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Since the 1990s, Ontario and Canada at large have seen the rise of the neoliberal state with a concurrent punitive turn in public policy. While academic inquiry has attempted to understand the evolution of penality, the functional linkages that exist between the social assistance and penal apparatus have been largely overlooked. This paper seeks to bridge this gap through examining the way in which community housing is increasingly being envisaged as a mechanism of social control and an exclusionary tactic. Drawing on 150 newsprint media items, reports produced by non-governmental organizations, and Hansard transcripts, the hegemonic discourses surrounding Ontario’s Community Housing Renewal Strategy are explored. Particular attention is given to the proposed amendment which denies individuals criminalized for a ‘serious criminal offence’ from accessing community housing. In conceptualizing criminalized individuals as ‘non-deserving’ citizens, exclusionary tactics are legitimized as ‘crime reduction’ strategies.

This article presents a sociolegal study of decisions by a Canadian immigration tribunal on appeals for “humanitarian and compassionate” relief from criminal deportation. Drawing on the work of Émile Durkheim, we argue that the appeal decisions serve two legitimating functions. On the one hand, they seek to demonstrate the state’s capacity to ensure that the large-scale admission of mostly economic immigrants does not threaten the solidarity of Canadian society. On the other, the decisions address concerns about the justifiability of deportation by making vivid the moral incompetence of unsuccessful appellants, hence their unsuitability for membership. Cet article présente une étude sociojuridique des décisions prises par un tribunal canadien d’immigration en appel de décisions pour « motifs d’ordre humanitaire » suivant une mesure de renvoi fondé sur une déclaration de culpabilité au Canada. Sur la base des travaux d’Émile Durkheim, nous soutenons que ces décisions en appel remplissent deux fonctions de légitimation. D’une part, ces décisions tentent de faire la démonstration de la capacité de l’État à veiller à ce que l’admission à grande échelle d’immigrants, principalement des immigrants économiques, ne menace pas la solidarité de la société canadienne. D’autre part, ces décisions répondent aux préoccupations concernant la justification de la mesure de renvoi en mettant en évidence l’incompétence morale des requérants déboutés et donc leur inaptitude à devenir membres de la société canadienne.

This dissertation examines a Bail Supervision Program (BSP) operated by a nongovernmental organization in Ontario, Canada. The data includes over 200 hours of informal observations and conversations at a BSP in Ontario, Canada, coded client case files that closed in 2019 (n= 212), interviews with accused (n= 20), and interviews with bail supervisors (n= 9). This dissertation follows the three-manuscript option and presents three main arguments. The first manuscript argues BSP is a tool used by courts to intervene in the lives of marginalized accused without first needing to secure a conviction. The BSP monitors, tests, and sorts accused, assessing capacity for self-governance and docility through procedural hassle, then relaying this information to the court to be used to determine an appropriate case outcome. The second manuscript argues the BSP provides a critical support role for accused: avoiding consequences of pre-trial detention, offering guidance in navigating the criminal legal process, acting as a resource and information hub, and offering emotional support for accused during a stressful period. While the supporting role is beneficial for accused and the court, accessing support is contingent on accepting coercive conditions that may further entrench accused in the criminal justice system. The third manuscript outlines concerns with the supervisory role of the BSP finding the program does not impact compliance with conditions and is not well positioned to detect condition violations outside of program specific conditions. Instead, the onerous BSP conditions (i.e., weekly reporting to the BSP and program referrals) contribute to a cycle of criminalization through increasing the risk of incurring additional charges for failing to report as required. This research provides needed knowledge of the utility of BSPs from the perspectives of supervised accused people and bail supervisors.

    Independently, obesity and physical activity (PA) influence cerebral structure in aging, yet their interaction has not been investigated. We examined sex differences in the relationships among PA, obesity, and cerebral structure in aging with 340 participants who completed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition to quantify grey matter volume (GMV) and white matter volume (WMV). Height and weight were measured to calculate body mass index (BMI). A PA questionnaire was used to estimate weekly Metabolic Equivalents. The relationships between BMI, PA, and their interaction on GMV Regions of Interest (ROIs) and WMV ROIs were examined. Increased BMI was associated with higher GMV in females, an inverse U relationship was found between PA and GMV in females, and the interaction indicated that regardless of BMI greater PA was associated with enhanced GMV. Males demonstrated an inverse U shape between BMI and GMV, and in males with high PA and had normal weight demonstrated greater GMV than normal weight low PA revealed by the interaction. WMV ROIs had a linear relationship with moderate PA in females, whereas in males, increased BMI was associated with lower WMV as well as a positive relationship with moderate PA and WMV. Males and females have unique relationships among GMV, PA and BMI, suggesting sex-aggregated analyses may lead to biased or non-significant results. These results suggest higher BMI, and PA are associated with increased GMV in females, uniquely different from males, highlighting the importance of sex-disaggregated models. Future work should include other imaging parameters, such as perfusion, to identify if these differences co-occur in the same regions as GMV.