Radical Criminology and the Law Reform Commission of Canada – A Reply to Professor M. R. Goode

Professor M. R. Goode' has recently attacked the criminal law work of the Law Reform Commission of Canada as "profoundly unsatisfactory" ' because the Commission has apparently adopted an outmoded theory of the criminal process. He maintains that the approach of the Commission has been vitiated by ... what may be loosely called a liberal-positivist ideology, which fails to question the most fundamental bases of the criminal process in a democratic capitalist society and the faiths which underlie them. This failing to question or to-give written consideration to current criticisms of this ideology has led, in Goode's view, to "the bankruptcy of the Commission's philosophical approach". 4 This is a serious charge; our purpose is to show that Goode fails to substantiate it. Goode argues that the Commission accepted a "value-consensus model" of society, a model possessing two major premises: