CONTEXT

To set the context for the Roundtable, Steve Mihorean of the Research and Statistics Section of the Department of Justice made a short presentation outlining the current and future trends in crime and public perceptions about crime and justice.

Mr. Mihorean noted that when thinking about crime and the criminal law, it is important to focus attention on more than victims and accused and pointed out that the demographic portrait of Canada is changing and with it the values and principles of Canadian society. He referred, for example, to an ageing population, declining fertility rate and growth in the diversity of the Canadian population. Public perceptions and attitudes toward crime, he said, change over time and vary widely depending on where you live. While national indicators of crime are used as a measure of well-being and security, in isolation, such indicators can mask the reality at the community level. All too often, crime is viewed as a national phenomenon but it is at the community level that the impact of crime is felt.

The full presentation is attached as Appendix C.

At the outset of the Roundtable, participants were asked to identify themselves and what they believed were the key criminal law issues. Some of these issues were more fully explored during the course of the day and are dealt with below in the discussion of the themes that emerged. Among the issues that were mentioned by participants in this introductory phase of the Roundtable but not discussed at great length, were the danger of mandatory minimum sentences, the inadequacy of legal aid funding, the overrepresentation of Aboriginals in the criminal justice system, the problem of wrongful convictions and the desire to increase restorative justice efforts. Other issues mentioned were the war on drugs, the dangers of the criminalization of prostitution, and the interaction between new technologies and privacy.

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