Alternatives to Incarceration

DIVERSION
For adults
o Alternatives involved
Community service
o In Canada,
You need be a first time offender
You have to be wiling to take responsibility of your
actions
No criminal record
Youth
o Avoid calling them names
o Extrajudicial Measures
If the youth has no previous offence, the police can
make the decision to give a warning to the child,
have their parents involved or to take them to court
Used extensively
o Extrajudicial Sanctions
Police prepares a report and crown then decides
upon the consequences of the child
Diversion: based on restorative justice
Get to the root of the problem
COMMUNITY ORIENTED SENTENCES
Discharge
o Looked at 4 things
Good character volunteering, jobs, family person,
good outstanding citizen
o Absolute
Best case scenario
No conviction, register
Offender free to go
o Conditional
Probation of upto 3 years
Have to do something before you are discharge
Negative outcome
Couple months in jail if probation not
completed properly
Alternatives to going to jail
Since 1996
Only for adult offenders
Criteria

Conditional sentencing
Probation
o Most common sentencing option
o Can be used alone
o Can be combined with incarceration
Probation officare
o Lots of diversity
o Supervising the terms and conditions
o Assist the courts
o Breaching offenders
o Prepare to testify the court
o Acts as a community Resource
Participate in justice/social services

QUIZ
Correctional institutions
o Kent (maximum)
o Mission (medium)
High levels of programs are offered
o Ferndale (minimum)
o Regional Treatment Centre/Pacific Institution/Regional
Reception Centre (multi-level)
They have psychiatric nurses and wards
Very specialized for mentally disabled offenders
o Matsqui
One of the most dangerous
Inmates fighting with inmates problems between
inmates
o Mountain (medium)
Right beside Kent
More longer term offenders
Lots of programs are available
Large and relatively modern
o William Head
On Vancouver Island
Aboriginal
Experiment with lots of innovative program
o Kwikwexwelhp Healing Village (medium)
Largely for aboriginal offenders
Commit to spiritual
o Fraser Valley Institution for Women (multi-level)
Accommodate maximum to minimum security
women

Sentenced to jail for 3 years

o Offender go to federal jail
o Provincial
Responsible for young offenders
For people serving probation and sentences up to
two years
o Federal Government
Responsible for federal prison system
Terms of incarceration of two years of life, as well as
parole supervision
Annual cost to keep an offender house
o Male 110,223 for maximum security, 71,640 med, 74, 430
min
o Female: 150-250000
Country with the highest incarceration rate
o United States
Canadas incarceration rate
o Around 38 thousand
Last person was executed in 1962 hanging, preferred method in
Canada
o 1640: 16 years old girl hang for theft
o Death penalty abolished in 1976 commuted to life
sentences
o Current opinion about death penalty in Canada
Public opinion about the criminal justice system is important to
its functioning. The most negative part of criminal justice in
peoples opinion
o Parole board and correction
Parole Board Study
o 200 people died between 1975 and 1999 by parolees
serving sentences for murder and manslaughter
Not all offenders are not released on parole