Society and Law / en New book by U of T law professor Kent Roach examines the injustice of wrongful convictions in Canada /news/new-book-u-t-law-professor-kent-roach-examines-injustice-wrongful-convictions-canada <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">New book by U of T law professor Kent Roach examines the injustice of wrongful convictions in Canada</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/roach-book.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=SYQl0T8B 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-04/roach-book.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=ImkPZRSq 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-04/roach-book.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=VFoSlPWI 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/roach-book.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=SYQl0T8B" alt="A composite of the cover of Wrongfully Convicted and Kent Roach"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2023-04-21T15:46:27-04:00" title="Friday, April 21, 2023 - 15:46" class="datetime">Fri, 04/21/2023 - 15:46</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>In his latest book, U of T law professor Kent Roach outlines Canada's history of of wrongful convictions and how the legal system can better safeguard justice (photo of Roach by Faculty of Law)</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/nina-haikara" hreflang="en">Nina Haikara</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6902" hreflang="en">Justice</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/alumni" hreflang="en">Alumni</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/books" hreflang="en">Books</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-staff" hreflang="en">Faculty &amp; Staff</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/professors" hreflang="en">Professors</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/society-and-law" hreflang="en">Society and Law</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/kent-roach"><strong>Kent Roach</strong></a>, a professor in the Faculty of Law at the Ƶ,&nbsp;has spent decades sounding the alarm on wrongful convictions in Canada.</p> <p>His new research underlines the dangers of wrongful convictions based on false guilty pleas or imagined crimes that never happened.</p> <p>“In judgments, the courts recite ‘the facts’ – but sometimes the legal system gets ‘the facts’ wrong, and the wrongfully convicted and their families suffer as a result,”&nbsp;Roach says.</p> <p>His latest book –&nbsp;<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Wrongfully-Convicted/Kent-Roach/9781668023662"><em>Wrongfully Convicted: Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes, and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice</em></a>&nbsp;– bookends his trilogy on Canada’s criminal justice system with previously published books on Canadian policing and the case that saw Gerald Stanley acquitted in the 2018 killing of Colten Boushie.</p> <p>All three books, published in the span of less than five years,&nbsp;strongly advocate for policy change and reform.</p> <p>Roach's 2019 book&nbsp;<em>Canadian Justice Indigenous Injustice</em>&nbsp;was shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing. And&nbsp;<em>Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change</em>, published last year, was a finalist for both the Balsillie and Donner prizes for public policy books.</p> <p>His&nbsp;books also grapple with injustice towards Indigenous people in Canada’s justice system.</p> <p>“Wrongful convictions affect the so-called ‘usual suspects’ – and in Canada, the ‘usual suspects’ are too often Indigenous, racialized, socio-economically marginalized or suffering with mental health challenges,” Roach says.</p> <p>Another thread in his work is the necessity of&nbsp;police reform. He says police can still use aggressive and deceitful ways of questioning suspects that are not always prohibited by judicial regulation of police interrogation techniques.</p> <p>Roach adds that one of the lessons to be learned from&nbsp;<em>Wrongfully Convicted&nbsp;</em>is that police should not be so aggressive when interviewing people who are vulnerable, have cognitive challenges, or are suffering from addiction or mental health issues. He notes that police need to consider alternative suspects and be aware of stereotypes that associate groups and individuals with crime.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Police are subject to a very natural&nbsp;human tendency of zeroing-in on a suspect and interpreting evidence so that it confirms the suspect's guilt&nbsp;– while disregarding evidence that points in another direction, such as&nbsp;an alternative suspect,” he says.</p> <p>Though not perfect, computerized case-management tools can help, Roach says, adding such tools are currently underutilized but can provide case-linkage and analysis to help guard against tunnel vision or confirmation bias.</p> <p>“If we wait for the courts to correct these errors, it's too late. The courts alone cannot produce good policing.”