Shook, Jarrod, A Little Less Conversation, A Lot More Action, Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 27 (1), 2018 pp.269-302 (original) (raw)
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Disruptive Prisoners: Resistance, Reform, and the New Deal
The Canadian Historical Review, 2022
The book 'Disruptive Prisoners' (University of Toronto Press, 2021) offers a counter-narrative to the dominant perspective produced by government officials concerning the socio-political history of federal prisons in Canada during the mid-twentieth century, mainly focusing on the decades from 1920 to 1960. Based on primary research from a review of over ten thousand pages of archival materials and twenty-four hundred penal news- letters from personal collections and Library and Archives Canada, Chris Clarkson and Melissa Munn document the emergence of the penal press in Canada, providing a unique window into the previously unknown history of the stagnated federal prison reformation program. By foregrounding the voices of prisoners through prisoner-generated writing, their review of available penal press literature, along with the glaring absence of censored documents, provides critical insights into the limitations and failed efforts of penal reformation.The value of this text transcends the unexpected findings by highlighting the importance of rigorous, inclusionary research methodology.
There is a remand crisis in Canada. Pre-trial detention rates have nearly tripled in the past thirty years and today, of the 25,208 adults detained in Canada’s provincial and territorial jails, over half are remand prisoners (54.5%) (Porter & Caverley, 2011; Dauvergne, 2012). These trends cannot be attributed to rising crime rates nor the absence of legislation governing the use of pre-trial detention. Both the crime rate and the violent crime rate have been on a steady decline for over the last 20 years (Boyce, Cotter & Perreault, 2014). Further, the legal framework guiding bail in Canada, as established by the Criminal Code (S. 515) and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (S.11(e)), mandates the presumption of release, absent conditions, unless the Crown can show just cause as to why conditional bail or the detention of the accused is justified (Meyers & Dhillon, 2013). It would seem that the remand problem in Canada may be arising from the abstract nature of the federal legislation being translated into practice in an ad hoc manner across the provinces and territories (The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, 2014).
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Drawing on interviews conducted with former federal and provincial prisoners in Ontario, Canada, we consider how the unique social conditions in these two institutional contexts shape interpersonal dynamics and the prisoner experience. Despite notable differences in federal versus provincial prisoner culture, we suggest that prisoners in both contexts lived in environments marked by uncertainties and risk; in response, they tended to adapt to a highly individualistic orientation toward doing time. Based on our analysis, we complicate the conceptualization of prisoner culture as primarily serving an adaptive function, suggesting the prison social climate may actually drive the most salient pains of imprisonment.
Unknown Unknowns: We Need to Know How Many People Experience Imprisonment in Canada
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1. BACKGROUND International and Canadian data reveal that the health of people who experience imprisonment is poor compared to the general population [1, 2]. The health of this population may affect the general population directly through the transmission of diseases such as hepatitis C, the costs of recidivism and health care due to untreated illness such as substance use disorders, and effects on public safety [3]. A focus on the health of people who experience imprisonment could reduce inequity and advance population health [3], and efforts to improve health could build on the emerging evidence base regarding effective interventions [4]. Over three hundred years ago, John Graunt articulated the value of population statistics for understanding the “nature of society, the changes taking place within it and the issues arising for government and policy-making” [5]. Data on the size of the population of persons who experience imprisonment could enhance our understanding of the burden ...