The focus for the call for proposals is social determinants of criminal justice system involvement, and the potential impact that interventions could have on improving individual and community well-being and/or reducing criminalization. As the goal of this research is to support efforts to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous, Black and other racialized groups in the criminal justice system, funded projects are expected to take an intersectional approach with a focus on these populations.

A secondary goal of this research is to help parameterize a simulation model of flows in and out of the criminal justice system, currently in development by Statistics Canada in partnership with Justice Canada. This tool is being designed to provide a mechanism for estimating the potential impacts of policies, programs, and legislation on the overrepresentation of Indigenous and racialized groups in the Criminal Justice System. Studies that are able to demonstrate statistically the effect of characteristics or interventions, using standard measures of effect size, on criminal justice system involvement may be prioritized.

Research that investigates the following thematic areas will be prioritized:

• Effects of childhood experiences (either as victim or proximity to other criminality) and in particular experience with the child welfare system
• Labour markets and employment status
• Educational attainment
• Victimization
• Non-individual factors (neighborhood level characteristics)

The proposals can make use of any data or methodology, but we highlight the RDC data that might be particularly relevant here:

• Survey of Safety in Public & Private Spaces
• Hate crime policing incident profile
• Canadian Legal Problems Survey
• Integrated Criminal Courts Survey
• Homicide Survey
• Census

For more information, please review the full RFP here.

Applications are accepted only through the CRDCN website here.