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Reconsidering Penal Stability in Canada Through a New Sentencing Severity Index

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Abstract

Changes to criminal sentencing practices are often multifaceted and complex to interpret. This article proposes the development of a new sentencing severity index which simultaneously considers the type of punishment mobilized as well as the scale of that punishment. It does so in the context of important reforms to Canadian sentencing, examining the possibility of a punitive turn in Canadian criminal justice through this new index. Data were drawn from Canadian adult criminal courts collected through Statistics Canada’s Integrated Criminal Court Survey between 2005/2006 and 2016/2017. The analysis is based on instances where either custody or probation were the primary sentence of a case. We show that the underlying makeup of Canadian sentencing has changed over time. Custodial sentences are more frequent, but shorter, while probation sentences are fewer, but longer overall. However, in combining these dimensions (frequency and length), the index suggests that overall sentencing severity remained generally stable. Nevertheless, considerable changes across offence type and jurisdictions were observed. The article points to the importance of nuancing the assessment of penal practices with multiple parameters to better understand penal reform and transformation. The new index provides a tool which helps to do so.

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Data Availability

The dataset used in this project is not currently available to the public. We accessed this data through a pilot project with Statistics Canada. Nevertheless, many tables using the Integrated Criminal Court Survey are available online through Statistics Canada, and custom statistics can be requested from the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics. It is hoped that this dataset will be made available through Statistics Canada in the future.

Notes

  1. Though speaking of aggregate trends, the authors do not suggest that such trends are applicable in every place and time. Diverse is the literature variegating understandings of penal populism and punishment (see Garland (2018), or Rubin and Phelps (2017)).

  2. Recent trends suggest that this is changing (Campbell et al., 2020; Steiker & Steiker, 2020). Nevertheless, they continue to have the largest penal population in the world.

  3. In Canada, this most obviously implicates both federal and provincial or territorial governments as well as the unelected judiciary, government-funded prosecutors, and Legal Aid Defence lawyers, as well as private defence attorneys among many others.

  4. The analysis presented in this paper was conducted at the Quebec Interuniversity Centre for Social Statistics which is part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The services and activities provided by the QICSS are made possible by the financial or in-kind support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Statistics Canada, the Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Quebec universities. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of the CRDCN, the QICSS or their partners.

  5. Crude sentencing rates were calculated using the following equation:

    \(Crude \, Sentencing \, Rate = 1000\left( \frac{D}{P} \right)\)

    Where D represents the number of sentences issued for a given sentence type, P the total number of guilty cases. This measure is deemed “crude” because it does not account for variation in the distribution of offence types over the observation period. This measure is equivalent to the crude death rate used in the field of demography (e.g., Rowland, 2003, p. 33).

  6. Standardized sentencing rates were calculated using the following equation:

    \(Standardized \, Sentencing \, Rate = \mathop \sum \limits_{j} \left[ {\left( {\frac{{D_{j}^{B} }}{{P_{j}^{B} }}} \right)*\left( {\frac{{P_{j}^{A} }}{{P^{A} }}} \right)} \right]*1000\)

    Where D represents the number sentences issued for a given sentence type, P the number of guilty cases, A represents the year of reference and B the year of interest, and j the offence type. This measure is equivalent to the standardization of crude death rate (i.e., direct standardization) used in the field of demography (Rowland, 2003, p. 125).

  7. The contribution of the compositional effect on crude rate differences can be determined through a process known as decomposition. Decomposition is calculated using the following equation:

    \(Decomposition = \mathop \sum \limits_{j} \left( {C_{j}^{B} - C_{j}^{A} } \right)*\left[ {\frac{{M_{j}^{B} + M_{j}^{A} }}{2}} \right] + \mathop \sum \limits_{j} \left( {M_{j}^{B} - M_{j}^{A} } \right)*\left[ {\frac{{C_{j}^{B} + C_{j}^{A} }}{2}} \right]\)

    Where C represents the composition (i.e., the proportion of the total number of guilty cases), M represents the sentencing rate (i.e., number of sentences issued for a given sentence type over the total number of guilty cases), A represents the period of reference, B represents the period of interest, and j represent the offence type. The section of the equation to the right of the main addition sign represents the contribution of the compositional effect. The section of the equation to the left of the main addition sign represents the contribution of the actual rate change. For more details on decomposition, see Das Gupta (1978).

  8. Notably, this does not include simple drug possession.

  9. We acknowledge that for “other sexual offences”, the ASSI had been increasing before the introduction of Bill C-10. However, these offences were subject to a first wave of mandatory minimum penalties following the election of the Harper government in 2005. The changes in Bill C-10 continued this trajectory. Further, the ASSI for “other drug offences” was also increasing prior to Bill C-10. Notably, however, the ASSI had begun to decrease slightly before increasing dramatically upon the introduction of the bill.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Rémi Boivin and Jose Pina-Sánchez for their insightful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Funding

This work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) (435-2017-0759).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, McGill University, 845 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal, Québec, H3A 0G4, Canada

    Jean-Denis David

  2. School of Criminology, University of Montreal, 3150 Jean-Brillant Street, Montréal, Québec, H3T 1N8, Canada

    Chloé Leclerc & Brendyn Johnson

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David, JD., Leclerc, C. & Johnson, B. Reconsidering Penal Stability in Canada Through a New Sentencing Severity Index. Int Criminol 3, 26–37 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43576-023-00080-7

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