The Canadian Criminal
Justice System: Inequalities
of Class, Race and Gender
By: Rajean Koshy, Susan
McKelvey, Nirmala Ramnarine
CLASS
Two basic dimensions in critical criminological analyses of
class-biased nature of law are:
What gets defined in legislation as crime and what is controlled as
regulatory law.
Differential processing of working-class individuals, professionalclass individuals and corporations in the criminal justice system for
“criminal acts.”
CLASS
Political economy
A relatively small group of individuals control a very large proportion
of the wealth and political power in society.
The elite class
They influence the political-legal process.
The social, economic and physical harm they inflict on society are
not treated seriously under either criminal or regulatory law.
The working class
Crimes committed by working-class people are prosecuted more
severely under law resulting in incarceration
CLASS
Definition of corporate crimes - (Goff and Reuson, 1978)
Behaviors, whose economic and physical costs to individuals and
the environment far exceed those of street crimes.
Corporate crimes
Harmful economic, human, and environmental acts committed by
corporate official in the pursuit of organizational goals , usually profit,
and generally unpunished by the state.
Examples of crimes:
Fraud: Street crimes for 1 year estimated at $4 billion.
This is just 5% of a take from one corporate crime.
For example, Michael Millken aka “Junk Bond King”.$325 Million.
CLASS
Homicide: 1975-85
On-the-job fatalities - 907
First degree murders- 335
Assaults: 1994-1995 (Desmond Ellis)
Corporate assaults 25% greater than street assaults.
On-the-job deaths: Charles Reason, Lois Ross, Craig Patterson:
Only 1/3 of job, deaths and injuries related to worker careless
40% job-related injuries related to illegal working conditions.
25% job-related injuries due to unsafe but legal working conditions.
CLASS
Safety Code Violation:
For example, Westray Mine explosion……26 lives
14,000 deaths per annum from industrial accidents.
Illegal Products:
30,000 deaths from unsafe, illegal products
Ford Motor Company’s production of Pinto-gas tank major defect
Dalton intra-uterine device (IUD)- unsterilized.
A.H Robins “killed” 17 women; infected 200,000.
CLASS
Why do corporate officials and corporations experience few
economic, social or legal penalties?
The class bias of criminal law
Corporate lawlessness is not even defined as criminal.
Harmful behaviors are illegal but within the parameters of regulatory
law, rather than criminal code.
Before 1941, Corporations were immune to criminal liability because
they had no minds of their own,
Decisions at provincial court level have eliminated incarcerations.
Corporations only prosecuted for safety violations not their
consequences.
Corporations have direct input into the formulation and passing of
regulatory laws, resulting in a lax system.
CLASS
Further dimensions of legal requirements
Corporations are able to avoid prosecution for illegal activity.
Even if they are punished, the penalty is usually an inconsequential
fine.
How to get tough on corporate Crime ?
“Three strikes and you are out” legislation
Tougher laws, regulations and sanctions.
Judicial decisions should emphasize corporate responsibility for
harmful acts
Breakdown corporate inducement to crime by
Shaming and positive repentance
New legal tools and controls
CLASS
Corporate accountability and restructing
New forms of penalty and criminal sanctioning
Application of countervailing force against crime
In Canada replacement of Environmental
Contaminants Act with:
New legislation for fines up to $1 million per day and up
5 years imprisonment
More prosecutions in the Federal Gov’t Department
22 prosecutions in 1991 compared to only one in 1990
CLASS
However class bias is shown in the differential conviction and
sentencing for street crime involving poor working class
offenders as compared with middle class or wealthier
offenders.
54% of rich defendants found guilty
72%of poor defendants found guilty
Even when found guilty upper and middle class offenders were
given lenient sentences
.
What hope do we have for the future?
Pro regulatory pressure groups provides the crucial leverage that
forces the state to direct at least some attention to the area of
corporate crime
RACE



Almost half of Canadians believe aboriginals have an equal
or better standard of living than the average citizen. 40%
believed that Natives have only themselves to blame for
their problems.
Overall, 17% of persons incarcerated in Canada were
aboriginal, while only 3.7% of the population reported
aboriginal origins in the 1991 census.
Western provinces have the highest aboriginal inmates,
17% in B.C, 31% Alberta, 73% in Saskatchewan & 57% in
Manitoba, and 7% in Ontario.
RACE



An Alberta report provides a worst-case scenario of what
could happen in Western Canada if the trends of the
criminal justices system continue to be based on
colonialism: by the year 2011, aboriginal offenders will
account for 18,552 (38%) of all admissions to federal &
provincial correctional centers in Alberta, compared to
29.5%.
Women constitute the minority in the justice system;
however aboriginal women represent in both provincial &
federal institutions almost 50% even though they make up
for less than 3% of the population in Canada.
Women are especially overrepresented in the western
provinces. For example, in Pine Grove Provincial Prison for
women in northern Saskatchewan, 1988, 83% were
aboriginal, the figures has now gone up to 95%.
RACE



A study on the Ontario Native Women’s Association found
37% of aboriginal women in Ontario provincial correctional
institutions were 20 years of age or younger, 52% were
first arrested between the ages of 14 to 17 & 18% were
even younger when first arrested.
They also found 55% had been incarcerated 1 to 3 times
previously 40% had been arrested fifteen times or more,
21% had seventeen prior incarcerations.
There is differential charging of aboriginal people by police
for relatively minor public offences. Research done in
Regina found that 30% of the Indians arrested for
drunkenness were charged & sent to court. By contrast
only 11% of non-Natives were charged & sent to court.
GENDER
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The main areas of concern regarding the justice system’s treatment
of women have been the system’s biases, injustices, and
ineffectiveness in dealing with women who have been victims of
domestic assault.