</p> <p>In 2007, Roach was appointed research director of Ontario’s public inquiry into systemic concerns in pediatric forensic pathology in the wake of revelations that former forensic pathologist Charles Smith had performed flawed child autopsies that resulted in wrongful convictions.</p> <figure role="group" class="caption caption-drupal-media align-left"> <div> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/MicrosoftTeams-image%20%282%29_0.png" width="400" height="600" alt="Amanda Carling"> </div> </div> <figcaption>Amanda Carling&nbsp;(photo by Jesse Johnston)</figcaption> </figure> <p>In&nbsp;<em>Wrongfully Convicted</em>, Roach&nbsp;revisits the cases that were the result of Smith’s misleading forensic evidence.&nbsp;A section of the book examines ‘imagined crimes’ that never happened – such crimes constitute one-third of the wrongful convictions recorded in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wrongfulconvictions.ca/">Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions</a>&nbsp;that Roach co-founded with Métis lawyer&nbsp;<strong><a href="/celebrates/faculty-law-staff-member-amanda-carling-recognized-support-indigenous-students">Amanda Carling</a></strong>, a 2012 graduate of the JD program at U of T's Faculty of Law.</p> <p>Roach and Carling co-taught a seminar on wrongful convictions at U of T,&nbsp;which&nbsp;<a href="/news/canadian-registry-wrongful-convictions-highlights-failures-criminal-justice-system">led to the development of the registry</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Smith had suspicions directed towards young, single mothers and racialized men. The system, which is designed to be a check on mere suspicions, didn't stop Smith's,” Roach says.</p> <p>He notes there are more recent cases of ‘imagined crime’ wrongful convictions. In fact, three more cases involving such imagined crimes will soon be added to the registry with the help of U of T JD alumni&nbsp;<strong>Jessie Stirling</strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Joel Voss</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Sarah Harland-Logan</strong>.</p> <p>The&nbsp;registry was launched this past February&nbsp;with 83 cases. The three new cases will bring the total to 86 – two cases involved Black parents&nbsp;wrongfully convicted in the death of their child&nbsp;and another case of a woman with intellectual challenges who is unhoused.</p> <p>Roach explains that both the registry and his new book are designed to raise awareness that wrongful convictions are not just a historical or U.S. problem.&nbsp;</p> <p>“I want Canadians to know that&nbsp;we too&nbsp;have problems in our criminal justice system. The registry is just the tip of the iceberg," he says.</p> <p>"The real question is, how large is the iceberg? We really won’t know that until we have a better system than we do now.”</p> <p>Earlier this year, just days before the registry’s launch, the&nbsp;federal government introduced legislation to create a federal commission to review potential cases of wrongful conviction.</p> <p>Roach led the research on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/ccr-rc/mjc-cej/index.html">A Miscarriages of Justice Commission</a>&nbsp;report in November 2021, which advocated for the creation of an independent federal commission to consider cases of wrongful conviction.</p> <p>He says the announcement of a permanent federal commission to investigate allegations of wrongful convictions is an important next step in addressing the issue.</p> <p>Roach notes that the proposed commission will need to be properly funded and staffed to be able to help people, and will need to be made aware of the realities of wrongful convictions –&nbsp;including false guilty&nbsp;pleas and crimes that never happened.</p> <p>"We also need to find a way to compensate the wrongfully convicted more quickly and humanely for the terrible injustices done, in all our names," he says.</p> <p>“It's a long, hard climb to reverse or remedy a wrongful conviction."</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 21 Apr 2023 19:46:27 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 301281 at Undergraduate students compete at U of T this weekend to tackle affordable housing challenges /news/undergraduate-students-compete-u-t-weekend-tackle-affordable-housing-challenges <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Undergraduate students compete at U of T this weekend to tackle affordable housing challenges</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2017-03-10-regent-park.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=OUe9PfKT 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2017-03-10-regent-park.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=wvHR8TAP 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2017-03-10-regent-park.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=ESVxWd4C 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2017-03-10-regent-park.