Aboriginal Fishing Rights

Laws, Courts, Politics

Parnesh Sharma

This book examines the nature of aboriginal fishing rights before and after the Sparrow decision from a perspective of whether disadvantaged groups are able to use the law to advance their causes of social progress and equality. It includes interviews with the key players in the fishing industry: the Musqueam Indian Band, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the commercial industry. It concludes that aboriginal fishing rights remain subject to arbitrary control and examines why and how… (more information)

An Ideal Prison?

Critical Essays on Women’s Imprisonment in Canada

Edited by Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Margaret Shaw

Ten years after the publication of Creating Choices, a remarkable report on women’s imprisonment in Canada, this book sets out to reflect on attempts to reform prison. In a series of critical essays, the contributors stimulate reflection and discussion. They explore the effects of punishment and penality on women’s lives, the impact of feminist reforms on the lives of women in prison and the systemic barriers which limit change in the context of both provincial and federal prisons. Each… (more information)

Being Heard

The Experiences of Young Women in Prostitution

Edited by Kelly Gorkoff, Jane Runner

Being Heard examines, from their own perspectives and experiences, the lives of young women sexually exploited through prostitution. Putting their voices in the centre of its analysis, the book tries to help us more fully understand the experiences of girls exploited through prostitution, the complex issues of sex trade work and the ways to best respond to the issues. Beginning with a discussion of what little we know about youth prostitution, subsequent chapters address young women’s experiences… (more information)

Beyond the Limits of the Law

Corporate Crime and Law and Order

John McMullan

McMullan attributes corporate crime to a process whereby the accumulation of capital takes precedence over human safety. He concludes that “the scope and seriousness of corporate crime is enormous, far exceeding that of conventional crime.” (more information)

Canadian Critical Race Theory

Racism and the Law

Carol A. Aylward

The growth of the Critical Race Theory genre began in Canada when scholars of colour in Canada began to articulate a dissatisfaction with the existing Canadian legal discourse which failed to include an analysis of the role that “race” and racism has played in the political and legal structures of Canadian society. This book is about the role that race and racism play in the theory and practice of law. It shows how Canadian Black lawyers and others are beginning to seriously consider… (more information)

Constructing Danger

Emotions and Mis/Representation of Crime in the News (Second Edition)

Christopher McCormick

Crime reporting is often thought to be simply an objective and factual description of an event. In Constructing Danger Chris McCormick argues that crime is more than simply reported: it is constructed. And sometimes it is distorted, exaggerated and manipulated in order to create certain impressions of and opinions about the world. Examining issues such as how misrepresentations of AIDS perpetuates harmful stereotypes, the underrepresentation of women in the news, the trivialization of sexual… (more information)

Creating Criminals

Prisons and People in a Market Society

Vivien Stern

Everywhere, the market society is producing more crime. More acts are being defined as crimes. More people are classified as criminals and more are being locked up in prison. With globalization, the crime and punishment problem is no longer insulated from pressures beyond national borders. The rich may retreat behind their expensive security into gated communities, but the poor are more and more at the mercy of criminals and corrupt policing. Vivien Stern argues that the trends towards more criminalization… (more information)

Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty

Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada

Wendy Chan, Kiran Mirchandani

The criminalization and penalization of poverty through increased surveillance and control of welfare recipients in recent years has led many poverty advocates to claim that “a war against the poor” is currently in progress. The authors argue that people of colour are most often the casualties in the governments’ desire to roll back the welfare state. Relying on myths and stereotypes about racial difference, the enforcement and policing of welfare fraud policies constructs people… (more information)

Disorderly People

Law and the Politics of Exclusion in Ontario

Joe Hermer, Janet Mosher

The Ontario Safe Streets Act is the first modern provincial law to prohibit a wide range of begging and squeegee work in public space. This Act is representative of a much wider set of reforms that the Ontario government has carried out in the administration of criminal justice and social welfare. Central to the neo-conservative character of these reforms has been the construction of “disorderly people,” of those portrayed as “welfare cheats,” “squeegee kids,” &… (more information)

Giving Youth a Voice

Christie Barron

This book challenges traditional theories and methods associated with the study of youth violence. It offers a fresh perspective by incorporating into the discourse the voices of youths speaking about their own experience of the justice system. The book underscores the ineffectual nature of current corrections programs which are prescribed to deal with youth violence. (more information)

