Unsettling Colonialism in the Canadian Criminal Justice System


Book Description

Canada’s criminal justice system reinforces dominant relations of power and further entrenches the country in its colonial past. Through the mechanisms of surveillance, segregation, and containment, the criminal justice system ensures that Indigenous peoples remain in a state of economic deprivation, social isolation, and political subjection. By examining the ways in which the Canadian justice system continues to sanction overtly discriminatory and racist practices, the authors in this collection demonstrate clearly how historical patterns of privilege and domination are extended and reinforced.




Unsettling Colonialism in the Canadian Criminal Justice System


Book Description

A revealing survey of ongoing settler colonialism in Canada's criminal justice system. This book argues that Canada's criminal justice system continues to reinforce colonial power structures. Through mechanisms of surveillance, segregation, and containment, Canadian law enforcement deprives Indigenous peoples of economic stability, social inclusion, and political agency. Examining both overt and more insidious racist practices, contributors reveal the ongoing reinforcement of white-settler privilege and domination in Canada.




Unsettling the Settler Within


Book Description

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization. They must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. Today’s truth and reconciliation processes must make space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative in order to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples. A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers all Canadians – both Indigenous and not – a new way of approaching the critical task of healing the wounds left by the residential school system.




The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice


Book Description

The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice focuses on the growing worldwide movement aimed at decolonizing state policies and practices, and various disciplinary knowledges including criminology, social work and law. The collection of original chapters brings together cutting-edge, politically engaged work from a diverse group of writers who take as a starting point an analysis founded in a decolonizing, decolonial and/or Indigenous standpoint. Centering the perspectives of Black, First Nations and other racialized and minoritized peoples, the book makes an internationally significant contribution to the literature. The chapters include analyses of specific decolonization policies and interventions instigated by communities to enhance jurisdictional self-determination; theoretical approaches to decolonization; the importance of research and research ethics as a key foundation of the decolonization process; crucial contemporary issues including deaths in custody, state crime, reparations, and transitional justice; and critical analysis of key institutions of control, including police, courts, corrections, child protection systems and other forms of carcerality. The handbook is divided into five sections which reflect the breadth of the decolonizing literature: • Why decolonization? From the personal to the global • State terror and violence • Abolishing the carceral • Transforming and decolonizing justice • Disrupting epistemic violence This book offers a comprehensive and timely resource for activists, students, academics, and those with an interest in Indigenous studies, decolonial and post-colonial studies, criminal legal institutions and criminology. It provides critical commentary and analyses of the major issues for enhancing social justice internationally. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




Contesting Carceral Logic


Book Description

Contesting Carceral Logic provides an innovative and cutting-edge analysis of how carceral logic is embedded within contemporary society, emphasizing international perspectives, the harms and critiques of using carceral logic to respond to human wrongdoing, and exploring penal abolition thought. With chapters from scholars across many disciplines, people in prison, as well as penal abolition activists, the book explores what a future without carceral logic would look like, as well as how such a future is to be developed. The book is also an exploration of penal abolition thought as it is developing in the twenty-first century. Diverse geographical, cultural, identity and experiential frames inform the book’s themes of analysing carceral logic as it harms disparate people in disparate places, creating anti-carceral knowledge, exploring case studies pointing to radical alternatives, and to contesting carceral logic from below. Ultimately, Contesting Carceral Logic provides the reader with an alternative and critical perspective from which to reflect on carceral logic, the punitive state and the criminalizing systems that almost exclusively dominate across the world. Finally, it raises the questions of how we are to build communities as well as transform our response to human wrongdoing in ways that are not defined by racism/ethnocentrism, class war and heteropatriarchy. Contesting Carceral Logic will be of great interest to not only scholars and activists, but also provides an introduction to key carceral issues and debates for students of penology, criminology, social policy, geography, politics, philosophy, social work and social history programmes in countries all around the world.




Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice


Book Description

In August 2016 Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation. In Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. Roach provides historical, legal, political, and sociological background to the case including misunderstandings over crime when Treaty 6 was negotiated, the 1885 hanging of eight Indigenous men at Fort Battleford, the role of the RCMP, prior litigation over Indigenous underrepresentation on juries, and the racially charged debate about defence of property and rural crime. Drawing on both trial transcripts and research on miscarriages of justice, Roach looks at jury selection, the controversial “hang fire” defence, how the credibility and beliefs of Indigenous witnesses were challenged on the stand, and Gerald Stanley's implicit appeals to self-defence and defence of property, as well as the decision not to appeal the acquittal. Concluding his study, Roach asks whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's controversial call to “do better” is possible, given similar cases since Stanley's, the difficulty of reforming the jury or the RCMP, and the combination of Indigenous underrepresentation on juries and overrepresentation among those victimized and accused of crimes. Informed and timely, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice is a searing account of one case that provides valuable insight into criminal justice, racism, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada.




The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology


Book Description

Collectively, The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology explores the contemporary terrain around new and emergent issues and forms of activism, and offers cutting edge conceptualizations of the methodological and practical applications of activist engagement, solidarity, and resistance.




Empires of Sustainability


Book Description

Focussing on the greening of imperialisms and empires, Empires of Sustainability analyses the shift around the world from denial of the environmental crisis to action to prevent catastrophe, and the resulting implications. Evidence of this shift is clear in widespread and purposeful social change which is gathering momentum. The book explains how globalisation accelerated us towards the crisis, and today, even as its own legitimacy is being questioned, is evolving through solutions and responses to it. Looking ahead and as the environmental crisis worsens, two possible futures are discerned and explored. One is that through universal actions to save the planet, shaped by interweaving political and economic forces, the hegemony of globalisation is restored, albeit in a green form. The other is that the world reorganises into competing spheres of influence, with politics, economics and the environment interwoven differently in each case. In these ways, we face the prospect of one or more Empires of Sustainability emerging over the decades ahead, unless we build a better alternative society. The author presents an alternative: a more diverse World of Caring Places. This accessible book will appeal to students and scholars of international political economy, sustainability and environmental studies, and analysts, policy makers, campaigners and others concerned about the future of relations between people and planet.




Unsettling Activisms


Book Description

How and why do “ordinary” women and nonbinary people engage in various forms of social-change work at different times in their lives? What does it mean for these people to age as activists? Unsettling Activisms brings together insights from academics and activists in an intergenerational conversation that addresses these questions. Drawing on diverse lived experiences, including contributions from leading feminist and age studies scholars, this volume investigates how powerful, interlocking forms of difference such as gender, class, race, ability, ethnicity, sexuality, and Indigeneity, shape the meaning and experience of both ageing and activism. This vital resource consists of eight analytic chapters and eight vibrant reflective pieces, alongside poignant poetry and photography. This collection is best suited for undergraduate and graduate courses in gender studies, activist and social movement studies, and age and ageing studies.




Dying from Improvement


Book Description

Razack s powerful critique of the Canadian settler state and its legal system speaks to many of today s most pressing issues of social justice."