Criminology

Social media have been increasingly embraced by social actors inhabiting a wide range of social worlds, including the world of professional sports. This paper argues that Twitter has become an indispensible resource for sociologists seeking to better understand these worlds. Using data col- lected for a study of the Canadian Football League (CFL), the paper contrasts traditional interviews and Twitter as sources of data. This is followed by a discussion of both the unique advantages and limitations of Twitter data in research. The paper ends by encouraging an expansion of sociology’s methodological toolbox to include this form of social media.

Drawing on interviews with football wives from the Canadian Football League (CFL), this article examines how these women define their personal identity through their talk about being married to a pro football player. Using the concept of courtesy identity and Anderson and Snow’s (1987) conceptualization of identity talk, this chapter explains the processes in which these women claim a courtesy identity of a football wife. I identify two strategies these women use to construct their identity: distancing from stereotypes and envisioning self as his teammate. I argue that women performed this verbal identity work in pursuit of legitimizing their courtesy identity of a football wife. They accomplish this by distancing self from a stereotypical, anticipated social identity of the football wife as a “gold digger” or naïve woman and then working up another socially positive and normative one that they are supportive women who have worked alongside their husband and are part of their career. I conclude by summarizing the findings and argue that by constructing themselves as devoted football wives, they uphold these idealized images of traditional masculinity and femininity in professional sports.

The not criminally responsible (NCR) designation is undergoing significant legislative changes that will see a greater focus on public safety and information for victims as well as the creation of a 'high risk' status. The NCR designation has an inconsistent history in Canada that highlights the complexity of straddling therapeutic and punitive frameworks. This latest development in NCR's formulation is a punitive response to the perceived clamour by the general public for safety and security and a loss of faith in the psy sciences ability to treat and manage mentally ill accused. In turn, the NCR designation has taken up the punitive rhetoric despite it being framed outside the system of punishment

Despite the torrent of the punitive state, people in conflict with the law are made up as 'clients' of criminal justice. This article looks curiously upon the figure of the client, positioning her as a translation of the offender who flags particular relationships of justice. While the client is nowhere to be found on the public face of punishment, she emerges in the most unlikely of places (prisons, courts) when looking at punishment's inner workings. The client, we argue, is born of the elision of managerial and consumerist discourses in order to recruit people in conflict with the law and justice workers into contemporary penal project. The subject positions of criminal justice actors (offenders and workers) are reframed such that they are all active agents in the practice of social service delivery. These translations reveal the fluidity of identities and relationships within the criminal justice system and teach us about the political strategies underlying differing argots of punishment.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is constituted by different networks and institutions. I demonstrate that while the symptoms associated with FASD do not differ from childhood to adulthood, their conceptualization and thus societal and governmental responses to individuals with FASD change dramatically. This research is theoretically grounded in Rose's work on psy-identities and Hacking's concept of a looping effect. To unpack the reconstitution of the FASD identity from childhood to adulthood I have identified two linked but distinctive loops — that of the promising child and the deviant adult. These two loops conceptualize the different institutions, stakeholders, and knowledges that take interest in the " FASD child " and those that constitute the " FASD adult " identity within the criminal justice system. Résumé. Les définitions liées à l'ensemble des troubles causés par l'alcoolisation foetale (ETCAF) proviennent de différents systèmes de réseaux et institutions. Je démontre que la conceptualisation des TCAF et les approches sociales et gou-vernementales envers ceux qui en souffrent changenr radicalement malgré le fait que les symptômes associés aux TCAF demeurent les mêmes de l'enfance à l'âge adulte. À l'intérieur de cette recherche, je me réfère au travail de Rose sur les «identités psy» et de Hacking sur l'effet de boucle. Afin de révéler la recons-titution de l'identité associée à l'adulte qui souffre de TCAF, j'ai identifié deux boucles qui sont à la fois liées et distinctes — celle de l'enfant prometteur et celle de l'adulte délinquant. Ces deux boucles nous aident à conceptualiser les diffé-rentes institutions, les parties prenantes et les connaissances qui s'intéressent à « l'enfant souffrant des TCAF » et ceux qui servent à définir l'adulte TCAF à l'intérieur du système pénal.

The authors problematize essentialized notions of motherhood both ideologically and through criminalized women’s accounts of correctional programming discourses that engage these notions as a way to foster “motherhood as praxis.” Using data from interviews conducted with former female prisoners, we analyze how substance using mothers invoke the concept of a “good” mother by negotiating its meaning through techniques of self-surveillance and the surveillance of other  criminalized mothers. Women use this renegotiated identity as inspiration to move away from activities in conflict with motherhood, such as using drugs and/or alcohol. Correctional authorities in drug rehabilitation programs encourage women to use motherhood as an “anchor” upon which to stop using and the women appeal to this identity to responsibilize their actions. Dichotomizing conceptualizations of a selfless, nurturing, and chaste mother with an addict identity is in fact a precarious rehabilitation tactic. We hypothesize that women who feel they cannot live up to the idealized notion of motherhood might use drugs to cope with feelings of inadequacy, a point that requires further research. Using a framework where motherhood is the key to recovery  not only reinforces the addict identity should a woman relapse, it necessarily indicates failure as a mother.

