Evidence-based criminal justice policy for Canada: An exploratory study of public opinion and the perspective of mental health and legal professionals.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Increasingly, scholars are identifying the need for evidence-based justice policy. There has been, and continues to be, changes in Canadian criminal justice acts, such as Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Community Act (2012). Bill C-10 amended several criminal justice acts, including the Youth Criminal Justice Act (2002), Criminal Code (1985), Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (1996), and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (1992). The amendments introduced by Bill C-10 were made in the name of public safety, yet according to empirical evidence, the potential ramifications of these changes appear to counter these notions. The purpose of the current research was to compare public opinion with the opinions of mental health and legal professionals prior to and after the presentation of evidence, including academically recognised social science research, to examine whether exposure to empirical evidence would change public opinions of justice policy. Participants consisted of 2 groups: (a) members of the Canadian public, and (b) mental health and legal professionals who work internationally with adults or youth who are either currently involved with, or at risk of becoming involved with, the criminal justice system. Quantitative analyses demonstrated that opinions from the general public were varied, but became more similar to the perspectives of mental health and legal professionals after the presentation of empirical evidence. Qualitative analyses offered insight into participant decisions and concerns. The results support the paradigm shift to evidence-based justice policy and the importance of educating Canadians in order to increase awareness of Canadian policies and social science literature.Keywords: evidence-based crime and justice policy, reforms, public safety, public opinion, CanadaResumeDe plus en plus, les chercheurs pointent vers le besoin de poli- tiques de justice basees sur des faits. Des changements ont ete apportes, et seront apportes, aux lois relatives a la justice penale, comme en temoignent le projet de loi C-10 et la Loi sur la securite des rues et des communautes (2012). Le projet de loi C-10 visait a amender maintes lois sur la justice penale, dont la Loi sur le systeme de justice penale pour les adolescents (2002), le Code criminel (1985), la Loi reglementant certaines drogues et autres substances (1996), et la Loi sur le systeme correctionnel et la mise en liberte sous condition (1992). Les modifications qu'il apportait ont ete presentees au nom de la securite publique, et pourtant, selon les donnees empiriques, les repercussions potentielles de ces changements semblent aller a l'encontre de cette notion. Le but de la presente recherche etait de comparer l'opinion publique aux opinions de professionnels de la sante mentale et d'experts ju- ridiques avant et apres la presentation des faits, y compris des recherches en sciences sociales reconnues dans le milieu univer- sitaire, en vue de determiner si la connaissance de preuves em- piriques pouvait changer l'opinion publique sur les politiques relatives a la justice. Les participants etaient repartis en 2 groupes : a) des Canadiens du grand public; b) des professionnels des milieux de la sante mentale et de la justice qui travaillent a l'echelle internationale avec des adultes ou des jeunes qui sont actuellement concernes par le systeme de justice penale ou qui risquent de l'etre. Des analyses quantitatives ont revele que les opinions parmi le grand public etaient variees, mais qu'elles se rapprochaient davantage des vues des professionnels de la sante mentale et des experts juridiques apres avoir pris connaissance des preuves empiriques. Des analyses qualitatives ont permis d'approfondir les decisions et les preoccupations des participants. Les resultats revelent un changement de paradigme vers une poli- tique de justice basee sur des faits et rappellent l'importance d'informer la population canadienne en vue de la sensibiliser aux politiques du pays et aux publications en sciences sociales. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.064 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.034 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".