Paula Maurutto

Reading and skimming from computer screens and books: the paperless office revisited?

Abstract Past research has demonstrated that reading efficiency is lower from the standard computer displays of the 1980s than from paper. In the present experiments, subjects read or skimmed stories, sometimes from a high-quality CRT (cathode ray tube) and sometimes from a book. Skimming was 41% slower from the CRTs than from the book. Possible reasons for this finding are discussed. Reading speed and comprehension were equivalent for the high-quality CRTs and the book. The paperless office may be imminent after all.

Re-contextualizing pre-sentence reports: Risk and race

In the past two decades, Canadian policies governing the structure and content of presentence reports (PSRs) have shifted to focus more directly on the systematic identification of offender’s criminogenic risk and needs. In this article, we (1) examine how risk-based approaches to offender management have altered the structure and format of the PSR in Canada, and (2) contrast the structure of risk-based PSRs to Gladue reports for Aboriginal offenders in Canada. Gladue reports are designed to identify the unique systemic race/cultural and historical factors specific to Aboriginal offenders and to recommend alternatives to incarceration. We argue that although risk-based PSRs incorporate recognition of race-related issues, their structure and emphasis on actuarially based risk assessments frames race and risk differently from Gladue reports. In Gladue reports, holistic approaches and cultural impact factors are documented and used to understand risk and need. Finally, we argue that the conceptualization and relevance of race is limited by actuarial risk logic.

Shifting and targeted forms of penal governance: Bail, punishment and specialized courts

Studies of punishment have focused predominantly on emerging forms of penal governance, and the revival of punitive forms of punishment. Although this research helps to raise concerns about forms of penal excess and neoliberal penal patterns, it does not clarify how these strategies co-exist with, modify and are re-assembled with older and sometimes seemingly contradictory penal strategies. Our article examines how practices used by Canadian specialized courts are changing the parameters of punishment and thereby challenging the prevailing theories about neo-liberal punishment. Specialized courts are motivated by therapeutic and preventative goals, and they rely on relationships with local community groups to create a new range of interactions with the court and the offender. Our analysis of how bail strategies and techniques are altered in specialized courts provides a valuable context in which to analyse emerging theoretical issues associated with the management of risk, community/court interactions, the connotation of ‘therapeutic justice’ and the subtext of punishment and penal change.

Women’s Voluntary Organisations and the Canadian Penal ‘Culture of Control’

By the late 1980s, Canada was at the forefront of women’s prison reform: it was poised to be the first country to integrate feminist principles into the development of a new prison regime for women (Hannah-Moffat and Shaw, 2000). The design of this new model was laid out in the document Creating Choices: The Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (Task Force, 1990). This plan for prison redevelopment symbolised a unique turn in the history of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). For the first time, the government partnered with women’s organisations in a collaborative effort to advance a new vision for women’s punishment. This collaboration with community organisations was championed as evidence of an opening of the political process that would invite women’s prison advocates and organisations to play a greater role in prison reform.