Human Rights

Social Justice in the Age of the Market

Koen de Feyter

Rampant market economics has led to violations of human rights. Koen de Feyter questions how far the international human rights system provides effective protection against the adverse effects of globalization. His innovative suggestions for improving the human rights system include rethinking the states’ obligations, creating human rights responsibilities for big companies and international financial institutions and developing human rights obligations for states beyond their own national… (more information)

Journeying Forward

Dreaming First Nations’ Independence

Patricia Monture-Angus

Activist and scholar Patricia Monture-Angus examines her own intellectual and personal colonization as a way to share ideas about what she, as a Mohawk woman, sees as the next steps on the path to finding a solution to the continued oppression of First Nations people. She is dissatisfied with the circuitous progress with which Aboriginal claims and issues are being dealt with in both Canadian courts and Canadian politics. As well, because many current day First Nations political institutions are… (more information)

Manufacturing Guilt (2nd edition)

Wrongful Convictions in Canada

Barrie Anderson, Dawn Anderson

Manufacturing Guilt, 2nd edition, updates the cases presented in the first edition and includes two new chapters: one concerning the case of James Driskell and another regarding Dr. Charles Smith, whose role in forensic pathology evidence led to several wrongful convictions. In this new edition, the authors demonstrate that the same factors at play in the criminalization of the powerless and marginalized are found in cases of wrongful conviction. Contrary to popular belief, wrongful convictions… (more information)

Missing Women, Missing News

Covering Crisis in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

David Hugill

Missing Women, Missing News examines newspaper coverage of the arrest and trial of Robert Pickton, the man charged with murdering 26 street-level sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It demonstrates how news narratives obscured the complex matrix of social and political conditions that made it possible for so many women to simply ‘disappear’ from a densely populated urban neighborhood without provoking an aggressive response by the state. Grounded in a theory of ideology… (more information)

News, Truth and Crime

The Westray Disaster and Its Aftermath

John McMullan

The “truth” behind the Westray mine disaster remains a highly contested matter. This book is a study of how the media represented the events surrounding Westray. The absence of investigative reporting in favour of sensational stories about accidents and the pain and suffering of the bereaved obscures the truth. More importantly it presents a false truth so the question, “What happened at Westray?” remains largely unanswered. The answer to the question, “Who is responsible… (more information)

Perils and Possibilities

Social Activism and the Law

Byron Sheldrick

This book argues that law is a political resource that carries with it both opportunities and dangers for social activists. As such, activist groups must carefully navigate the contradictions within law to evaluate the strategic and tactical issues raised by law and legal institutions. Perils and Possibilities provides a guide to these issues and explores the types of questions activist groups need to ask themselves before embarking on a campaign of legal mobilization. In addition to a brief exploration… (more information)

Punched Drunk

Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO 1927–1975

Gary Genosko, Scott Thompson

In this critical study of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Scott Thompson and Gary Genosko expose the stakes and consequences of the enormous bureaucracy behind the administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario. Since its inception in 1927, the LCBO subjected alcohol consumption to its disciplinary gaze and generated knowledge about the drinking population. This book details how the LCBO tracked all alcohol consumption and capitalized on technological advances in order to generate… (more information)

Racialized Policing

Aboriginal People’s Encounters with the Police

Elizabeth Comack

“This book delves deep into the psyche of society’s attitudes towards racism, towards the racialization of issues, of social structures, and, importantly, of the police. It exposes the human element of justice, the attitudes and subconscious generalizations that culminate in differential justice, differential treatment, and the imbalance of socio-economic and criminal circumstances between peoples of Canada. Whether the abuse is racism, sexism, or discrimination on any other abhorrent… (more information)

Rethinking the Administration of Justice

Edited by Dawn Currie, Brian MacLean

This book analyzes different aspects of the administration of justice from the perspective of three emerging critical traditions of inquiry: Marxist political economy, feminist inquiry and discourse analysis. (more information)

Security, With Care

Restorative Justice and Healthy Societies

Elizabeth M. Elliott

“I learned that the problems were much deeper than a flawed criminal justice system, and that our work needed to begin in our relationships with each other and the natural world, and most importantly, with ourselves.” (from the preface) Restorative justice, as it exists in Canada and the U.S., has been co-opted and relegated to the sidelines of the dominant criminal justice system. In Security, With Care, Elizabeth M. Elliott argues that restorative justice cannot be actualized… (more information)

