Violence in Canada: Sociopolitical Perspectives

Anna Leslie is an associate professor of sociology at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Violence in Canada examines social and interpersonal violence in Canada
and public and government responses to it.

The central theme to emerge from the book is that “[Canada] does
indeed have serious problems of violence: homicide rates higher than
most Western societies, high levels of violence in aboriginal
communities, frequent victimization of children and women, and instances
of police and prison violence that violate the standards of civil
society.” At the same time, the essays (most of which consider
Canadian society from the 1960s onward) reveal that the growing fear of
violence among the public is not generally supported by statistics,
particularly with respect to homicide and terrorism. On the other hand,
public perception underestimates the incidence of some types of
violence, notably intimate male violence against women.

Despite its cursory examination of the nature and extent of violence in
a multicultural society, this book will have broad appeal to students of
social history, the social sciences, women’s studies, and criminology.