Anthony Doob

Ongoing & Future Research

Since 2003, I have been exploring the stability and the changes in criminal justice policies in Canada. Since at least the mid-20th century, Canada enjoyed a relatively stable rate of imprisonment of adult offenders even though there were quite dramatic changes in the rates of reported crime and the laws governing punishment. In addition, I have maintained my interest in the youth justice system, the operation of the courts, and in the bail system in Canada. Between 2019 and December 2024, I was a member of two panels appointed by Ministers of Public Safety Canada to examine the implementation of Canada’s new solitary confinement regime in federal penitentiaries.  The most recent (of 12) reports on this work can be found here.

Selected publications

• Doob, Anthony N. and Jane B Sprott. In Search of Proportionate Sentencing. In Marie Manikis and Gabrielle Watson, Sentencing, Public Opinion, and Criminal Justice. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2025. 
• Sprott, Jane B., Cheryl Marie Webster and Anthony N. Doob. Criminal Justice Reform and the Mass Imprisonment of Indigenous People in Canada. In Justice, Indigenous People and Canada: A Story of Courage and Resistance, edited by Kathryn M. Campbell and Stephanie Wellman. (Routledge, 2024). 
• Four separate reports (written with Jane B. Sprott, 2020-2021) on Correctional Service Canada’s “Structured Intervention Units” (solitary confinement). https://www.crimsl.utoronto.ca/news/reports-canada%E2%80%99s-structured-intervention-units.
• Webster, Cheryl Marie and Anthony Doob (2020). Principles and Politics: Sentencing and Imprisonment Policy in Canada. In David Cole & Julian Roberts Sentencing in Canada. (Irwin Law, 2020).
• Webster, Cheryl Marie, Jane B. Sprott and Anthony N. Doob (2019). The Will to Change: Lessons from Canada’s Successful Decarceration of Youth. Law & Society Review. 53(4), 1092–1131.
• Webster, Cheryl Marie and Anthony N. Doob (2019). Missed Opportunities: A Postmortem on Canada’s Experience with the Conditional Sentence. Law and Contemporary Problems, 82(1), 163-197.
• Webster, Cheryl Marie and Anthony N. Doob (2018). Penal Optimism: Understanding American Mass Imprisonment from a Canadian Perspective. In Kevin Reitz (ed.) American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment.  New York: Oxford University Press. (Pages 121-180)
• Doob, Anthony N. and Cheryl Marie Webster (2016). Weathering the Storm? Testing Longstanding Canadian Sentencing Policy in the 21st Century. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 45, 359-418.  (Michael Tonry, editor)