ment passed the Young Offenders Act, which insti-
tuted different treatment for criminals between the
ages of twelve and eighteen. Prior to the act’s pas-
sage, young offenders in Canada were treated just as
adults were and were subjected to the same penal-
ties. The Young Offenders Act instituted a policy of
fashioning age-appropriate techniques of rehabilita-
tion. The decision to tailor correctional techniques
to accomplish restorative, rather than punitive, aims
exemplified the philosophy guiding Canadian crim-
inal justice during the 1980’s and beyond: The ap-
proach to crime prevention in Canada increasingly
combined traditional focuses on rehabilitation and
retribution with ideas reflecting the principles of
restoration.
This shift in Canadian justice was influenced by a
steady increase in Canada’s prison population. Un-
like the United States, where the prison population
grew as a result of longer sentences, Canada’s pris-
ons were crowded by an increase in the number of
offenders. The nation sought to address this prob-
lem in part by instituting a restorative philosophy
that asserted that offenders need not be isolated
from the rest of society, either for justice to be
achieved or for the members of society to feel safe.
Thus, restorative justice is well-suited to a need to
reduce crime while simultaneously reducing the
prison population.
These needs were also addressed by reforms in
sentencing practices. In 1987, the Canadian Sen-
tencing Commission produced an influential report
outlining judicial processes in need of reform and fo-
cusing particularly on the sentencing process. The
commission emphasized that sentencing policies rep-
resented a statement to society, asserting that law-
breakers would be held accountable. Thus, a strong
sentencing policy would simultaneously reassure citi-
zens that they were safe and deter potential offenders
from committing crimes. Reforms were enacted to
achieve these goals, but they also incorporated restor-
ative principles, which sought to ensure that the par-
ticulars of a given case would be scrutinized so that
the punishment would always fit the crime.
The prisons themselves had to respond to emerg-
ing trends during the 1980’s as well. For example, an
increasing proportion of the prison population was
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive, so
health care facilities capable of treating prisoners
with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
had to be constructed. Meanwhile, in a trend similar
to the increasing overrepresentation of African
Americans in the U.S. prison population, Canadian
aboriginal peoples made up a disproportionate per-
centage of their nation’s inmates. Like African Amer-
icans, aborigines were no more likely to commit
crimes than were other demographic groups, but
they were significantly more likely to be arrested,
convicted, and sentenced for crimes they did com-
mit. Canadian policy makers, however, were more
sensitive to this situation than were their American
counterparts. They sought throughout the decade
to reverse the increase in aboriginal prisoners, albeit
with little success.
Impact Each nation’s approach to crime had
strengths and weaknesses. The United States suc-
ceeded in reducing recidivism, but only by creating
the third-largest prison population per capita in the
world, after the Soviet Union and apartheid-era
South Africa. (With the fall of those two govern-
ments in the 1990’s, the United States would come
to have the highest per capita prison population in
the world.) The nation effectively reduced the symp-
tom, without addressing the underlying causes of
crime—causes such as poverty and racism that were
arguably exacerbated by the American punitive ap-
proach to justice.
Canada, for its part, attempted a more holistic ap-
proach to crime that sought to take account of race
and class, among other factors. This approach had
its own pitfalls, however, as, for example, some men
accused of violence against women sought to justify
their behavior on the grounds that it was appropri-
ate to their particular subculture. It also tended to
conflate cultural identity with racial identity in ways
that proved counterproductive, encouraging stereo-
types that portrayed some races as more likely to
commit crimes than others.
Further Reading
Anand, Sanjeev. “The Sentencing of Aboriginal Of-
fenders, Continued Confusion and Persisting
Problems: A Comment on the Decision.”The Ca-
nadian Journal of Criminology42 (July, 2000): 412-- Looks at aboriginal peoples in the Canadian
criminal justice system.
Cayley, David.The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in
Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives.
Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1998. Critical ex-
amination of traditionalist approaches to prison
reform.
264 Crime The Eighties in America