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How the law effects a society
Canadian criminal justice problems
Canadian criminal justice problems
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In every society around the world, the law is affecting everyone since it shapes the behavior and sense of right and wrong for every citizen in society. Laws are meant to control a society’s behavior by outlining the accepted forms of conduct. The law is designed as a neutral aspect existent to solve society’s problems, a system specially designed to provide people with peace and order. The legal system runs more efficiently when people understand the laws they are intended to follow along with their legal rights and responsibilities. Within the legal system, there is the Canadian criminal justice system, which is meant to guarantee the safety of citizens within the country and is used to sustain social control and deliver justice for a society. The criminal justice system is made up of many components that are constructed to ensure justice for victims of crimes along with criminals. It is designed to guarantee that punishing those who are guilty will protect the innocent. Within the criminal justice system, there is a document that consists of all the jurisdictions of criminal law. This document is called the criminal code and entitles the offences that are acknowledged in the jurisdiction along with consequences that are enforced for these crimes. Throughout the years, there are offences constantly being added to the Criminal Code of Canada and many proposals being made by the Law Reform Commission of Canada. In the year 1970, the Canadian government founded the Law Reform Commission of Canada to ensure the progression of law making and to make recommendations for legal changes . The Law Reform Commission of Canada is constantly importing and suggesting proposals towards the criminal code of Canada. During the year of 1985, t... ... middle of paper ... ...ty. It is available to reflect the social values of a society such as new concepts of justice. The law Reform Commission of Canada is persistently submitting legal proposals that can be used to improve a society and it also serves as a crucial role to the structure of law and the government and the Canadian Criminal Justice System. A proposal that has drawn a lot of debate is the idea of whether environmental destruction and maltreatment should be criminalized. After examining the given themes, environmental harm should not be considered a crime. The undesirable outcomes of criminalizing environmental harm outweigh the positives of criminalizing such a reform. Although the environment affects people’s lives, so do the laws and regulations. This crime is too broad and may result in more harm than good in the Canadian society and the Canadian Criminal Justice System.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has long been the legal document that protects Canadian citizens from infringements made by unscrupulous politicians and legislators. However, there are questions explored about the Sections of the Charter and in those of Section 7 in particular. This is because of the protective function of Section 7 and its obligations of the protection of a citizen’s rights to life, liberty and security of the person. There are third parties that could be posing “threats” to Charter interests and therefore the extents of Section 7 in terms of its protective function for individuals’ rights are put into question. Section 7 of the Charter says that “[E]veryone has the right to life, liberty and the security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” The meaning of Section 7 is to adhere to each individual’s right to the sanctity of life, their physical liberty in a narrow sense, and the integrity of the person is to be kept secure. However, what would the extent of Section 7 be or moreover, what is the extent of each protected interest? The objective of this paper is to examine the extents of Section 7 of the Charter in which the focus is on the protected interests of life, liberty and security of the person. Each protected interest will be discussed in depth with its relationship to a specific Canadian court case. This will help to determine the extent of Section 7 and therefore help understand how much the Charter protects the freedom of Canadian citizens. For right to life, the First Nation communities in Canada had ‘high risk’ of threats to health in their water systems according to Health Canada. The focus of this topic...
Crime control and due process are two different ideal types of criminal justice. One could say they are extremes on a continuum. The role of crime control is to get the criminal off the street and to protect the innocent. The due process model of criminal justice is like an obstacle course, you have to keep going through legal obstacles to ensure in the end you convict the right person. In Canada the police lean toward crime control and the courts lean toward due process. This causes tension between the police and the courts. I will argue for both crime control and due process, putting more weight on due process If we did not have due process in Canada, people in positions of power, could manipulate the system for their own personal or political gain and railroad the innocent off to prison.
This paper will be focusing on the controversial issue of mandatory minimum sentences in Canada. There has been much debate over this topic, as it has quickly become implemented for the sentencing of drug offenders, drug-related crimes and banned firearm offences. I will argue that every case that comes through the criminal justice system is different and deserves a fair trial with a sentence that is not already determined for them. There have been many cases where the judge has no discretion in the sentence due to the mandatory minimum sentences pre-determined for the case, no matter what the aggravating or mitigating factors were. I will argue that the mandatory minimum sentences in Canada should be reduced or eliminated as they result in very few positive outcomes for the offender and society, increase recidivism rates, are very expensive, and in many cases are detrimental and unjust. Throughout this essay I will discuss two main cases that represent an unjust sentencing outcome due to the mandatory minimum sentencing laws. I will stress how it should be the discretion of the judge to individualize the sentences based on the offender’s mitigating factors, aggravating factors and background. Leroy Smickle is the first case discussed through the essay, which ended with the judge striking down the mandatory minimum sentences in Ontario due to the possession of a loaded gun. Robert Latimer was also a highly controversial Canadian case about a father who killed his mentally disabled daughter out of compassion to end her severe suffering. I will be using many academic articles throughout this essay to give empirical support to the overall argument.
The Canadian Justice system is run like a well-oiled machine. It is based on the fair and humane treatment of suspects who remain innocent until proven guilty. There is one big question that has been debated since July 14th, 1976 - should the death penalty have been abolished in Canada? The new younger generation of Canadians seems to agree with me that the death penalty should be resurrected in Canada.
Griffiths, C. T. (2007). Canadian Criminal Justice: A Primer (3rd Edition ed.). Toronto: Thomson Nelson.
