Intersectionality, as founded by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is referred to as the interlocking and

interconnectedness of different social categories such as race, caste, gender and sexuality together
interact with social institutions and form effects like social oppression and division, and none of these
categories taken alone can provide an accurate view of the reasons behind why these divisions exist. (C)
It recognizes the fact that for any situation in the criminal justice system, many different of these factors
come into play for a person who has committed a crime, rather than blaming just one of these
categories alone.

Intersectionality as a whole, thus shapes people's lives and their interactions and experiences with crime
and the criminal justice system, for better or for worse. Intersectionality can lead to some people being
way more discriminated against socially and criminally as well. For example, violence can happen to
anyone, but it is clear that indigenous women and girls, bisexual, transgender, and lesbian women are at
greater risks of violence (C) as their gender, sexuality, and race combined leads to them being
marginalized more than heterosexual and cisgender women (C). Violence against black women is so
common that in fact it has now a new term coined for it, “misogynoir” which describes the unjust hatred
against them which is usually rooted in interconnectedness of misogyny and racism in society. (C)

On the other hand, it can lead to some people being way more privileged in society, and that is reflected
in their interactions with the criminal justice system as well. For example, there is a visible distinction in
how white people and other visible minorities are treated in crimes portrayed in media. White people
are less likely than others to be depicted as criminal offenders, moreover they are commonly seen in law
enforcing roles. (C) Another example of this is seen in media when opioid addictions of white, middle
class, “normal” people are depicted as innocent victims, whereas the same addiction issue in indigenous
communities is seen as a chronic issue. (C)

These examples of intersectionality and more of them that are commonly seen around in our society
portray that this interconnectedness of these social categories gives rise to higher levels of division
between people who have privileges and people who are marginalized based on these factors.

The classical school of thought believed that humans have free will and that people choose to commit
crimes based on rational choices made by them and believed that the punishment of crimes should be
so severe that it is not worth it to commit crime for the pleasure of it as the pain of the punishment is so
high (C). There were two components of this theory, rational choice in humans and the concept of
deterrence which gave rise to Rational Choice theory and Deterrence Theory,

Rational Choice Theory describes that humans choose to commit crime based on rational decisions
made through assessing the possible upsides and downsides from a criminal activity. It also describes
that for a criminal activity to take place an offender makes four possible choices, choosing if or not to
commit a crime, deciding whether or not to pick a particular target, how many times to offend and
whether or not to stop doing that crime afterwards. This theory focusses on the chouces and
calculations hat go through a persons brain before commiting a crime,

Deterrence theory describes the idea that punishment, or just the threat of punishment will deter
people from committing that particular crim. There are two types specified in theory, one is general
deterrence, when a punishment to one person deters the general population from committing that
crime or specific deterrence, when a punishment is given to a person just so that he does not commit
that crime again.

Criticisms of this theory include how they ignore how intersectionality might affect a person and lead
them to commit a crime. It does not explain how systematic oppression, discrimination, colonialization
and deprivement of education and employment opportunities can for example, lead visible minorities to
be more commit crimes. It also needs to be more individual focused as everyone has different
circumstances that can lead them to commit a crime.

Classical school of criminology was adopted as it was a change from the previous beliefs that criminals
were demons, and they had demonic qualities that needed to be solved and they were just born that
way by God and could not be changed. Hence, classical school of thinking was adopted, and people
thought of crimes as a choice, But, then in 19th century, criminologists moved away from this thinking
because of its limitations and went to ‘positivism’ which thought that punishments should be given
based on a criminal and their individual case instead of a crime in general.

The over-representation of indigenous people in the Canadian Justice system is a complex and
convoluted issue that does deal with a lot of historical, societal and intersectional issues.

Historically, Indigenous people have been horribly discriminated against as well. Colonial practices like
the Indian Act of 1867, criminalized indigenous cultures and values. The RCMP was instrumental in the
execution of this act, and thus that discrimination still seeps into the police today and has also caused
massive distrust among indigenous people for the police. Moreover, the formation of residential schools
was also a major part of this act, and those schools took away indigenous children from their families
and made them lose their culture and language and taught them western cultures and languages. This
broke families and led to heavy intergenerational trauma which makes it harder for people to raise
proper families, may lead to high drug, alcohol use and thus more interactions with the police. Hence,
the enabling of the Indian Act and residential schools generating generations of trauma and overt
discrimination against them is playing a role in them being overrepresented in the justice system today.

Looking at this from a contemporary and intersectional perspective, there are still various factors that
contribute to this overrepresentation. Racial profiling is among the major ones of these, it states that
police men are more likely to ticket, charge, bring people to police stations and give overnight police
detention to racialised people than white people. This explains their over representaion as they are
discrimnated against by the police men itself. Moreover, due to this discrimination, indigenous people
are more likely to be in a cycle of low socio-economic status and these conditions along sode other
intersectional factors lead them to be more likely to have more interactions with the police and hence
being overrepresented in the justice system today.

In Mass media, crime is portrayed very differently than it happens in real life, and it can lead to people
having a very different view of crime. Crimes that are going to be covered are selected based on how
newsworthy they are, hence crimes that occur rarely are very commonly featured whereas the common
crimes are not covered as much as they should (47). For example, violent crimes by women and
sensational and dramatic crimes are overrepresented whereas common crimes like property crimes are
underrepresented (47). This makes people fear those crimes more and makes them think that those
crime occur more frequently, and they should take measures to prevent it whereas they do not think
the common crimes occur that much and hence do not try to prevent those and consequently may fall
victim to them.

Moral panic is the term comprised for when certain people or groups of people get labelled as threats to
society’s values and interests (45). Moral Panics happen when there is a disconnect between what
people perceive is the problem and what really is the problem (45). Hence, when people cannot really
find a reasonable explanation themselves about something, they blame any people or group they can
put the blame on, creating a moral panic.

Section 163 of the Criminal Code of Canada indeed deems making and publishing of any comics
containing obscene materials illegal. Yes, this ban on comics containing obscene themes like
crime might be due to the presence of a moral panic. They might have thought that comics
containing criminal activities could influence the youth into repeating them.