Release Date
Geography
Language of Resource
Full Text Available
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Peer Reviewed
Objective
This study examines the recent proliferation of manslaughter charges and subsequent prosecutions brought against people who have shared, sold, or provided drugs that have led to overdose death in Canada.
The abstract of this paper is also available in French.
Findings/Key points
The analysis finds that the vast majority of those who face manslaughter charges are engaged in the lowest tiers of the drug trade, are themselves people who use drugs, and are often intimately known to the deceased. Messaging by police, prosecutors and the courts mobilize the overdose crisis as rationale for these charges and prosecutions, positioning them as a form of redress to impacted communities. This phenomenon illustrates how punitive criminal legal responses to the overdose crisis have deepened alongside the retreat of criminal law in other circumstances, contradicting claims of a therapeutic turn in Canadian drug policies.
Design/methods
The research presented here comprises a documentary analysis of three textual sources, including news media coverage, Access-to-Information and Freedom-of-Information requests of materials from criminal legal institutions, and court records (e.g., criminal trial rulings and sentencing decisions).
