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Purpose – This chapter explores the question of whether provincial prisons in Western Canada might serve as a breeding ground for radical extremism.

Methodology/Approach – A large team of researchers from the University of Alberta Prison Project conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 587 incarcerated men and women, as well as 131 correctional officers (COs) located in four provincial prisons in Western Canada. Interviews involved a series of wide-ranging questions about prison life, but also prodded on topics relating to radicalized messaging or recruitment in the prisons where the participants lived or worked.

Findings – The authors learned that unlike other jurisdictions, radicalization was not common in the institutions they studied. The authors identified several factors that appear to inhibit the emergence of extremist radicalization in this research setting: (a) the existing prisoner subculture; (b) prisoners’ beliefs in Canadian multiculturalism and understandings of Canadian race relations; and (c) COs’ efforts to single out and isolate ostensible extremists.

Originality/Value – There is no empirical research on prison radicalization in Canada, and little independent research conducted inside of Canadian prisons more generally. The findings of this study contributes to an ongoing discussion about radicalization in prison and identify factors that appear to limit the prospect that prisons might become breeding grounds for radical extremism.

This chapter is about the politics of surveillance and more specifically about the politics of siting public closed circuit television (CCTV) systems within urban neighborhoods. Through an exploration of political contests waged around attempts by local police to install public surveillance systems in the City of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and Granville Mall districts, we argue that the success of public surveillance proposals is hardly inevitable. Instead, a combination of local factors play vital roles in variously supporting or constraining such attempts. Although this present chapter can be read as providing a useful counterpoint to the dominance of accounts about such developments in Great Britain, where public CCTV is a routine fact of daily urban life, we conclude on a cautionary note: with the current proliferation of public and private forms of surveillance throughout urban spaces, surveillance analysts risk missing the forest for the trees if we only concentrate on the fate of one surveillance tool or tactic.

Guided by Ericson’s counter-law analytic, the focus of this paper is how peace bonds erode traditional criminal law principles to govern uncertainty and provide applicants with a “freedom from fear” (Ericson, 2007a). Peace bonds permit the courts to impose a recognizance on anyone likely to cause harm or “personal injury” to a complainant. This paper conducts a critical discourse analysis to answer the question: how and to what extent are peace bonds a form of counter-law? Facilitated by the erosion of traditional criminal law principles and rationalized under a precautionary logic, proving that a complainant is fearful through a peace bond can result in the expansion of the state’s capacity to criminalize and conduct surveillance.

This chapter aims to make a contribution to recent debates on the ‘governance of security’ (Johnston & Shearing, 2003) by drawing upon empirical research conducted by the author and other writers on ‘plural policing’ and the construction of closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance networks. The chapter attempts to avoid the tendency in some of the ‘governmentality’ literature to ‘airbrush out the state’ (Hughes, 2007, p. 184), whilst at the same time showing that the aims and intentions of dominant state forces and elites are not always realised in practice. The chapter also tries to avoid any simplistic notion of a shift in policing strategies from ‘crime fighting’ to ‘risk management’. The aim instead is to show how the construction of surveillance networks is blurring the boundaries of the ‘public–private’ divide along the ‘sectoral’, ‘geographical’, ‘spatial’, ‘legal’ and ‘functional’ dimensions (Jones & Newburn, 1998), giving rise to a plural policing continuum.

Surveillance studies scholars have embraced Foucault's panopticon as a central metaphor in their analysis of online monitoring technologies, despite several architectural incompatibilities between eighteenth and nineteenth century prisons and twenty-first century computer networks. I highlight a number of Internet features that highlight the limits of the electronic panopticon. I examine two trends that have been considerably underestimated by surveillance scholars: (1) the democratization of surveillance, where the distributed structure of the Internet and the availability of observation technologies has blurred the distinction between those who watch and those who are being watched, allowing individuals or marginalized groups to deploy sophisticated surveillance technologies against the state or large corporations; and (2) the resistance strategies that Internet users are adopting to curb the surveillance of their online activities, through blocking moves such as the use of cryptography, or masking moves that are designed to feed meaningless data to monitoring tools. I conclude that these two trends are neglected by a majority of surveillance scholars because of biases that make them dismiss the initiative displayed by ordinary users, assess positive and negative outcomes differently, and confuse what is possible and what is probable.

Adolescent problem behaviours (substance use, delinquency, school dropout, pregnancy, and violence) are costly not only for individuals, but for entire communities. Policy makers and practitioners that are interested in preventing these problem behaviours are faced with many programming options. The purpose of this review is to discuss two criteria for selecting relevant parenting programmes, and provide five examples of such programmes.

The first criterion for programme selection is theory based. Well-supported theories, such as the social development model, have laid out key family-based risk and protective factors for problem behaviour. Programmes that target these risk and protective factors are more likely to be effective. Second, programmes should have demonstrated efficacy; these interventions have been called “evidence-based programmes” (EBP). This review highlights the importance of evidence from rigorous research designs, such as randomised clinical trials, in order to establish programme efficacy.

Nurse-Family Partnership, The Incredible Years, the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P), Strengthening Families 10-14, and Staying Connected with Your Teen are examined. The unique features of each programme are briefly presented. Evidence showing impact on family risk and protective factors, as well as long-term problem behaviours, is reviewed. Finally, a measure of cost effectiveness of each programme is provided.

The paper proposes that not all programmes are of equal value, and suggests two simple criteria for selecting a parenting programme with a high likelihood for positive outcomes. Furthermore, although this review is not exhaustive, the five examples of EBPs offer a good start for policy makers and practitioners seeking to implement effective programmes in their communities. Thus, this paper offers practical suggestions for those grappling with investments in child and adolescent programmes on the ground.

Juvenile delinquency research has identified two vital (and related) concepts to this area of study: age of onset and escalation. In this investigation, escalation is examined as a function of early drinking. Added to this are the influences of deviant peers and the social control effects of family and church. My analysis shows that consuming alcohol at a young age is correlated with illegal drug use, committing a greater number of illegal acts, committing more serious offences, and being confronted by police for delinquent behavior. Moreover, I show that peer influence has a greater impact on individual behavior than do other social control mechanisms. In conclusion, I offer a critique of current policies aimed at teenage drinking and argue in favor of preventative, rather than prohibitive strategies.