ground to make claims of discrimination; Gay men and women are all equal in rights and dignity and should have protection of those rights. The Vriend v. Alberta case was monumental in that it was not only a conflict to Alberta’s Individual’s Rights Protection Act, but the rights of all homosexuals in Canada based on the Charter Section 15 (1). It was an igniter against the Province of Alberta, the Government of Canada, as well as conservative religious groups. It was a conflict of religious rights versus human rights and which aspect of humanity is of greater importance to Canadian society as a whole. The road to equality has been a long and hard road for all homosexuals, working towards this right the Vriend case was a small stepping stone on this long journey. Vriend demonstrated to society, that as stated in the Canadian Charter...
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...Historically speaking, the notion of homosexuality has been the cause of major conflicts for the last two millennia. For centuries, people considered different based solely on their sexual orientation have been shunned, alienated, imprisoned, and, in extreme cases, even murdered all around the world. More specifically, the issue of homosexuality reached its apex in Canada in the post-Confederation era from the 1900s to the 1960s. Throughout those decades, the federal government of Canada placed a huge emphasis on the then entrenched “typical family structure,” consisting of the male breadwinner, the stay-at-home wife, and around two or three children (even more during the post-WWII decades). That being said, homosexuals were viewed as a threat to the heterosexual family structure, which was the fundamental social fabric at the time. It can be argued that the major factor leading to the quest for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada was the case of Everett George Klippert in the 1960s. For many federal government politicians at the time, such as Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau (Prime Minister from 1968-1979), Klippert’s case brought to light the imprecision of the laws and legal concepts concerning homosexuals and, by extension, homosexuality as a whole. In the following paragraphs, this essay will first provide a general context of how homosexuals were treated and/or perceived in the first half of the 20th century. Subsequently, an in depth examination of the Wolfenden...
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...maintaining the trend of declining the crime rate. However, there is an impact that can help emerge Canadians to continue the model of justice. The justice model’s essential factors is to punish offenders- fairly and with justice- through lengths of confinements proportionate to the gravity of their crimes (Logan 1993). The purpose of this model is to punish all offenders who commit the same crime receiving the same sentence within the crime exceeded. However, offenders who do not learn from their consequences, and continue to committing more crime in the future; the sentence is longer than the first time offenders for the same crime. This model creates offenders to help neglect them off the streets for a longer time of period for committing the crime repeatedly. Under those circumstances, I believe that the justice model is in view of a not proving the point of crime rates. Nonetheless, one key point which impact the model, is by punishing the offenders by their crime rate. The positive point is the offenders will be punished for a longer period of time, if the crime has been committed more than once, which means, the one at fault may be off the streets and equivalent a lower crime...
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...Fyodor Dostoevsky stated that, “You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”. Many prison systems in the world seem rather harsh. North America has received much criticism for having 76.6% of their ex-prisoners re-arrested within 5 years. Whereas Norway has a much superior rate, only 20% of ex-prisoners continue to be arrested within 5 years. This illustrates how the prison system of the United States is corrupt. For instance, the United States has nearly 5% of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of that 5% is serving time in prison. The society of the United States can truly be judged, and blamed for many ex-prisoners being re-arrested, considering the annual wage of an American citizen drops an average of 40% after...
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