COVID-19 highlights the pitfalls of reliance on the carceral system as a response to addiction

People who are incarcerated are likely to meet criteria for at least one substance use disorder and need access to treatment. Access to such interventions was limited prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and has almost certainly been restricted further due to implementation of procedures intended to stop the spread of the virus. In this brief commentary, we discuss how COVID-19 has revealed the already tenuous access that people who are incarcerated have to behavioral health services, and the pitfalls of reliance on the U.S. carceral system as a response to addiction

Disrupting Carceral Logic in Family Policing

A Review of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, By Dorothy Roberts

Care, Coloniality, and Indigeneity in Saskatchewan’s Carceral-Corrections Industry

This dissertation examines the way people care for one another within the context of incarceration, specifically in Saskatchewan, where the overwhelming majority of prisoners in provincial correctional facilities are Indigenous and staff are predominantly white, and where there is an assemblage of carceral-correctional institutions – a carceral-corrections industry – that has historically operated to facilitate settler-colonial expansion through sequestering Indigenous people and subjecting them to techniques and technologies geared toward reformation (aka “correction”). Drawing on twenty-two months of fieldwork, including participant observation in public forums, court rooms, and academic/industry conferences, archival research, and interviews with formerly incarcerated people and correctional staff, this dissertation attends to relations of care between and among those caught up in the carceral- corrections industry, either via conflict with the criminal justice system or through employment within it – what I term here “carceral care”. In so doing, it moves beyond monolithic representations of the settler state, focusing on the people who animate and mediate it, the roles they assume, the discourses they employ, their day-to-day practices, and the meaning they make of all this. This unsettles structural analyses of Indigenous over-incarceration and highlights thepersistence of both coloniality and Indigeneity, locating the agency of Indigenous political and social actors – including prisoners – within an industry geared toward undermining Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and wellbeing (both collective and individual). The reality of caring relations within institutions of confinement – which are animated equally by the impetus to cage and punish (carceral) and the commitment to rehabilitate (corrections) – is not a straightforward story of oppression and resistance, of staff versus prisoners, of settler versus Indigenous peoples. This dissertation is my attempt to honour and account for the varied, complex, and emergent forms of carceral care – to document instances of care-as-violence, acts and relations that save, support, and sustain, and all that lies between. Caring relations between and among prisoners and staff are simultaneously marked by paternalism, maternalism, racism, loathing, dehumanization, and fear of contagion as well as empathy, humour, respect, and reciprocity. They evidence lines of fracture, failure, multiplicity, ambivalence, and, crucially, illuminate possibilities of life beyond settler-coloniality.Ph.D

System-Impacted Motherwork: How Latino/a/x Families Navigate Criminalization, Health, and Healing

System-Impacted Motherwork examines Southern California’s child welfare system and the life course criminalization Latina mothers experience by situating their health and healing strategies as responses to punishment through System-Impacted Motherwork (SIM). Drawing on 27 photo-elicitation life history interviews with Latina (Central American, Mexican, Chicana) mothers from Southern California who have been involved with child protective services (CPS), and legal case analysis, this project offers System-Impacted Motherwork, a framework grounded in life course, intersectional feminist perspectives, for examining how mothers navigate mental health alongside child welfare system and various institutions of control. In this presentation, SIM is employed to examine how multi-institutional criminalization over the life course creates social conditions of threat that are detrimental to Latina mothers’ health and wellbeing. System-Impacted Motherwork excavates how mothers respond to criminalization and sheds new light on the maternal strategies system-involved Latina mothers enlist as they navigate the everyday processes of punishment through state-created categories, violence, and healing. This talk also examines how SIM illuminates the interconnections of systemic punishment, and constructions of “unfit” motherhood that manifest into strategies to navigate microcosms of U.S. medicalized carceral state by illustrating how Latinx families create 1. Safety 2. Material resources, and 3. Spiritual healing. Overall, this research contributes to the fields of Sociology, Criminology, Public Health, and Feminist Studies as it reveals how motherwork supports the longevity, healing, and quality of life for poor families by moving away from a punitive approach to violence, and into healing-centered intersectional responses grounded in collective care for intergenerational healing

A Multi-Site Qualitative Analysis of the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare Systems: Implications for Dual System Youth

Researchers have been studying juveniles who experience both child maltreatment and delinquency for decades. These studies document the prevalence, outcomes, and demographics of youth who navigate child welfare and juvenile justice systems, also known as dual system youth. However, there is a lack of investigation into the complex processes occurring at the intersection of these two systems. This dissertation aims to fill that gap by building on previous research, organizational theory, and the growing area of punishment literature in criminal justice. The goal is to better understand how juvenile justice and child welfare systems organizationally manage dual system youth. Specifically, the research explores the differences in processes, legal structures, and formal and informal policies observed at the state, local, and frontline levels. It also examines how these practices are creating racial and gender inequalities. To investigate, 36 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with practitioners such as caseworkers, judges, officers, court administrators, attorneys, and others who work at the juvenile justice and child welfare nexus across three study sites. Additionally, three focus groups were conducted in each site to fill gaps in the individual interview data and confirm the accuracy of the findings. The research found that there is wide variation in how juvenile justice and child welfare services are administered for dual system youth populations. These practices have a far-reaching impact, including the continuation of inequalities based on race and gender, as well as how youth with complex behavioral needs are handled. The study proposes a comprehensive policy solution while recommending strategies for fostering collaboration and supporting families

A World Without Prison: The role of policy in prison abolition

As concerns about mass incarceration persist, prison abolition offers an innovative approach to safety and justice. The prison abolition movement has been active in the United States since the 1970s. Despite increasingly critical attitudes of the prison system, prison abolition is yet to be accepted in mainstream policy making. Instead, policymakers focus on reform, which problematically legitimizes and reinforces locking people away as criminals. One reason why reform takes precedent may be that prison abolition is often understood in negative terms, as a movement that only advocates ending incarceration. However, its essence is better captured in positive terms, such as programs and policies that we may enact to create a world without prisons. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the philosophical debate underlying punishment, positioning abolition as more favorable than retributivist and consequentialist approaches. The subsequent chapters explore and evaluate the negative and positive agendas. Drawing from the seminal abolitionist text Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists, this thesis explores avenues for policymakers to implement abolitionist agendas. The handbook offers the five step attrition model: moratorium, decarceration, excarceration, restraint of “the few”, and building a caring community. An analysis of these steps reveal a framework that can still be used today to guide policy making