Law360 Canada (May 15, 2026, 10:09 AM EDT) -- This column is quite different from most of my previous ones in that it focuses on something other than my own experience. However, it grows entirely out of that experience. To reassure readers (beyond the many citations in the text), when I was arrested I had an extensive background in reading and analyzing social science research. In the years since my arrest, I have read and made notes on more than 1,000 books, reports and research studies in this field. I have talked with dozens of experts — lawyers, criminologists and community leaders — and even given presentations at conferences. Every claim in this column can be verified by looking at reputable sources in the field, including the reports of Canada’s Correctional Investigator.

Criminal justice is a field in which so much depends on evidence. In theory, you can only be convicted of a crime when there is compelling evidence you committed that crime. In practice, it’s not always that way; most people plead guilty, so the strength of the evidence is never tested. We have enough examples of wrongful convictions to know that evidence also gets manipulated. Nonetheless, there is a lot of attention in criminal justice on the rules of evidence; what counts, how it can be introduced, when evidence should be excluded, how it has to be shared with the defence, and so on.

But there’s another kind of evidence that’s highly relevant to criminal justice yet gets much less consideration. That is evidence from research that bears on criminal justice issues. Canadian courts have struggled with what to do with social science evidence. Sometimes it has reshaped the way we understand issues, but in other instances, strong research findings appear to have had no effect at all.

On the positive side, research has shown that eyewitness testimony, which used to be a critical part of convicting someone, is actually highly unreliable because our memories are so fallible. Courts will generally no longer convict someone solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony, a step that has doubtless prevented many miscarriages of justice.

Some forensic evidence falls in the same category, including blood spatter patterns, and even fingerprints and DNA. In most cases these should not be regarded as definitive, but criminal courts are still sometimes giving them enormous weight.

Other situations are more complicated. A great deal of research has shown the enormous overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons, a situation that continues to get worse despite many pledges to address it. One step in that regard was the mandating of what are called Gladue reports on criminal defendants that can inform a court of how the wrongs done to Indigenous people in Canada may have contributed to a person’s being involved in crime (R. v. Gladue, [1999] 1 S.C.R. 688). Yet after many years, Gladue reports continue to be underused, or of poor quality, or do not have much effect on the outcome of cases.

And then there are other areas in which strong research evidence is basically ignored. Deterrence continues to be a key sentencing principle in Canada, yet there is a strong consensus among researchers that imprisonment does not deter future crime and may actually increase it. That does not prevent judges (and the Criminal Code) from citing deterrence as a reason for sentencing. Longer sentences are ineffective in reducing crime as well, while governments continue to pass laws mandating longer sentences for various crimes.

Another instance of ignoring evidence has to do with sex offenders, who are subject to especially restrictive conditions even after completing a sentence, though there is more and more evidence that very few of them are actually high risk, so these extra measures have a high cost and no public benefit.

A more recent and blatant example is around bail. Many reports and analyses have shown that the central problem with bail is that it is too hard to get and carries too many restrictions, leading to further charges that have nothing to do with public safety. For every person who may commit a crime while on bail, thousands of people are held in jail at a huge cost to them and the public. No expert supports less access to bail, yet all we hear in public is calls to make bail harder to get.

These failures to consider research evidence have real results in the lives of thousands of people who are caught up in the justice system. Denial of bail, longer sentences and the like make many people’s lives worse, cost a lot of money and do not improve public safety.

Governments like to say they are “evidence-based,” but they clearly pick and choose when they want to pay attention to evidence and when they prefer to ignore it. There are many areas where strong evidence is ignored (from climate change to drug policy to school practices such as explicit teaching of spelling). Given the attacks on research and science in recent years, one might well think that the use of research evidence is in decline.

This is not just the fault of politicians. They make those choices because they believe that that is what the voting public wants, and in that belief they are, ionically, following the evidence. There’s not much reason to believe that governments suffer politically from ignoring what the research evidence tells us.

Criminal justice seems to be a field particularly resistant to evidence, probably because crime evokes such strong emotions in people — fear, anger, disgust. And when our emotions are aroused, our reason tends to disappear.

These emotions are what attract media attention as well. The media often assert their important role in educating people, yet when it comes to crime, almost all of them cannot resist milking the most unusual crime stories to create fear and thus generate more readers and viewers. Coverage of crime is vastly disproportionate to its actual effects when compared to other dangers such as disease or environmental degradation.

This is a hard pattern to fight. But it has been done in other areas; the efforts to change beliefs and laws around drinking and driving or smoking are cases where years of sustained work eventually led to much better public policy. All the more reason that those interested in better criminal justice and public safety should increase our efforts to generate and then share evidence, so we can do better.

David Dorson is the pen name of someone who went through arrest, case disposition, imprisonment and parole in Ontario a few years ago. Law360 Canada has granted him anonymity because he offers a unique perspective on a subject that matters deeply to many readers, and revealing the author’s identity would make re-establishment in the community after serving his sentence much more difficult than it already is.

The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

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