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=OUe9PfKT" alt> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>ullahnor</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2017-03-10T15:24:26-05:00" title="Friday, March 10, 2017 - 15:24" class="datetime">Fri, 03/10/2017 - 15:24</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Regent Park, Canada's oldest and largest social housing development, is being revitalized with a mixture of condominiums, market-rate rental apartments and public housing (photo by the City of Toronto via Flickr) </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/kim-luke" hreflang="en">Kim Luke</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Kim Luke</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/city-culture" hreflang="en">City &amp; Culture</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/urban" hreflang="en">urban</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/cities" hreflang="en">Cities</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/geography" hreflang="en">Geography</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/political-science" hreflang="en">Political Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/economics" hreflang="en">Economics</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ethis" hreflang="en">Ethis</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/society-and-law" hreflang="en">Society and Law</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/affordable-housing" hreflang="en">Affordable Housing</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/laneways" hreflang="en">Laneways</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The students behind <a href="http://civicspark.ca/">CivicSpark</a> – a Ƶ group devoted to fostering the next generation of city builders – will bring 13 undergraduate teams from universities across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) together this weekend to offer solutions <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/building-up-the-6ix-an-undergraduate-public-policy-case-competition-tickets-31136552266">to the area’s affordable housing problem</a>.</p> <p>“With the cost of housing constantly increasing, there is a real concern that people, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups can be pushed out of their homes,” said CivicSpark’s co-founder&nbsp;<strong>Edwin White Chacon</strong>, a fifth-year Arts &amp; Science undergrad who is majoring in political science, and ethics, society and law.</p> <p>The competition comes at a time when the Ƶ is exploring different housing approaches to help make the city more livable and sustainable. U of T President <strong>Meric Gertler</strong>&nbsp;is working with the presidents of three other GTA universities&nbsp;to tackle affordable housing through a call for research proposals. U of T is also looking into building laneway houses in the Huron-Sussex neighbourhood bordering the St. George campus.</p> <h3><a href="/news/u-t-teams-ocad-york-and-ryerson-seek-research-proposals-addressing-toronto%E2%80%99s-affordable-housing">Read more about the call for research proposals on affordable housing&nbsp;</a></h3> <h3><a href="/news/u-t-experts-creative-solution-toronto-s-housing-problems-laneway-homes">Read more about laneway housing initiatives</a></h3> <p>Student teams have each had one month to analyse a specific case and prepare a 20-minute presentation that includes innovative and tangible solutions. They will be judged by a panel of urban experts and city planners, as well as professionals from Toronto Community Housing Corporation and the Ontario Ministry of Housing.</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__3754 img__view_mode__media_large attr__format__media_large" src="/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/civicspark.jpg?itok=GHoOiY1g" style="width: 232px; height: 300px; margin: 10px; float: left;" typeof="foaf:Image">The top two teams of the day will go head-to-head in solving a surprise case under the pressure of a very tight time frame.</p> <p>“The finalist teams will be given the same case, and 60 minutes to prepare their solutions&nbsp;and present them,” said Chacon. &nbsp;</p> <p>Last year’s competition, which focused on transportation and public space, saw the final teams competing on ways to revitalize the space under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway.</p> <p>For student participants, the benefits include professional development, insight into the complexities of regional issues, as well as valuable connections with experts and professionals in urban planning. The winning team gets the opportunity to have an informational interview with decision-makers in the GTHA’s public, private and not-for-profit sectors.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/CivicSpark/">CivicSpark</a> was co-founded in 2015 as a chapter of CivicAction, a local city-building organization, by Chacon and undergraduate students <strong>Sara Urbina</strong>, who is majoring in economics and geography,&nbsp;and <strong>Joe Becker</strong>, who is studying political science and Canadian studies.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 10 Mar 2017 20:24:26 +0000 ullahnor 105688 at