“[There is a] conventional opinion that violence against wives or
female partners is in certain ways distinct from violence towards
non-family members in the street” and that it is a private family
matter (Edwards, pg 49).

In 1980 research done by Linda McLeod revealed that at least 10%
of women were victims of domestic violence per year
GENDER

According to Stats Canada, in 1995 women were six times more
likely to be killed by their partner than a stranger.

Women’s reluctance to press charges is frequently cited as a reason
for police non-intervention in domestic violence situations.

“There is evidence that police do have judgmental attitudes to the
behavior of women victims which they may consider contributory to
the man’s violence (Ex. If they think the women is ‘nagging,’
‘hysterical,’ or ‘a sluttish housewife’)” (Edwards, pg 95)
GENDER

“In practice, though many situations contained the potential of
escalating after the police had left, the police still displayed
considerable unwillingness to act. The only type of situation that
resulted in arrest in this study, as with others, was one in which
violence continued after police had arrived or the aggressor was
‘stroppy’ with the police. Officers relied on their own presence and
ability to calm things down. If these attempts failed, arrest would
follow but even then the arrest might not be for assault.” (Edwards,
pg 105)

“Throughout recent history, violent assault committed against a wife,
co-habittee or sexual intimate has been systematically diverted
away from the criminal justice process and dealt with as a civil
matter, or a minor misdemeanor – or victims have been told to cope
with it on their own. The decision to divert cases out of the criminal
justice process or to ‘down-crime’ and reduce the charge is taken at
the discretion of the charge officer.” (Edwards, pg 50)
GENDER
SEXUAL ASSAULT

The biggest judicial concern in terms of sexual assault is that
women are generally more afraid of the additional suffering and
humiliation that the justice system brings than being revengefully
attacked by the offender. Further, very small percentages of rapists
are convicted.
GENDER
INCARCERATED WOMEN

From the example of the prison Federal Prison for Women (P4W)
women offenders often stressed that their incarceration denied
them of control over their own lives including their schedules,
activities and space. They were, however, still expected by the
correctional staff and parole board to take self-determined action in
making responsible choices to become law abiding citizens. This left
them caught between what they are allowed to do and what they
could do.
GENDER

Prison programs for women reinforce the stereotypical social and
occupational roles of women in society. This includes laundry, doing
kitchen work, and sewing as available prison programs.

Report in 1990 by the Task force on Federally Sentenced Women
established five fundamental principles:
1. empowering women (programs to raise their self-esteem)
2. providing more meaningful choices in programs and community
facilities (a wider range of options)
3. treating women with respect and dignity (to enhance self-respect)
4. providing a physically and emotionally supportive environment
5. sharing responsibility for prisoners’ welfare among correctional
workers and members of the community (co-operation) among
government, correctional workers and voluntary organizations)
GENDER
CONCLUSIONS

To move beyond piecemeal and partial socio-legal reforms in the
area of gender and social justice it is necessary to develop a more
comprehensive theoretical, analytic and policy-based socialist
feminist critique of our society. This includes a dynamic and
integrated analysis of the inter-relationships between patriarchy,
capitalist society and state control of women according to feminist
criminologists such as Gregory (1986) and Chesney-Lind and Bloom
(1997).

“What is necessary is a distinctly ‘feminist’ criminology which can
explain crime in general while studying women in particular” (Currie,
D. 1986).
CRITICISMS

Issues covered in the chapter were limited:

The Race section only discussed Aboriginals and ignored all other
races.
The Gender section only covered domestic violence, sexual
assault, and conditions of one prison (P4W) which is no longer
open.

