Martin Dufresne

Young offender diversion in Canada: tensions and contradictions of social policy appropriation

Under Canada’s Young Offenders Act (YOA, 1984–2003), the concept of diversion became an important feature of the youth justice system. Consisting of the formally constituted Alternative Measures program and other more informally administered procedures, diversion was developed as a means of responding to youth aged 12–17 years who have committed minor offences while minimizing their risks of stigmatization and recidivism. Although the YOA was subjected to persistent criticism concerning its ambiguity and contradictions, and was recently replaced by the new Youth Justice Criminal Act, very little research has been devoted to the implementation of young offender diversion programs. In this paper we present the results of a phenomenological inquiry into the practice of diversion in one large southern Ontario community. By regarding the implementation of diversion as a form of social policy appropriation by various professional groups, we highlight the perspectives of 17 practitioners who have had extensive experience in administering particular aspects of diversion programs. These perspectives differ in some fundamental ways, and thus help to illuminate the broad latitude that exists for discretionary decision-making in sanctioning youth who have committed minor offences. Such differences also reflect the variation of diversion practices and corresponding tensions among those responsible for this form of young offender disposition. The paper concludes by surmising that a two-tiered system of diversion is emerging that inadvertently may be diminishing the rights of minor young offenders.

The social uses of DNA in the political realm or how politics constructs DNA technology in the fight against crime

Research has shown that the adoption and integration of new technologies in professional environments and daily lives depend less on their objective characteristics and “real” performance than on representations and hopes built into those technologies. This paper will focus on DNA technology and the meanings and expectations invested into it by actors who participated in the debate surrounding two bills on DNA identification in Canada. Through this process, we will uncover the symbolic conditions that allowed for the introduction of the National DNA Databank as a crime-fighting tool: first, the minimization of the power of the substance and the idealization of the DNA databank potentialities; second, the scientification and professionalization of the police through DNA; and third, the reconciliation of Canadas two identities, that of the criminal justice innovator and human rights defender. Those are some of the key symbolic elements that made the creation and expansion of the DNA databank possible.

Toward a slow criminology of sociotechnical orderings: A tale of many youth repellents

Taking the material turn can contribute to renewing the discipline and sustaining the development of a slow criminology. Treating objects as mediators and acknowledging their ontological multiplicities protect us from our reflex to condemn rather than analyze them. Using the example of the ‘youth repellent’, we document three of its instantiations: a spatial fluidity device; a pain delivery mechanism; and an environmental pollution agent. This exploration forces us to expand the borders of the discipline to embrace others such as audiology and epidemiology. While these detours slow our analysis, they are the price we must pay for doing justice to the messiness of the human and non-human associations that constitute the fabric of our world.