Sociology 3260A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Selective Enforcement, Vice News Tonight, The Vancouver Sun
1 Jan 2020
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Week 9 - mid the gap: law-on-the-books vs. law-in-action. Today"s agenda: mind the gap: law-on-the-books vs. law-in-action, where do we see the gap, routine and non-enforcement, selective enforcement, structural-institutional dilemmas, police work - discretion and corruption/misconduct, constitutional principles and their realization. Routine non-enforcement: historical example, vagrancy laws, contemporary example: Jaywalking: downloading copyrighted material without paying, environmental law, health law. Selective enforcement: the ability to enforce the law against some people and not others - often racial and/or class bias, historical example, contemporary example, vagrancy laws (motivated by class and race) Loitering: ontario safe streets act, 1999, drug laws. U. s. immigration and customs enforcement: widely criticized, sites between competing interests - economic (cheap immigrant labour) and. Political (national security: canadian environmental law, bad international reputation. Lecture notes: conflicting interests - economic (job creation/economic growth) and environment, symbolic law: policies that have little impact on objective conditions but serve the purpose of placating the public.
