Casebooks

Criminal Law: Canadian Law, Indigenous Laws & Critical Perspectives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

We’re excited to share this first ever open-access casebook on criminal law in Canada with you. Our hope is not only that it can contribute in a small way to making legal education less expensive, but that it can also enhance access to justice by making these materials available widely to law students, legal professionals and the general public. As a digital casebook, we have been able to include multi-media content like podcasts and videos and can easily update it with the latest changes to the law. This casebook is, of course, not intended to provide legal advice, but legal information and critical content.

Collections

Criminal Justice Resources (Various CC licences)

A collection of open resources curated by Houston Community College Libraries relating to different topics in criminal justice.

Monographs

Domestic Violence and Access to Justice: A Mapping of Relevant Laws, Policies and Justice Systems Component Across Canada (CanLII user licence)

In this eBook, we provide a survey of legislation, key government policies, and justice system components that apply to domestic violence across Canada. This mapping is an effort to comprehensively document the diversity of government responses to this social problem and to provide access to legal information. This document is not intended to provide legal advice.

We include all statutes, regulations, and government policies that expressly include or consider domestic violence, as well as those that implicitly apply to domestic violence cases – for example, those providing particular procedures or remedies in cases involving harm to persons. Our focus on “domestic violence” is on abuse in adult intimate partner relationships. We do not include a comprehensive list of laws that apply to other forms of interpersonal violence such as child abuse or elder abuse.

Textbooks

Forensic Toxicology: From Crime Scene to the Virtual Lab (CC BY-NC-SA)

Take a virtual tour from fundamental toxicology through laboratory demonstrations to court cases that focus on analysis, interpretation and reporting of toxicological results in a forensic science context.

Game-Day Gangsters: Crime and Deviance in Canadian Football (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA)

In the complicated interaction between sport and law, much is revealed about the perception and understanding of consent and tolerable deviance. When a football player steps onto the field, what deviations from the rules of the game are considered acceptable? And what risks has the player already accepted by voluntarily participating in the sport? In the case of Canadian football, acts of on-field violence, hazing, and performance-enhancing drug use that would be considered criminal outside the context of sport are tolerated and even promoted by team and league administrators. The manner in which league review committees and the Canadian legal system understand such actions highlights the challenges faced by those looking to protect players from the dangers of the sport. Although there has been some discussion of legal and institutional reforms dealing with crime and deviance in Canadian sport, little exists in the way of sports law, with most cases falling into the legal categories of criminal, administrative, or civil law.

In Game-Day Gangsters, Fogel argues for a review of the systems by which Canadian football is governed and analyzes the reforms proposed by football leagues and by players. Juxtaposing material from interviews with football players and administrators and from media files and legal cases, he explores the discrepancies between the players’ own experiences and the institutional handling of disciplinary matters in junior, university, and professional football leagues across the country.

Introduction to Criminal Investigation: Processes, Practices and Thinking (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Introduction to Criminal Investigation, Processes, Practices, and Thinking, as the title suggests, is a teaching text describing and segmenting criminal investigations into its component parts to illustrate the craft of criminal investigation. Delineating criminal investigation within the components of task-skills and thinking-skills, this book describes task-skills such incident response, crime scene management, evidence management, witness management, and forensic analysis, as essential foundations supporting the critical thinking-skills of offence validation and theory development for the creation of effective investigative plans aimed at forming reasonable grounds for belief. The goal of the text is to assist the reader in forming their own structured mental map of investigative thinking practices.

Representing Mentally Disabled Persons in the Criminal Justice System: A Guide for Practitioners 2017 Edition (CanLII user licence)

This guide, Representing Mentally Disabled Persons In the Criminal Justice System, Second edition, is intended to provide an overview of the legal issues faced by mentally disabled clients and their lawyers at every stage of the criminal justice process. The guide focuses on the legal, practical and ethical dilemmas that may occur, the role of the police and the prosecution in diverting mentally disabled offenders out of the criminal justice system, sentencing options, prison conditions, treatment issues, and human rights issues. Practical aspects of representation, such as taking instructions from a mentally disabled client, the options open to mentally disabled accused and some of the possible consequences of choosing these options are also addressed.

The CanLII Criminal Law Ebook: A user-friendly guide (CanLII user licence)

The criminal law is not just the stuff of salacious headlines and political sound bites. Although it is the regular focus of media attention, where can the public go to actually learn how it operates?  More importantly, where can the public easily access this information for free?

Enter the CanLII Criminal Law Ebook. We hope it sheds some light on a topic that greatly interests Canadians.

Unsettling Colonialism in the Canadian Criminal Justice System (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)