Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article details how a subset of women can perceive of prison as temporary refuge from the hardships and marginalization they face on the outside. It focuses particularly on a group of 88 women incarcerated in western Canada. A large percentage of these women accentuated several reasons why they saw being incarcerated as a desirable alternative to their marginalized situation in their respective communities. These findings nuance our understanding of the place of prison in the lives of these women and draws attention to notable gaps in Canada's often-celebrated social welfare system.

Research on incarcerated fathers tends to accentuate the harmful familial consequences of parental incarceration and discuss how having children might prompt incarcerated fathers to desist from crime. Less attention has focused on how narratives of fatherhood shape the day-to-day dynamics of incarceration. Drawing on 93 qualitative interviews with incarcerated fathers in Western Canada, we focus specifically on our participants' parenting narratives. Such narratives are significant interventions in the world, allowing incarcerated fathers to frame their identities in particular ways while simultaneously shaping personal behaviour. Our research, 1. Identifies important fatherhood narratives provided by our participants, and 2. Details how such narratives operate in prison, allowing our participants to advance personal agendas that are themselves related to the dynamics of incarceration. In doing so, we provide insights into incarcerated fathers' situations and advance criminological efforts to appreciate how different actors entangled in the criminal justice system conceive, manage, and narrate their situation.

What do race relations among Canadian prisoners tell us about national mythology, liberal multiculturalism, and racial colour-blindness? Drawing from almost 500 semi-structured interviews conducted with male prisoners inside four provincial institutions in Western Canada as part of the University of Alberta Prison Project, we analyse prisoners' perceptions of race and detail how their beliefs in Canada's national mythology – particularly multiculturalism – foster racial colour-blindness in daily prison life. Our data speak to both support for, and critiques of, liberal multiculturalism as a lived political philosophy. For instance, racial colour-blindness helps reduce ethnic conflict and encourages inter-group relations among racially diverse prisoners. As critics of liberal multiculturalism suggest, however, our participants individualized racism, focusing on what is often called 'overt racism' (such as white supremacy). Few participants acknowledged 'structural racism' or dwelled on the overrepresentation of people of colour in the prison system (even when housed on a unit that could contain over 60 per cent Indigenous prisoners). Some prisoners expressed a belief that Canada had overcome racism.

The work of a multidisciplinary research team, Transparent Lives explains why and how surveillance is expanding-mostly unchecked-into every facet of our lives

The work of a multidisciplinary research team, Transparent Lives explains why and how surveillance is expanding-mostly unchecked-into every facet of our lives.