Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Starting With Life: Murder Sentencing And Feminist Prison Abolitionist Praxis, Debra Parkes
Starting With Life: Murder Sentencing And Feminist Prison Abolitionist Praxis, Debra Parkes
All Faculty Publications
Advocates of decarcation often focus their critiques on imprisonment for non-violent offences. In this vein, current advocacy efforts to end mandatory sentences in Canada tend to carve out “serious violent offences” as not part of a reform agenda. In this chapter, Debra Parkes sketches out the contours of an argument for why feminists might not want to cede that ground, why anti-carceral feminism might involve centering our analysis on the most, rather than the least, serious crimes – starting with those who are serving life sentences for murder. Parkes identifies four non-exhaustive reasons for that focus. The first reason relates …
Instrumentalizing The Expressive: Transplanting Sentencing Circles Into The Canadian Criminal Trial, Toby S. Goldbach
Instrumentalizing The Expressive: Transplanting Sentencing Circles Into The Canadian Criminal Trial, Toby S. Goldbach
All Faculty Publications
This Article examines reforms to criminal sentencing procedures in Canada, focusing on Aboriginal healing circles, which were incorporated as “sentencing circles” into the criminal trial. Using the lens of comparative law and legal transplants, this Article recounts the period of sentencing reform in Canada in the 1990s, when scholars, practitioners, and activists inquired into Aboriginal confrontation with the criminal justice system by comparing Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal justice values and principles. As a way to bridge the gap between vastly differing worldviews and approaches to justice, judges and Aboriginal justice advocates transplanted sentencing circles into the sentencing phase of the criminal …