Ontario Strengthening Police Oversight, Redefining Core Police Duties
"Sweeping changes to Ontario's policing laws were introduced
Thursday, including strengthening oversight, making it possible to
suspend officers without pay and redefining police duties.
The new rules, contained in a massive piece of legislation years in the
making, would include the first update to the province's Police
Services Act in more than 25 years.
'The issues faced by police services and their members today are far
more complex than when the act was developed,' said Community Safety and
Correctional Services Minister Marie-France Lalonde. 'The last time the
act was revised, there was no internet, the Blue Jays won the World
Series and you needed a briefcase to carry your cellphone.'
Many of the policing updates stem from Appeal Court Justice Michael
Tulloch's report on police oversight, released earlier this year, and
include requiring the Special Investigations Unit or SIU, one of the
province's police oversight agencies, to report publicly on all of its
investigations and release the names of officers charged."
Ontario Ombudsman: Submission to the Independent Police Oversight Review
Report of the Independent Police Oversight Review
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Correctional Services Canada Failing Younger Inmates, Advocates Argue in Report
"Canada's prison watchdog and Ontario's Child Advocate say Correctional Service Canada is squandering opportunities to turn young federal inmates' lives around.
'The majority of them are not enrolled in programs or school, not because they're not motivated but because they're wait listed and there are very few programs being offered,' said Canada's Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger in an interview with CBC News. 'They're also not connecting with the programs.'
Zinger said Correctional Services Canada has designed programs — such as anger management — with an older inmate in mind, when younger offenders require basic skills such as how to prepare meals, apply for a job and open a bank account.
The report ... titled 'Missed Opportunities,' was produced by Zinger and Ontario's child advocate, Irwin Elman.
'Young people who find themselves in adult custody should have, and be given, the opportunity to positively change the direction of their lives,' said Elman.
'As we stated at the inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the adult correctional system is not equipped to ensure this happens.'"
Related Report: Children and Young People In Custody in Scotland
"Canada's prison watchdog and Ontario's Child Advocate say Correctional Service Canada is squandering opportunities to turn young federal inmates' lives around.
'The majority of them are not enrolled in programs or school, not because they're not motivated but because they're wait listed and there are very few programs being offered,' said Canada's Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger in an interview with CBC News. 'They're also not connecting with the programs.'
Zinger said Correctional Services Canada has designed programs — such as anger management — with an older inmate in mind, when younger offenders require basic skills such as how to prepare meals, apply for a job and open a bank account.
The report ... titled 'Missed Opportunities,' was produced by Zinger and Ontario's child advocate, Irwin Elman.
'Young people who find themselves in adult custody should have, and be given, the opportunity to positively change the direction of their lives,' said Elman.
'As we stated at the inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the adult correctional system is not equipped to ensure this happens.'"
Related Report: Children and Young People In Custody in Scotland
Why Don't Police Body Cameras Work Like We Expected?
"Police-worn body cameras do not reduce the instances of police use of force. Nor do they reduce citizen complaints about excessive force. These are the unexpected findings from the largest study to date on the subject, which casts doubt on the generally accepted wisdom regarding body camera effectiveness. “We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras,” said Anita Ravishankar, one of the researchers behind the study."
"Police-worn body cameras do not reduce the instances of police use of force. Nor do they reduce citizen complaints about excessive force. These are the unexpected findings from the largest study to date on the subject, which casts doubt on the generally accepted wisdom regarding body camera effectiveness. “We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras,” said Anita Ravishankar, one of the researchers behind the study."
Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences
"Every state and the federal government allow prison sentences that are so long that death in prison is presumed. This report provides a comprehensive profile of those living in this deep end of the justice system. Our analysis provides current figures on people serving life with parole (LWP) and life without parole (LWOP) as well as a category of long-term prisoner that has not previously been quantified: those serving “virtual” or de facto life sentences. Even though virtual life sentences can extend beyond the typical lifespan, because the sentences are not legally considered life sentences, traditional counts of life-sentenced prisoners have excluded them until now."
"Every state and the federal government allow prison sentences that are so long that death in prison is presumed. This report provides a comprehensive profile of those living in this deep end of the justice system. Our analysis provides current figures on people serving life with parole (LWP) and life without parole (LWOP) as well as a category of long-term prisoner that has not previously been quantified: those serving “virtual” or de facto life sentences. Even though virtual life sentences can extend beyond the typical lifespan, because the sentences are not legally considered life sentences, traditional counts of life-sentenced prisoners have excluded them until now."
