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New issue now available!
Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Volume 60, No. 4, October 2018
CJCCJ Online: http://bit.ly/cjccj604
What's in a Name? Shifting Identities of Traditional Organized Crime in Canada in the Transnational Fight against the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta
Anna Sergi
The Italian antimafia authorities have warned Canadian law enforcement about the risks and the growing concerns for the infiltration of clans of the Calabrian mafia, known as ‘ndrangheta, in Eastern Canada.3 The alarm linked to the rise of the ‘ndrangheta challenges the paradigms of traditional organized crime in Canada, because the ‘ndrangheta is presented as traditional but also innovative and more pervasive than other mafia-type groups. Through access to confidential investigations and interviews of key specialist law enforcement teams in Toronto and Montreal, this article investigates today's institutional perception of mafia – the ‘ndrangheta in particular – in Canada when compared to Italian conceptualizations. I will argue that the changes in narratives in Canada can be read in relation to changes in the Italian identity in the country, moving towards regionalization and specialist knowledge of ethnic differences.
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Masarah Paquet-Clouston, David Décary-Hétu
This article explores how online drug sellers interact on cryptomarket discussion forums. The results suggest that the sellers' interactions are modulated by their status as sellers. Sellers fuse two roles to adjust their status, combining the role of entrepreneur and the role of volunteer expert. As entrepreneurs, sellers post promotional messages to take advantage of the visibility provided by the forums. They also take on an expert volunteer role, making “effort donations” to the community by helping other participants. These effort donations may be made with the aim of raising their reputation within a community, a key element in the sale of illegal products online. These donations could also be motivated by a form of participatory act, which benefits the maximum number of participants and ensures the welfare and development of the virtual community.
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Alissa Greer, Justin Sorge, Kimberly Sharpe, Daniel Bear, Scott Macdonald
People who use drugs are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system in Canada; how they come to be in contact with this system is typically through encounters with police. Understanding the nature of encounters between people who use drugs and police is vital to developing interventions and policing practices that are appropriate, fair, and promote the well-being of this community. This study quantitatively and qualitatively examines police encounters from the perspectives of youths and adults who use drugs in Victoria, British Columbia. The results show divergent predictors of police encounters and perceptions of these encounters based on age cohort. Youths were more likely to report police encounters and were more likely to perceive these encounters as negative compared with the adult cohort. Among both age groups, unstable housing was a significant predictor of reporting a recent encounter with the police. Among adults only, opioid use was a significant predictor of negative encounters. The qualitative findings show that negative perceptions were largely due to police harassment, being labelled as a person who uses drugs, and interference with drug paraphernalia. These findings also show that mutual respect and relationships built over time contribute to more positive reports of encounters. There were also many reports of positive experiences despite legal interference. These results suggest that people who use drugs belong to a group that are labelled and discriminated against, but that relationship building between people who use drugs and police can have a positive impact. These results may inform local policing practices and cultures, which can promote the health and well-being of the community.
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Logan Ewanation, Evelyn Maeder
Negative stereotypes about Indigenous people concerning alcoholism and criminality permeate Canadian society. This study primarily explores whether racial bias affects mock jurors' perceptions of Indigenous eyewitnesses, particularly when the eyewitness was intoxicated at the time of the crime. Participants read a trial transcript in which eyewitness intoxication and both eyewitness and defendant race (Indigenous/white) were manipulated, then provided a verdict and responded to a series of questions about the eyewitness. We found an indirect effect of eyewitness intoxication on verdict, operating through perceived eyewitness accuracy, such that intoxicated eyewitnesses were associated with significantly fewer convictions. Participants also rated Indigenous eyewitnesses as more accurate than white eyewitnesses. Although there were no significant main effects of defendant or eyewitness race on verdicts, we did observe a significant indirect effect of eyewitness race: Indigenous eyewitnesses were associated with more convictions via perceived accuracy. These effects run contrary to some previous literature and, coupled with our findings regarding criminality stereotypes, suggest that prospective jurors may be becoming aware of systemic bias facing Indigenous peoples. This study adds to the growing body of research investigating prospective jurors' decision making in Canada.
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Ismail Onat, Davut Akca, Mehmet Fatih Bastug
Street-level drug activities pose a serious problem for communities, and exploring the environmental context of drug crimes is one important aspect of the increasing problem in Canada. This study examined the urban backcloth of illicit drug activities in the Durham Region, Ontario. Drawing on the locations of 5,297 drug arrests between 2011and 2013, along with 6,291 surrounding physical features in the environment, the risk terrain modelling framework guided the analyses, which revealed that the risk of drug crimes varies by context and time. Similar to previous research in the United States and the Netherlands, the authors found that 11 out of 18 correlates were significantly associated with drug crimes. Unlike other study settings, the locations of alcohol sales and service did not predict the occurrence of drug crimes in the Durham Region. In addition, the risk clusters differed when the same correlates were modelled for incidents of each year separately. The models provided a valid prediction from one year to the next. Nearly 85% of all places with illicit drugs arrests in 2012 and 2013 overlapped with high-risk places of 2011 and 2012, respectively. The resulting risk map informs practitioners and policy makers on where to focus resources in the region.
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Rose Ricciardelli, R. Nicholas Carleton, Dianne Groll, Heidi Cramm
We thematically analysed responses volunteered by 828 of the nearly 9,000 public safety personnel (PSP) who participated in an online survey on occupational stress injuries and symptoms. Participants responded to an open-ended optional request for “additional feedback” located at the end of the survey. Salient response themes reveal that, across occupations and organizations, PSP report witnessing, enduring, and encountering extensive trauma, directly and vicariously, acutely and cumulatively. PSP reported effects of such trauma on themselves and their families as including physical (e.g., headaches, back pain, cardiac arrest, digestive symptoms), psychological (e.g., crying, feeling unhappy, living in fear, experiencing anxiety and anger), and social or interpersonal impacts (e.g., social exclusion, avoidance, cynicism towards others). The effects on their families included marital breakdown and relationship dissolution with children, as well as increased familial stress, strain, and anger. PSP also reported fatalistic attitudes; specifically, they felt that nothing would change, that they had no voice, and that both their employer and the different levels of government did not care about their well-being.
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