1. Home
2. Notebook

Urban survival notes from the welfare jungle

Otherwise known as co-existing with the economically disadvantaged occupying substandard housing in the inner-city. These notes are, at times, specific to the province of Ontario. Moving forward, details from other Canadian jurisdictions would be an invaluable resource.

• The neighbourhood
  • The overall intention of this section has always been to present alternate experience and perspective in the context of our legislative framework and simple reality. Things like the practical notes from someone who had to know what day of the month to visit a food bank so that, hopefully, they could provide their kids with cereal for breakfast are forthcoming...along with a healthly look at private companies using the programs as grants while gaming the system and treating their new hires as TFWs.
• Social science, law, and societal norms
  • Scientific method
  • Social construction of diagnostic criteria
  • Quantifying means and ends
  • Epistemic grounds for content-independent coordination, consent, procedural fairness, and self-governance
  • How can you be sure that you have a personality?
  • What if I have recourse to those who say, 'What now if the sky were to fall?'
  • Applied science
• Fun with fallacies
  • Non sequitur - deductive reasoning’s failing grade
  • Permitted, obligatory, forbidden
    • Early transcendentals: First-order predicate calculus
    • Modus ponendo ponens
    • Normative statements
    • Deontic logic
  • Informal fallacies
  • Cop Fu - the art of creating truthfull bullshit to recount later
  • Sovereign power and Separation of Powers post-1982
  • Social science wielded as a divining rod to easy excuses
• Crime Incorporated
  • Plato’s cave
  • Praxis: Sex, drugs, grain and taxes
  • Stakeholders
    • The Public
    • The accused
    • Civil servants
      • Job security
  • I didn’t mean to, But I was..., Our policy states... - Intent vs. Motive
  • Duty of care
  • Violence
    • Risk to reward ratio
    • Rewards and punishment: Temporary motivation
    • Self-control and the use of violence
      • Use of force
      • Mugger vs. Robber
      • Carrots, sticks, honey and vinegar
    • Lifestyles and routine activities
    • Individual differences
      • Class, Caste, Education - Trivialities and the colour of your collar
      • Retaliation, vengance, and vendetta
      • Calling the police
    • Subcultural
      • Case study: The welfare mothers of Windsor
    • Differential vulnerability
    • Proximal and Distal effects
• Ius civis: Through the looking-glass of Ethics
  • Postulating indeterminate loci
  • Differential social phenotypes: Economics
  • Game theory
  • The Flynn Effect
  • Sex, Gender, "race", and the modern misandrist
  • How did we get here?
  • Equal rights and the corollaries
  • Time, sequence, and human perception
  • Cutting the Fucktardian Knot? Let slip the dogs of war!
• The law
  • Historical basis
  • Common law
  • International law
  • The Commonwealth of Canada
  • Constitution of Canada
  • Sovereign power
  • Criminal law
  • Civil law
  • Provincial law
  • Municipal law
  • Administrative law
• The Justice system
  • Natural morality born of relative nihilism
    • Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger
    • Justice is obedience to laws
    • Justice is nothing but the advantage of another
  • Law Enforcement
    • Law Enforcement Ethics Training
    • Mindset
    • Training for Stress or Pressure
    • Bloom's Taxonomy
  • Department of Justice
  • Ministry of the Attorney General
  • Prosecutorial discretion
  • Planning ahead: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Juvenal
  • Butterflies and spontaneous order
  • Stare decisis
  • Applied social science: Manufactured fact
  • Public law
  • Private law
  • Evidence
  • Appeals
    • Correction, clarification, interpretation
    • Into the Heart of Darkness: A creature of statute
    • Temporality of an Archimedean vantage
• Taking action

Further reading

Material referenced in these pages or suggested.

• Department of Justice
• Ontario Police College
• Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP
• Ombudsman Ontario
• Egon Bittner
• John Van Maanen
• Herman Goldstein
• Laura Huey
• Scott, Michael S. Problem-Oriented Policing: Reflections on the First 20 Years. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2000.
• Harmening, W. (2010). The criminal triad: Psychosocial development of the criminal personality type. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.
• CMHA
• Davis, S. (2006). Community Mental Health in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press.
• Hart, C. (2013). High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society. New York: Harper.
• Andrews, D.A.; Bonta, J. (2010). The psychology of criminal conduct, Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Matthew Bender & Company, Inc.
• Ceyssens, P. (2011). Legal Aspects of Policing. Carswell.
• Neisser, U. (2014). Cognitive Psychology, Classic Edition. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
• Schraube, E.; Osterkamp, U. (eds) (2013). Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject: Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.