Interesting Week for Law-Related Government Studies and Reports

It has been a good week for people interested in Canadian government documents related to law and justice issues.

The most recent Weekly Checklist of Government of Canada Publications includes 2 parliamentary committee reports:

• the June 2009 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security entitled Statutory Review of the DNA Identification Act which examines how effective the National DNA Data Bank has been as a police investigation tool
• the June 2009 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights entitled Ending Alcohol-Impaired Driving: A Common Approach that looks at the advisability of lowering the Blood Alcohol Concentration limits in the Criminal Code, random roadside breath testing, the use of alcohol ignition interlock devices and better coordination of provincial legal drinking ages to reduce the practice of crossborder drinking and driving

And Statistics Canada released 2 criminal justice-related reports on July 21:

• Police-reported crime statistics showing the fifth consecutive annual decline in police-reported crime
• The incarceration of Aboriginal people in adult correctional services, a document that provides an analysis of factors that could be contributing to the over-representation of Aboriginal adults in custody (in 2007/2008, Aboriginal adults accounted for close to 20% of admissions to sentenced custody, while representing 3% of the Canadian population)