Canada’s criminal justice system (CJS) is not perfect; there are flaws, imperfections. Imperfections such as the dark figure of crime, as well as the criminal justice funnel, play a key role within the CJS that can determine how the public perceives our justice system. Griffiths (2015) defines the dark figure of crime to simply be the “difference between how much crime occurs and how much crime is reported to or discovered by the police.” (p. 45) This unreported amount of crime is the starting point of the criminal justice funnel where the numerical figure for each division decreases drastically. As with all crime in Canada, police are unable to resolve the matter unless it is detected by the officer themselves, or if it is reported by the …show more content…
Before we can answer this question, we must further understand how the dark figure of crime affects the criminal justice funnel. The process of the funnel, in regard to corrections and conditional release for example, begins with the dark figure, the number of unreported crimes. It then continues to decrease as the funnel progresses down to the total number of reported offences, then to the cases with guilty findings, sentenced admission to provincial/territorial custody, and finally to the lowest count regarding warrants of committal admissions to federal jurisdiction. As you advance down the funnel, the counts drop drastically, decreasing almost 450% from the first known stage (incidents reported to the police) to the last stage (federal jurisdictions) (Griffiths, 2015, p. 27). This is mainly due to the fact that victims do not report crimes that are committed against them, resulting in the spike in the dark figure of crime which displays approximately 60% of crime remains unreported as stated in the article by Fohring (2014). It is further proved that victims are “highly motivated to avoid be labelled as victims.” (p. 8) Individuals, for the most part, do not want to walk around the streets and have people treat them differently, like they are a different person, simply because they are a victim. Additionally, they do not want to be subject to revictimization …show more content…
Victims are simply afraid to come forward and share the information about the crimes committed against them. There are many reasons why domestic violence or spousal abuse victims do not come forward and tell their story right away. Bostick (2017) outlines some of the main reasons such as “A lot of victims prefer to create an alternate reality, one in which the abuse didn’t happen” or that the “Victims find it easier to pretend to be normal and live a lie than face the horror of sexual abuse and trauma” as well as the simple fact that “Naming an act of sexual violence makes it real” (para. 4). All of these reasons can have a significant impact on the CJS and the dark figure of crime because people can argue that sexual assault is one of the most personal attacks on an individual. Teitel (2014) later expands and explains that in the questioning process, there are no easy question, there are no questions the victim would want to answer, and this may be another reason why victims do not come forward (para. 3). In regard to the criminal justice funnel, the self-reported incidents down to actual convictions for spousal assaults decreased by almost 83 percent (Griffiths, 2015, p. 27). The CJS must implement matters to make it more approachable for victims of such sexual assault, spousal assault, and
How to appropriately and fairly carry out criminal justice matters is something that every country struggles with. A major reason for this struggle is the fallibility of the justice system. It is acceptable to concede that the possibility of human error in every case and investigation may lead to a wrongful conviction. In the case of David Milgaard, however, Canada's Criminal Justice System not only erred, but failed grievously, resulting in millions of dollars wasted, in a loss of public confidence in the system, and most tragically, in the robbery of two decades of one man's life. Factors including, but not limited to, the social context at the time of the crime, the social perception of deviance, the influence of the media, and the
N., Tomsich, E., Gover, A. R., & Jennings, W. G. (2016)). As Mrs. Whitfield was going through college she would have various flash backs of her childhood. 25% of women and 15% of men have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) before the age of 25. It was often said that college students who have been involved in DV struggles academically, transfer institutions, or just drop out completely. Mrs. Whitfield would be labeled as a victim-offender because she was once a victim and now she is the offender. “Research on the victim-offender overlap observes this trend across delinquency, property crimes, and violent offenses, with the relationship between victimization and offending being strongest for violent crimes, particularly homicide” (Jennings et al., 2012). This would explain why Mrs. Whitfield had expressed that she killed her ex-husband because she caught him cheating and it was with a white woman. She witnessed her mother killing her father because he had cheated on her with a colleague. It has been shown in a study that females were offending equal to or greater than males. Physical maltreatment increases the risk for violence later on in life. Children who have witness and/or experienced the direct benefits of
As mentioned, Canada is utilizing an alternative response to crime that is not primarily based in mass incarceration and punishments(Webster, C., & Doob, A, 2008). This result was possible in Canada because Canada has managed to resist wider punitive trends in terms of crime control against crimes. I believe Canada’s stability in levels of incarceration over the last 40 years is rooted in Canada’s cultural beliefs on restraint in the use of imprisonment and punishment itself
Many believed that there was no reason to report an abuse because the police or authorities would not believe them. However, they did not believe many until proven truthful, anyone can say someone sexually assaulted them, but they did not. This was to take precautions amongst both the victim and the accused perpetrator. In the article, there were many aspects that explained that the woman felt more victimized because of the courts decision to believe the abuser until proved he/she is guilt. Also, many children blamed themselves for the rape, so they would not tell their parents. To add, as we read throughout the article, we can distinguish that many abused individuals are scared and embarrassed about the sexual harassment. Many factors were brought to attention: youth and woman fell under the micro-level individual factors, and the community and police did not want to really intervene. These factors result in many victims maybe later on abusing others because they were abused, which should not happen. So, therefore, there was a lot of valuable information presented throughout this
Wrongful conviction is an issue that has plagued the Canadian Justice System since it came to be. It is an issue that is hard to sort out between horrific crimes and society’s desire to find truth and justice. Incidences of wrongful conviction hit close to home right here in Saskatchewan as well as across the entire nation. Experts claim “each miscarriage of justice, however, deals a blow to society’s confidence in the legal justice system” (Schmalleger, Volk, 2014, 131). Professionals in the criminal justice field such as police, forensic analyst, and prosecutors must all be held accountable for their implications in wrongful convictions. There are several reasons for wrongful convictions such as racial bias, false confessions, jailhouse
How often do we stop to think about the minorities of this country and how they become involved and are treated in the criminal justice system? I surmise; only some of us will concern ourselves with such details. For some like myself; we might work with individuals of the Aboriginal community or have interacted with members of this group whether through school or work. Canada “had an Aboriginal identity in 2011 of 4 % or 1.4 million people” (Kelly-Scott and Smith, 2015). Of this total there is a gross overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Canada’s Criminal Justice System. This overrepresentation of Aboriginals in the CJS comes as a result of socio economic factors, sentencing reforms, systemic discrimination, education and employment and victimization of Aboriginal women. In partial fulfilment of this course, this paper will address the leading factors which has led to the overrepresentation of this group in the CJS.