DEFINITIONS

1. Harmful economic,
human, and
environmental acts
committed by
corporate officials in
the pursuit of
organizational goals
usually profit, and
generally unpunished
by the state








a) Domestic violence
b) Political economy
c) class-gender relations
d) postcolonial justice
e) Corporate crime
f) European colonialism
g) Environmental
Contaminants Act
h) socialist feminist perspective
DEFINITIONS

2. Usually violence
against women by
their partners. The
Violence Against
Women Survey found
that 25% of women
over 16 years of age
experience violence
from a current or
post-marital partner.







a) Domestic violence
b) Political economy
c) class-gender relations
d) postcolonial justice
f) European colonialism
g) Environmental
Contaminants Act
h) socialist feminist perspective
DEFINITIONS

3. New legislation
after 1987, which
substantially
increased the penalty
for environmental
pollution to up to $1
million/day and up to
5 years in prison for
guilty corporate
executives






b) Political economy
c) class-gender relations
d) postcolonial justice
f) European colonialism
g) Environmental
Contaminants Act
h) socialist feminist perspective
DEFINITIONS

4. The takeover by
white settlers of the
land belonging to
aboriginal peoples,
resulting in their near
genocidal destruction,
both physically and
culturally.

b) Political economy
c) class-gender relations
d) postcolonial justice

f) European colonialism




h) socialist feminist perspective
DEFINITIONS

5. Wealth and political
power concentrated in
a few individuals and
corporations, giving
them substantial
political, legal, and
economic control over
our ostensibly
democratic society

b) Political economy
c) class-gender relations

d) postcolonial justice

h) socialist feminist perspective

DEFINTIONS

6. An alternative
system of justice for
aboriginals that
includes aboriginal
self-determination
and resolution of land
claims in conjunction
with traditional
healing and harmony
restoration

c) class-gender relations
d) postcolonial justice

h) socialist feminist perspective

DEFINITIONS

7. A focus on the
relationship between
class and gender and
how it is manifested,
especially in the
subjugation of women
in the productive and
reproductive spheres
of society

c) class-gender relations

h) socialist feminist perspective
DISCUSSION QUESTION #1
In the case of domestic violence is mandatory
charges (or arrests) an adequate solution to this
social problem?
Keep in mind some of the reasons for women’s inhibition to
lay charges against their spouses:




Learned helplessness – affects the ability of the battered to make
the right decisions (Buzawa & Buzawa, pg 143).
restricted access to money
isolation, retaliation and dependence on the batterer (Buzawa &
Buzawa, pg 144).
minority women may be faced with inhibition based on language
and other cultural barriers.
DISCUSSION QUESTION #1





Our Answer is both yes and no. We believe mandatory arrest is a
good start because:
of its attempt to limit police discretion, (many officers do not have
adequate knowledge of how to handle domestic violence
women who are in these traumatizing situations may feel relief that
their immediate source of terror has been removed as well as their
responsibility for coercive actions.
it acts as a deterrent, when an offender has been arrested the
second time around they’ll be less likely to act the same. Also, the
label of “wife beater” is a strong deterrent because of the negative
publicity
“relying on preference remains problematic for three subgroups:
a)women whose physical or psychological entrapment prevents their
expressing a preference for arrest, b) minorities who may view
expressing a preference for arrest as a betrayal of cultural norms
and c)women who may simply not understand the nature of their
risk” (Buzawa & Buzawa, pg 143).
DISCUSSION QUESTION #1




but it is not a final solution because:
while Mandatory Arrests reduce violence in some cases it may
increase violence in others
appears contradictory to arrest in the name of liberty for the women
when she does not want that approach to be taken. (Buzawa &
Buzawa, pg 124)
some, such as Larry Sherman of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence
Experiment, argue that mandatory arrest does not deter domestic
violence except among select groups (eg. married , employed men)
(Buzawa & Buzawa, pg 125) The experiment claims that arrest
actually increases in the long run especially among unemployed,
unmarried and minority males (Buzawa & Buzawa, pg 125)
DISCUSSION QUESTION #1
Therefore, mandatory arrests should be
combined with other actions such as treatment
for the prosecuted. Where arrests have been
combined with treatment and prosecution as in
the Canadian experiment reported by Dutton
(1986), batterers were 10 times less likely to be
recidivists than when arrest alone was used
(40% vs. 4%) (Buzawa & Buzawa, pg 128)
DISCUSSION QUESTION #2

Question: “ It is a myth that guilty upper
class offenders are punished sufficiently”.
Discuss.
DISCUSSION QUESTION #2


Answer: yes and no
Yes, it is a myth.
Many corporate crimes are not even defined as crimes so they get
away with many crimes. Corporations are immune to criminal
liability because they have no minds of their own. Incarcerations are
eliminated at the provincial level. Corporations are only prosecuted
for safety violations and not consequences. Corporations have input
into the laws regulating them resulting in a lax system which allows
them to not be brought to justice. Statistics show only 54% of these
defendants are found guilty against 72% for poor defendants.
Harmful behaviors are illegal but within the parameters of regulatory
law, for example, safety violations, rather than criminal law.
DISCUSSION QUESTION #2


No, it is not a myth.
Laws are being passed. Also the federal and provincial government
are getting tough on corporate crime. For example , 22
prosecutions were made in 1991versus one in 1987 and presidents
of corporations are being incarcerated. The state is not as tough as
we want them to be but they are making some inroads.
OUTSIDE REFERENCES
• C. Buzawa & E. Buzawa.
Domestic Violence: The
Criminal Justice Response.
(2003). London: Sage
Publications
• Edwards, Susan. Policing
‘Domestic’ Violence. (1991).
London: Sage Publications