The criminal justice system aims to maintain a balance between the individual interest of private citizens to carry on their lives free from state interference, and the communal interest in maintaining a safe society. These two goals come into conflict with each other most visibly when agents of the state take control of private citizens — that is, when they exercise their powers to detain or to arrest.
The book focuses on “street-level” encounters: detentions and arrests that occur in the course of investigating crime and laying charges. The authors explore the initial interaction between agents of the state or others authorized to detain and arrest, and the private citizens whose liberty is interfered with. It is at that point that the balance between societal safety and individual liberty is most keenly in play.
This third edition has been updated to incorporate significant statutory changes to Part XVI of the Criminal Code (Compelling Appearance of Accused Before a Justice and Interim Release), to common law powers (powers of detention, safety searches, search incident to arrest, etc.), to developments in the law in dealing with racial profiling, and to Charter rights (freedom from arbitrary detention, right to counsel, and so on).
Book details
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English -
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About the author
Glen Luther
Glen Luther, QC, is a professor at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan. He has previously taught at several law schools, including Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Calgary, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has extensive criminal litigation experience in Alberta and Saskatchewan and has argued cases at all levels of courts. Professor Luther has received several awards for teaching excellence and in 2009 was appointed Queen’s Counsel by the Government of Saskatchewan.
Steve Coughlan
Steve Coughlan is a professor at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. He is the author of Criminal Procedure (Irwin Law, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020) and many other books, as well as a co-author of the Annual Review of Criminal Law. He is one of the editors of Criminal Reports and is a co-author of the National Judicial Institute Criminal Law Essentials e-letter. He is the recipient of a number of teaching awards, including the Association of Atlantic Universities Distinguished Teacher Award. In 2019, he was named by Canadian Lawyer magazine as one of the Twenty-Five Most Influential People in the Justice System.