The criminalization of HIV exposure or transmission began in Canada in the late 1980s. Although the number of people charged with HIV exposure/transmission has risen consistently over the past two decades, there is little critical social-scientific research on the topic in the Canadian context, with a few notable exceptions. The goal of this research note is to take stock of the Canadian criminal justice system’s prosecution of individuals who knowingly expose a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing their positive sero-status. By framing the current state of the law within a socio-legal/critical criminological perspective, we can begin to make connections between different bodies of work and set the foundation for future research in this field.

Psychocentrism is a governing neoliberal rationality that pathologizes human problems and frames individuals as responsible for socially structured inequalities. The homeless community provides an important case study to examine the ways psychocentrism manifests among an excluded population. This paper explores the paradox whereby homeless individuals are simultaneously pathologized and responsibilized through psychocentric discourses in which their status as economically poor becomes individualized as a symptom of mental illness and/or addiction. Although medicalized understandings of mental and emotional distress pervade the homeless industry, the obligations of freedom in the neoliberal era mean that individuals alone are held responsible for their failures. The paper examines the ways individuals experiencing homelessness are compelled to embark on an entrepreneurial project of the self that requires them to accept blame for their social precariousness. Further, it deconstructs the narratives that regard social explanations as an excuse and a failure of individual accountability. I argue that the " shamed poor " adopt empowerment discourses touted by the homeless industry, which paradoxically encourage individuals to find strength in their personal failures and to work toward self-governance, devoid of historical, social, and cultural context.

Prevention makes sense. To prevent disease, we vaccinate. To prevent traffic deaths, we install seat belts. While we recognize intuitively that preventing homelessness is a good idea, there has been little movement in Canada to make that happen on a national scale. A New Direction: A Framework for Homelessness Prevention sets out to provide the language and clarity to begin that conversation.

Since mass homelessness emerged in the mid-1980s, we have largely used emergency services to respond to people’s immediate needs. While we will always need emergency services to help those in crisis, over time these short-term responses have become the standard method for managing homelessness long-term. In the last decade, Canadian policies and practices have begun to shift from managing homelessness to finding solutions, in particular the expansion of the Housing First approach across the country. The Housing First model provides housing and supports for people experiencing chronic homelessness with no housing readiness requirements. New research, innovation, and best practices have propelled our thinking to make the goal of ending homelessness realistic; however, we are still missing an important piece – preventing homelessness in the first place. Why must we wait until people are entrenched in homelessness before offering help?

In A New Direction: A Framework for Homelessness Prevention, we set out to uncover what it will take to stop homelessness before it starts, to avoid its often-traumatizing effects. The aim of the framework is to begin a nation-wide conversation on what prevention looks like, and what it will take to shift toward homelessness prevention. Using international examples, the framework operationalizes the policies and practices necessary to successfully prevent homelessness and highlights who is responsible. Above all, it situates prevention within a human rights approach. Now is the time to prioritize homelessness prevention.

The What Would it Take? study asked young people with lived experience of homelessness: what would it take to prevent youth homelessness in Canada? Between July 2017 and January 2018, A Way Home Canada and the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness consulted with youth across Canada to ask:

What would have prevented your homelessness?
What programs, policies, services, and supports are needed to prevent youth homelessness?
What do you want to tell the Canadian government about preventing youth homelessness?
How do you want to be involved in making change on this issue?
The purpose of this report is to amplify the voices, insights, and wisdom of these young people in order to drive policy and practice change.

We are at a pivotal moment in addressing homelessness in Canada. For decades, the Federal Government did not prioritize investments in safe, adequate, and affordable housing. Coupled with shifting economic and social landscapes, the modern homelessness crisis was made. In order to develop long-term solutions to homelessness, we must recognize that homelessness exists along a continuum. In this article, we discuss the full extent of homelessness in Canada, including the relationship between a lack of affordable housing and the homelessness crisis. We argue that preventing and ending homelessness is achievable so long as investments, strategies, policies, and practices account for those at risk of homelessness and/or who are precariously housed.

In this paper we analyse a friendly fire incident from the Second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner’s inquest in 2007. Focussing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draws on and links ethnomethodological studies of work, research into ‘normal’ accidents, disasters and risks and recent ethnographies of the military. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the accounts offered after the event by the military and civilian inquiries should be treated less as competing descriptions than different ways of problematising particular aspects of the military-political machineries the pilots actions were enmeshed within.