22, 2010, when the government banned the double credit, Kevin Page, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer, predicted that the new approach would cost the federal and provincial governments as much as $5-billion a year by 2015-16. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General Nicholson’s statement on Second Reading of Bill C-25, or the Truth in Sentencing Act, criticizes judicial competency in our criminal courts. He uses the phrase, “generous credit for pre-sentence custody” four times, and links it to, “eroding public confidence in the integrity of the justice system.” That means that the judges, collectively, have been eroding public confidence in the justice
They stated that some victims may not be forthcoming with reporting again because they may feel that the criminal justice system did not help with preventing reabuse. Also victims of repeated victimzations may have already had their partner arrested or a restraining order put on them. "Despite their intervention, the victim was revictimized" (Buzawa et al., 2012). As we see in "Till Death Do Us Part" the different stories of victims that took legal action to stop the violence that they lived in everyday, but it did not stop the offender. There needs to be more attention given to the victims and what they need in order to try to prevent further abuse. Repeat victimzations accounts for a huge part in all crimes (Analyzing repeat victimizations, 2015). One of the things that can be use to help stop revictimizations that is a time frame that can help. Domestic violence is one of the highest of crimes that is predictable to repeat over again. Estimate repeated victimzations for domestic violence is about 44% (Analyzing repeat victimizations,
Introduction Based on the 2016 Canadian Crime Statistics it was discovered that the theory that best described Canada is the Rational Choice Theory. This theory explains that when people desire to commit a crime they have more reasons and see more positive outcomes with committing the crime and disobeying the law than not. Like most, Canadian citizens pick and choose their battles with committing crimes; they know what is legal and good, along with what is illegal and bad. The rational choice theory shows that most of the crimes being committed, were crimes that could possibly help support the committers families. Even though the cost of the crime was big, they had more reasons to commit the crime do to the larger outcomes
In today’s media, countries such as the United States are portrayed as having corrupt legal systems which are responsible for mass incarceration. However, many do not know this is also a problem in Canada. New bills have recently been put in place to incarcerate more people for non-violent crimes. The poor are being kept off the streets by being sent to prison. Different races make up a small population in Canada, but a large population in its prison system.
The Canadian criminal justice system collects statistics and data on a variety of topics in respect to both offenders and victims. Some of the data that is collected include information about an offender or victim's age, race, and marital status. Whether or not data should be collected and what kind of data that is being collected has been a topic of controversy. Canada has no official policy regarding the use of racial profiling, but that does not mean that it is not prevalent in our society. It is known that making information about the race of an offender public potentially leads to racial profiling by the public; however the collection of data is important for other areas of the criminal justice system. Collecting data for use in the criminal
Shockingly, “Aboriginal offenders constitute 3% of the adult Canadian population but account for approximately 20% of admissions into custody and probation” (Gutierrez, 2014). Such an inordinate reality may have span from violent past Canadian-Aboriginal relations; which gave rise to the marginalization of Native people. This marginalization led to there being higher counts of criminogenic behaviours amongst Aboriginals and thus resulted in their overrepresentation in the justice system, and higher rates of recidivism. Although the hardships they once have endured for the most part have ended, their communities offenders are still socially, culturally, and economically marginalized (Gutierrez,
The Canadian criminal justice system is often represented by the balanced scales of justice. These scales symbolize the need for the law to be viewed objectively in order to ensure a fair determination of innocence (Griffiths, 2011). Ideally, the criminal justice system should incorporate the values of the scales of justice to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate the law. However, despite justice being supposedly impartial, there is an overwhelming representation of Aboriginal people in all stages of the criminal justice process, from the charging of the individuals in court to their sentence in prison (Jordan, 2014). This is a clear indication that the criminal justice system is not adequately representing the needs of
An American is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds, and every 8 minutes, that victim is a child. Only 310 out of 1,000 assaults are reported, but only 6 out of 1,000 perpetrators end up in prison (RAINN). Although sexual assault is egregious, these perpetrators are less likely to end up in prison than other criminals. The reason that is seems to be that victims do not report their cases. So why are sexual assault victims afraid to share their stories? Victims often do not report their assault because of many reasons, including the fear of reprisal, the belief that the police could not and would not do anything about the case, or because they simply did not know how to approach an official.
The challenge of crime policy is that crime is not evenly distributed across the socio-economic population. There are a multitude of reasons why this is a fact, but what is important to know, is that it greatly impacts crime policy. Criminal justice policies have vastly changed, especially in the last fifty years, in an effort to respond to citizens’ needs because of the uneven distribution of crime. Therefore, this means it is a reactionary response. It is imperative to remember that crime tends to effect the poor, the young, and particular ethnic groups more, when examining criminal justice policies. Policies that are of the criminal justice persuasion in their nature, in the extent of the policies, and in their impact directly effects the liberties of a governments’ citizens are always in flux.