Women Need Health and Dental Care to Stay Out of Prison
"In British Columbia, the population of women prisoners is on the rise. The number of women incarcerated each year has increased 20 per cent between 2012 and 2015. There have been few studies to date on the rates of return to prison among the female prison population. There is research that evaluates the effectiveness of substance abuse programming, investigates risk factors for return to prison and the effectiveness of community-based after care. None have examined the role of health-related factors.
Our research study, Doing Time, began with participatory health research forums held within the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women. In these forums, inmates gathered informally to talk about their life trajectories and what their hopes for the future were. They are described in more detail in our book, Arresting Hope.
Inmates also identified the health and social goals they believed would help them transition successfully into the community."
View the Study
"In British Columbia, the population of women prisoners is on the rise. The number of women incarcerated each year has increased 20 per cent between 2012 and 2015. There have been few studies to date on the rates of return to prison among the female prison population. There is research that evaluates the effectiveness of substance abuse programming, investigates risk factors for return to prison and the effectiveness of community-based after care. None have examined the role of health-related factors.
Our research study, Doing Time, began with participatory health research forums held within the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women. In these forums, inmates gathered informally to talk about their life trajectories and what their hopes for the future were. They are described in more detail in our book, Arresting Hope.
Inmates also identified the health and social goals they believed would help them transition successfully into the community."
View the Study
"Cooking them to Death": the Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons
"...Although there are no national figures on how many prisoners die of heat illness, horror stories emerge every summer: inmates screaming 'Help us!' out of the windows of a St. Louis jail; New Hampshire men flooding their scorching cells to cool them down; Arizona prisoners whose shoes melt in the sun.
A growing segment of the incarcerated population is especially heat-sensitive. Jails and prisons house an increasing number of people with mental illness; as many as one in five Texas prisoners are prescribed psychotropic medications, which make the body more vulnerable to heat. A similar number receive blood pressure drugs, which can cause the same problem. And the rise of longer sentences in the 1980s and 90s has produced a surge of older prisoners, who are particularly susceptible to heat illnesses...."
"...Although there are no national figures on how many prisoners die of heat illness, horror stories emerge every summer: inmates screaming 'Help us!' out of the windows of a St. Louis jail; New Hampshire men flooding their scorching cells to cool them down; Arizona prisoners whose shoes melt in the sun.
A growing segment of the incarcerated population is especially heat-sensitive. Jails and prisons house an increasing number of people with mental illness; as many as one in five Texas prisoners are prescribed psychotropic medications, which make the body more vulnerable to heat. A similar number receive blood pressure drugs, which can cause the same problem. And the rise of longer sentences in the 1980s and 90s has produced a surge of older prisoners, who are particularly susceptible to heat illnesses...."
Harvard Study Shows Actual Number of People Killed by U.S. Police
"In a revelatory new study published Tuesday, Harvard public health researchers report that in 2015, a total of 1,166 people were killed by police in the United States. What’s staggering about this research is not just the massive number of police killings it reports — and knowing that many of those police aren’t disciplined, — but the fact that scientists were able to conduct the study at all. Historically, the U.S. government has been unable to provide a full count of people killed by police that has the confidence of federal statisticians.
"In a revelatory new study published Tuesday, Harvard public health researchers report that in 2015, a total of 1,166 people were killed by police in the United States. What’s staggering about this research is not just the massive number of police killings it reports — and knowing that many of those police aren’t disciplined, — but the fact that scientists were able to conduct the study at all. Historically, the U.S. government has been unable to provide a full count of people killed by police that has the confidence of federal statisticians.
This new study, published Tuesday in PLoS Medicine,
is the first to quantify the undercounting of police-related deaths in
both a nationwide death certificate data and in a news media-based
database — which makes it the most accurate count the public has to
date."
View the Study
Related Article:
Debate over Police Shootings Raises Questions Over Police Versus Tactics
Related Article:
Debate over Police Shootings Raises Questions Over Police Versus Tactics
Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
"This report provides a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even larger picture of correctional control. Since 2014, the Prison Policy Initiative has quantified the number of people incarcerated in the United States, and calculated the breakdown of people held by each correctional system by offense in an annual Whole Pie: Mass Incarceration report. This report, done in collaboration with the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, finally provides similar data on women incarcerated in the Unites States. We break the data down to show the various correctional systems that control women, and to examine why women in the various systems of confinement are locked up."
"This report provides a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even larger picture of correctional control. Since 2014, the Prison Policy Initiative has quantified the number of people incarcerated in the United States, and calculated the breakdown of people held by each correctional system by offense in an annual Whole Pie: Mass Incarceration report. This report, done in collaboration with the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, finally provides similar data on women incarcerated in the Unites States. We break the data down to show the various correctional systems that control women, and to examine why women in the various systems of confinement are locked up."
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