Cheryl Webster holds an M.A. in Sociology from the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa in Lisbon, Portugal and a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Toronto. She was also awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto before accepting an academic position at the University of Ottawa. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa. Her initial research focused on an examination of the role of the two-tiered criminal trial courts in Canada, the use and value of the preliminary inquiry, and an investigation of case processing in the provincial and superior courts. More recently, her research has concentrated on the effectiveness of general deterrence as applied to sentencing, a comparative analysis of policies related to imprisonment in Canada and abroad, and an examination of trends in pre-trial detention.