The ReeveLaw Blog

New Year, new laws: Everything you need to know about this year’s big bills | CTV News.

If a government wants to control a portion of the population they determine their cultural distinction and criminalize it. “In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African-Americans.” The drug was is the new Jim Crow.

Book Excerpt: Understanding the New Jim Crow | BillMoyers.com.

James Wigmore knows a lot about alcohol. If after drinking you don’t remember what you did, does that mean you have a defence for what you did?

Alcohol-Induced Blackouts | Jim Wigmore | LinkedIn.

Here’s the truth: “Culturally, we’ve become much more civilized,” “Globally, the decline (in crime) since the mid-1990s is also evident in countries from Europe to Asia.” For Harper to claim responsibility for the decline in crime in Canada is simply and blatently dishonest.

With Canada’s murder rate the lowest since 1966, are we simply becoming more civilized (again)? | National Post.

This is likely the last thing Eddie Greenspan wrote. “Imprisonment, if anything, increases the likelihood of reoffending.” YET “Our Conservative government believes that convicted criminals belong behind bars.” No qualifications, no exceptions. As an MP said: “Mr. Speaker, that is scary to hear.” Yes it is scary.

Greenspan & Doob: Stephen Harper’s scary crime bluster | National Post.

Now Tinder Is Being Used To ID Suspected Thieves | TechCrunch.

This is the American experience and this is where we are heading. Our public defenders are called duty counsel. Previously they have not been authorized to conduct trials however this is changing. Is this what we really want?

What If Your Freedom Was In The Hands Of The Public Defender? | Deblis & Deblis.

HARPER: Bah humbug. Screw the poor …again. “Equal justice for all is the most basic principle of a fair legal system. But for the poor who can’t afford to hire good lawyers, raise bail or pay for fines imposed as punishment, the criminal justice system is anything but equal. That inequality has now been made even worse by the imposition of mandatory victim surcharges as an additional fine on people convicted of crimes.”

Canadian criminal justice meets ghost of Christmas past | Toronto Star.

THE STAIRCASE – If you’re looking for a series to watch I highly recommend “The Staircase”. This is an 8 part documentary series of a murder case that shows the twists and turns, complexities, issues and difficulties of a murder trial. If you’re interested in finding out what a typical murder (or any serious criminal) trial is really like – in real life – check it out on youtube. Here’s episode one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2345vJZhSw

THE HARPER “WAR ON CRIME” HURTS US ALL – “The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), once recognized as a world leader in research and practice, is now lagging far behind many other systems through its more punitive approach to the management of offenders. To see proof of the failure of strategies like those being pursued by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, we need only to look to many states in America. Its “war on crime” included a significant reduction in judicial discretion, dramatic cutbacks to rehabilitation programs and the dismantling of reintegration infrastructure. This resulted in massive increases in prison populations and cost increases that promised to bankrupt future generations. Many states are now working to undo these policies and replace their strategies with a model very similar to the one that the Harper government has scrapped here in Canada. These states include Texas, which can hardly be described as being soft of crime.”

Oades: Tories’ approach to corrections endangers prisoners, public.