Seven studies of compliance with the law are set out in this volume. The subjects range from securities regulation and prostitution to environmental protection and family violence. Also included are studies of compliance with tax laws and workplace safety and an extended analysis of techniques for regulating traffic safety.

In an earlier collection,Sanctions and Rewards in the Legal System:A Multidisciplinary Approach(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), ten scholars examined the subject from the perspective of their own disciplines. Those earlier papers were designed to give insights into strategies and approaches that would assist us in this further stage of...

The focus of this study is prostitution law and its enforcement. Although prostitution itself is not illegal in Canada, it is socially stigmatized, and much prostitution-related conduct comes under the direct purview of the criminal law. Whether viewed from a religious or secular perspective, prostitution has often been thought to be a threat to the welfare of Canadian society - for some to its physical and moral health and therefore its social cohesion, for others to the more particular and localized economic and social environments in which ‘we move and have our being.’ This concern about prostitution has periodically crystallized...

As any experienced elephant trainer will attest, this animal, while potentially very dangerous to work with, can also be a remarkably compliant beast. Even when it is in a docile mood, however, the sheer size and power of an elephant pose a special problem for anyone seeking its co-operation. Indeed, in order to reduce the risk to self and others to an acceptable minimum, the trainer of an elephant in captivity must develop a sympathetic understanding of the animal. A degree of mutual trust must be established between animal and trainer, such that the trainer's behaviour is as predictable to...

Canadians take considerable pride in the fact that their income tax system is premised upon voluntary compliance. Whether it is in fact ‘voluntary’ in any meaningful sense might be disputable; however, the system does require taxpayers to take the initiative in filing timely returns, in assessing their tax liabilities correctly, and in paying taxes when due.

The system appears to work reasonably well. In 1984, over 10.5 million income tax returns in which tax was payable were filed by individuals. Fifty billion dollars was collected from these taxpayers as income tax, which was over 36 per cent of total government...

We undertook this examination of techniques of controlling traffic accidents as part of a larger study of sanctions and rewards in the legal system.² We thought that an understanding of what worked and did not work in the traffic area might give us insights into the regulation of conduct in other fields of law. Traffic accidents were a particularly appropriate focus, we thought, because of the good statistics that we assumed were available and because of the extensive research and other resources that had been and are devoted to the field. We were wrong. The statistics are not particularly good;...

Regulators respond to most environmental and occupational health and safety violations by ordering offenders to obey the law. Sanctions are seldom invoked. This conciliatory mode of implementation is documented in several empirical studies of environmental¹ and health and safety regulation² in Canada. Similar observations have been made about enforcement of these types of regulatory schemes in Britain,³ Australia,⁴ and several other countries.⁵ While the strong preference of regulatory officials for persuasion over punishment is common knowledge, little is known about what success they enjoy in persuading offenders to obey legal requirements or about the fate of those who are impervious...

This study explores changes over time, and the causes of these changes,in pollution discharge in Ontario since 1970.¹ The primary hypothesis to be tested is that government regulatory activity significantly affects the rate of pollution discharge. This hypothesis is tested by reviewing evidence regarding discharge rates and a number of variables that might affect these discharges. The variables include: the quantitative discharge limit, regulatory effort and penalties, tort liability, pressures brought to bear on the firm by workers or the public, changes in production inputs or outputs, and the prices of pollution-related inputs or outputs.

I consider this question in...

During the past few decades family violence has emerged as a major issue in public policy.¹ One can trace the beginnings of the emergence of this new social problem to the discovery by the medical profession in the 1960s of the ‘battered child syndrome.’² In the 1970s wife-battering was brought to public attention, beginning with the efforts of workers in shelters for battered women, and followed by the adoption of wife-battering as a political cause by the broader feminist movement.³ In the1980s, because of the combined concerns of child care professionals and feminists, sexual abuse of children has become a...