The Use of Incarceration in Canada: A Test of Political and Social Threat Explanations on the Variation in Prison Admissions across Canadian Provinces, 2001–2010

Abstract

Recent scholarship has indicated that political and ethnic threat theories-which maintain that the use of prison is not only determined by the extent of crime in society but also by various features related to power, ideology, and access to resources-provide powerful accounts as to why the use of punishment varies within and between societies. However, no study to date has tested these theories within Canada, a country in which such theories are quite plausible. This study begins to fill this void by assessing these theoretical claims using a pooled time series analysis of the variation in imprisonment rates across Canadian provinces from the years 2001 to 2010. After accounting for several measures including charge rates, the results show that Canadian incarceration rates are largely driven by ethnic threat. The size of the Aboriginal and visible minority populations across each province are the most significant determinants of the variation in punishment. Furthermore, we find a nonlinear relationship consistent with a political version of the threat hypothesis. Results, however, do not support political accounts which stress the power of right-wing parties or a conservative public.

Reconsidering Penal Stability in Canada Through a New Sentencing Severity Index

“…While the lack of reliable data in Canada is an important issue (Leclerc, in print), it is also important not to discount this data as it provides insights into the state of Canadian sentencing. In fact, several studies over decades have relied on this same data to examine various questions related to penal strategies and practices in this country which continue to this day to inform our understanding of Canadian sentencing (Gartner et al, 2009;Neil & Carmichael, 2015;Reid, 2017;Sprott et al, 2013). Without claiming exhaustivity, this study builds on this body of research by contributing new insights through the creation and use of the sentencing Severity Index.…”

COVID-19 and European carcerality: Do national prison policies converge when faced with a pandemic?

“…2 We constructed a scale ranging from left to right using five values: 1 if a country had more than 45% of votes from a left-leaning party or coalition; 0.5 if a country had between 0 and 45% of votes from a left-leaning party or coalition; 0 if a center party or coalition won the election; -0.5 if a country had between 0 and 45% of votes from a right-wing party or a coalition; and -1 if a country had more than 45% of votes from a right-wing party or coalition. Sutton (2004) and Neil and Carmichael (2015) have suggested that governments' political orientation has a bearing on incarceration. More specifically, higher rates of imprisonment are associated with the rule of right-leaning political parties rather than left-leaning ones.…”

“…This variable measures the number of prisoners divided by the total population of each country. Countries with higher rates could be expected to limit visitation rights more rapidly, since this variable could be associated with nations more inclined to be "tougher on crime" and therefore less likely to recognize prisoners' rights (Neil and Carmichael, 2015). On the other hand, prison population rates do not always correlate with quality of prison conditions, so countries could be slower to enact visitation bans if conditions of prisons allow for physically-distanced visits and for social distancing between prisoners within the prison.…”

Structural Violence Perpetrated Against Indigenous Peoples in Canadian Criminal Courts: Meta- Analytic Evidence of Longstanding Sentencing Inequities

“…In their analysis of data related to admissions into federal custody, Neil and Carmichael (2015) found that "ethnic divisions" and the "minority threat theory" apply in Canada and are significantly associated with variations in incarceration rates. Their findings, aligned with the ethnic divisions and minority threat theories, show that as the rates of minority populations and Indigenous peoples increase within a Canadian region, federal incarceration rates also increase.…”