The article Marginalization and Wrongful Convictions, discusses issues with Canadian criminal justice system that has led to wrongful convictions. This problem seems to be more complex than just human errors. (Anderson, 2009: 7) Wrongful convictions closely contribute to the practice of the Adversarial Legal Processes, bureaucratic and professional wrongdoings, “tunnel vision,” and social inequality. ( )Wrongful convictions harm innocent people, traumatize them and undermine their healthy relationships with their loved ones.
Today our world is filled with crime. The people committing these crimes must have a consequence for their illegal actions. The system in place to keeping everything fair and safe is called the criminal justice system. This was put in place to ensure there is fairness and justice served to people who break the laws set up by the government.
As noted by Allen (2016), measures that are implemented outside the courtrooms, especially in a formal procedure, may lead to the provision of accurate as well as timely considerations for youth crime. As such, Canada is keen in the reinforcement of these regulations, as they determine both short and long-term judicial solutions. Most importantly, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) in Canada plays a major role in the implementation of extrajudicial measures as they may affirm to the occurrence of future issues. According to the Government of Canada (2015a), this calls for an attempt to channel out or divert such offenders from the mainstream justice system to a lesser formal way of dealing with the offenses. This paper attempts to investigate the appropriateness of the extrajudicial measures in Canada, and the reason behind why we established these provisions of the YCJA. It also illustrates an example of a Canadian case, which questions the extrajudicial measures. This discussion canvasses the main argument as for or against the extrajudicial measures in Canada through the adoption of recommendations to the Canadian Government about the proper situations in which such processes should be used.
Organized crime takes many forms, from low-level street violence committed on city streets to white collar crime and fraud perpetrated in corporate settings. It is not surprising then, that one of the key problems pertaining to organized criminal activity in Canada is the convoluted legal definition of organized crime. Indeed, there remains little to no consensus as to what organized crime and criminal organizations should be defined as, how the presence of said crime should be measured, and what types of policies and strategies should be implemented to remove this problem from the Canadian criminal justice landscape.
Improved economy helped Canada’s rate of crime decrease since the 1990’s but different evidence suggests that methods used in response to serious crimes during that time may have influenced the crime trends. The Constitution Act of 1867 contains the authority to enact criminal laws and procedures to be followed by the federal government (Welsh & Irving, 2005). First enacted in 1892, the Criminal Code, continually revised, is used for setting out two main categories of offense: indictable and summary conviction, indictable being homicide and robbery, more serious kinds of crime with involved trials (Welsh & Irving, 2005). Canada is also known for its Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and these police ...
Youth and juvenile crime is a common and serious issue in current society, and people, especially parents and educators, are pretty worried about the trend of this problem. According to Bala and Roberts, around 17% of criminals were youths, compared to 8% of Canadian population ranging between 12 to 18 years of age between 2003 and 2004 (2006, p37). As a big federal country, Canada has taken a series of actions since 1908. So far, there are three justice acts in the history of Canadian juvenile justice system, the 1908 Juvenile Delinquents Act, the 1982 Young Offenders Act, and the 2003 Youth Criminal Justice Act. In Canada, the judicial system and the principle of these laws have been debated for a long time. This paper will discuss how these three laws were defined and why one was replaced by another.
The criminal justice system is composed of three parts – Police, Courts and Corrections – and all three work together to protect an individual’s rights and the rights of society to live without fear of being a victim of crime. According to merriam-webster.com, crime is defined as “an act that is forbidden or omission of a duty that is commanded by public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law.” When all the three parts work together, it makes the criminal justice system function like a well tuned machine.
Mauer, Marc. "The Race to Incarcerate." The Case For Penal Abolition. Ed. W. Gordon West and Ruth Morris. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars? Press, 2000. 89-99.
Punishments for crime in Canada. If this bill is put forwards it will affect all the classes of people, middle, upper and lower. In our lives we like not having to worry about getting robbed or killed but not everyone can be worry free about crime. I would like to make it so that no one will have to worry about crime. Lots of places in Canada, people have to worry about crime and I believe the reason for this is because the punishment isnt harsh enough. “ A criminal should not be allowed to enjoy a better quality lifestyle than the victim. And in the case of first degree murder, even life in prison presupposes a better lifestyle than that of the deceased and, thus, the criminal’s death is logical. Not immoral, barbaric or vengeful, just fair.” said Jeffrey W. Tighe, Toronto.
Laws serve several purposes in the criminal justice system. The main purpose of criminal law is to protect, serve, and limit human actions and to help guide human conduct. Also, laws provide penalties and punishment against those who are guilty of committing crimes against property or persons. In the modern world, there are three choices in dealing with criminals’ namely criminal punishment, private action and executive control. Although both private action and executive control are advantageous in terms of costs and speed, they present big dangers that discourage their use unless in exceptional situations. The second purpose of criminal law is to punish the offender. Punishing the offender is the most important purpose of criminal law since by doing so; it discourages him from committing crime again while making him or her pay for their crimes. Retribution does not mean inflicting physical punishment by incarceration only, but it also may include things like rehabilitation and financial retribution among other things. The last purpose of criminal law is to protect the community from criminals. Criminal law acts as the means through which the society protects itself from those who are harmful or dangerous to it. This is achieved through sentences meant to act as a way of deterring the offender from repeating the same crime in the future.