Constructing Risk through Jurisdictional Talk: The Ontario Review Board Process under Part XX.1 of the Criminal Code

Abstract

The Ontario Review Board (ORB) makes and reviews dispositions that limit the freedoms of individuals found not criminally responsible (NCR) due to a “mental disorder.” Their dispositions must be responsive to the risk NCR individuals pose to the public. To assess how risk is measured, the authors studied twenty-six publicly accessible court files pertaining to the appeal of ORB dispositions. The authors studied hospital reports, the ORB’s dispositions, and transcripts of ORB hearings found in the court files. In this paper, the authors draw on institutional ethnography and critical legal theories of jurisdiction to analyze how certain citational practices—namely citation of closely related statutes and the ORB’s procedures—participate in structuring the ORB’s analysis of risk. The authors argue that risk becomes legible to participants in the NCR process through the intertextual mediation of these citations, which legitimize and naturalize the NCR individuals’ dependence on forensic institutions.

Documenting the Document: The Forensic Hospital Report and Its Knowledge Moves

“…Of course, the ORB's network also includes many other documents and objects not explicitly discussed here, including those from other jurisdictions such as civil statutes and public health acts/forms (see Shaw et al, 2023), which may themselves influence the creation of the forensic hospital report and the risk-knowledges we claim it helps produce (hence the importance of the network). However, at our level of analysis, it is clear that without the particular construction of the hospital report, certain claims and decisions rendered by the all-powerful Ontario Review Board may not have been possible.…”