Sex Traffic

Prostitution, Crime and Exploitation

Paola Monzini

The trafficking of women and girls for prostitution is big business. This book focuses on the experiences of migrant women and girls who have very little choice or control over their lives. In the context of neo-liberal globalization, they are the new ‘slaves’ of the contemporary era. The annual worth of this global industry is now estimated to be approximately $7 billion, making it particularly attractive to organized crime networks. Women are forced to compete for work in conditions… (more information)

The Mean Girl Motive

Negotiating Power and Femininity

Nicole E.R. Landry

Prior to the 1980s, girls were completely excluded from research on childhood aggression, presumably because their ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’ made them averse to aggression. Not only were girls missing from research, their voices are frequently absent in current ‘girl aggression’ discourse. Despite this, ‘mean’ girls have received growing attention, especially in psychology. Besides conclusions that boys and girls aggress differently, much work has… (more information)

The Ocean Ranger

Remaking the Promise of Oil

Susan Dodd

On February 15, 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland taking the entire crew of eighty-four men — including the author’s brother — down with it. It was the worst sea disaster in Canada since the Second World War, but the memory of this event gradually faded into a sad story about a bad storm — relegated to the “Extreme Weather” section of the CBC archives. Susan Dodd resurrects this disaster from the realm of “history” and… (more information)

The Political Economy of Narcotics

Production, Consumption and Global Markets

Julia Buxton

For nearly a century, regimes around the world have upheld a prohibitionist stance toward narcotics. The US has led this global consensus, enforcing recognition of international narcotics conventions and laws. Vast resources are pumped into the “war on drugs.” But in practice, prohibition has been an abject failure. Narcotics use continues to rise, while technology and globalization have made a whole new range of drugs available to a vast consumer market. Where wealth and demand exist… (more information)

The Power to Criminalize

Violence, Inequality and Law

Gillian Balfour, Elizabeth Comack

Law’s power to criminalize—to turn a person into a criminal—is formidable. Traditional legal doctrine argues that law dispenses justice in an impartial and unbiased fashion. Critical legal theorists claim that law reproduces gender, race and class inequalities. The Power to Criminalize offers an analysis that acknowledges the tensions between these two views of law. Drawing from crown attorneys’ files on violent crime cases and interviews with defence lawyers, the authors… (more information)

The Westray Chronicles

A Case Study in Corporate Crime

Edited by Christopher McCormick

In this book authors from backgrounds as diverse as engineering to public relations are brought together to create a holistic picture of what happened at Westray. From an analysis of the geology of the underlying coal seam to an assessment of the difficulties of pinning legal responsibility on the company, the government or any of the managers, this book constitutes one of the few case studies of corporate crime in Canada. The contributors offer the reader challenging new ways to think about workplace… (more information)

Toxic Criminology

Environment, Law and the State in Canada

Edited by Susan C. Boyd, Dorothy E. Chunn, Robert Menzies

Critical research, writing and advocacy by legal academics and practitioners, NGOs, indigenous peoples and ecofeminists has existed on a global scale since the 1960s, but not until the 1990s did criminologists begin to examine environmental crime in a more concerted way. This late entrance by criminologist has much to do with who is involved in environmental crime—namely upper strata, mostly “white” men who run corporations and state agancies and the preception of environmental… (more information)

Victim No More

Women’s Resistance to Law, Culture and Power

Edited by Ellen Faulkner, Gayle MacDonald

This book challenges the idea that women are simply victims. It celebrates women’s resistance. It explores the moments beyond victimization. It argues that women do not stay crushed and broken, but move on, build and grow. The contributors to this edited edition celebrate the various forms of resistance: political resistance at both the collective and individual levels, legal resistance and resistance to cultural forms and labels. The editors argue that “Women-as-victim is not an emancipatory… (more information)

Women in Trouble

Connecting Women’s Law Violation to their Histories of Abuse

Elizabeth Comack

This book addresses one of the more alarming findings to emerge about women in prison: the fact that 80 percent report histories of physical and sexual abuse. “Elizabeth allows the women in this book to speak their own truth. It’s a graphic, shocking, depressing and absolutely necessary account of the connections between histories of abuse and trouble with the law.” - Karen Toole-Mitchell, Winnipeg Free Press (more information)