Criminal Law and Sentencing in Canadian Judicial System

Running head: CRIMINAL LAW
CRIMINAL LAW
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Author Note:

1CRIMINAL LAW
Answer 1:
The Canadian judicial system put emphasis on punishing the offenders by sentencing him
imprisonment. The sentencing procedure of the Canadian system varies widely from that of the
Aboriginals (Lithopoulos & Ruddell, 2016). During sentencing of any criminal offence, a judge
must take in to account whether the accused pleads guilty or is found to be guilty by the judge or
by the jury. When the accused is deemed guilty, judge then considers the crime committed then
he gives sentences depending on various provisions of Criminal Code. The goal of the
Aboriginal justice was to heal the offender as the well the victim by restoring harmony to the
community as held by Rudin in his article ‘Aboriginal peoples and the criminal justice system’
(Rudin, 2016). On the other hand, the Canadian judicial system uses imprisonment to deter
crime. Here lie the differences between the approaches of the judicial systems.
Aboriginal justice system focuses on the reformative theory where the offenders are put
back into the mainstream. The object of the justice system of the Aboriginals is the reformation
which depends on humanistic approach such that when an offender commits any offence, he is
still a human being. Hence an effort must be taken during the incarceration period (Lithopoulos
& Ruddell, 2016). The object of the Aboriginal system of justice is to cause the moral reform of
the offender. While giving punishment, the judge must consider his character, early life style, his
education and the environment and circumstances that make him commit such offence.
On the other hand, the Canadian Justice as said earlier is focused on deterrent theory
mainly. The Canadian judges are over using the incarceration as a mode of punishing the
accused. The problem of this is that imprisonment does not cause the rehabilitation of the
Aboriginal offenders or of non Native offenders. Moreover, incarceration accelerates the making

2CRIMINAL LAW
more criminals in the society. It is seen that imprisonment does operate as a deterrent but it
makes the offenders angrier and more prone to commit crime than they before being sentenced to
imprisonment. The main problem is that the Parliament has fixed the hands of the judges by
making legislations from which the judges cannot turn away. They are bound by the provisions
enumerated in those legislations. The legislative frame works do not act as guidelines but they
are the rules that need to be followed strictly. The judges have no option of allowing flexibility to
those rules and sections given in the acts. Thus the punishments being offered are strictly on the
basis of provisions enumerated in the Criminal codes of Canada. Any innovation observed by
any judge is regarded to be out of the legislations and are subjected to appeals in the higher
courts. Thus the Canadian justice system follows different approach that that of the Aboriginals
(Lithopoulos & Ruddell, 2016). Apart from imprisonment, the Canadian judicial system also
considers imposing fines. This is another problem of this system which is being faced by the
Aboriginals as they are unable to pay those fines as they are very poor (Lithopoulos & Ruddell,
2016). Thus as seen before in the history of the Aboriginals, these people have very little
involvement with the Canadian justice system. The lack of active participation from their side
together with their negative experiences who had come in contact with the Canadian justice
system have left them estranged.
Answer 2:
A new initiative in the system of Aboriginal justice is the sentencing circles or the circle
sentencing that came into existence approximately since the year 1992 (Morrison, 2016). The
sentencing circles work within the ambit of the criminal justice system and hence they are
controlled by the parameters given by the Canadian criminal code and case laws or appeals,