As a television
chronology of Canada's cultural underbelly, Crime &
Punishment is thematically driven and circular in its
linking of the past with the present. Selected themes are each explored
from a starting point in the near present. For example:
The story of rebellion in
Canada unfolds from recent civil disorders in Quebec City, Windsor,
Toronto, and Vancouver. In the look at the response of law and order to
the 1990 Oka crisis in Quebec, the little known 19th century uprising in
Oka is paralleled. From the riot in Toronto's Queens Park in 2000, to those of the
1930's Depression era on the same ground, down to the deadly clashes at St. Lawrence Hall in the 1870's and firing of canon grapeshot up Yonge
Street in 1834, our series illuminates a meaningful chain-of-events
linking our historic past with the present;
The history of the treatment
of female offenders traces centuries of conflicting bawdy house and
solicitation laws, works its way back through nineteenth century bylaws
on female labour, indentured servitude, arriving at the story of
Canada's first recorded execution: the hanging in New France of a
sixteen year old girl at a time when there were 162 capital offenses and
a female condemned to death could escape the penalty by marrying her
executioner;
The theme of prohibition
departs from the current debate on BC marijuana cross border smuggling
and journeys back through alcohol smuggling of the 1920's to the story
of British Columbia's enormous opium industry in the 19th century-and
how it was finally criminalized in 1908.
Some of the themes that Crime &
Punishment explores are: juvenile offenders, the concept of
policing, organized crime, terrorism and rebellion, aboriginal offenders,
punishments and prisons, serial murder, prohibition, financial crime,
racism, street gangs, labour conflicts, vice and morality.
While
Crime & Punishment documents early periods
and frontier regions of Canadian history, the series outlook is largely
urban focused. The growth of densely populated urban centers is presented
as a primary force behind the evolution in justice and policing nation
wide. In striving to present an unseen perspective on justice history in
Canada, Crime & Punishment de-emphasizes detailed treatment of events
extensively documented by other television programs. (Such as, for
example, the Riel Rebellion or the early history of the RCMP.) |
