"Published some two decades ago, Elizabeth Comack's Women in Trouble explored the connections between the women's abuse histories and their law violations as well as their experience of imprisonment in an aged facility. What has changed for incarcerated women in those twenty years? Are experiences of abuse continuing to have an impact on the lives of criminalized women? How do women find the experience of imprisonment in a new facility? Drawing on the stories of forty-two incarcerated women, Coming Back to Jail broadens the focus to examine the role of trauma in the women's lives. Resisting the popular move to understand trauma in psychiatric terms--as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--the book frames trauma as "lived experience" and locates the women's lives within the context of a settler-colonial, capitalist, patriarchal society. Doing so enables a better appreciation of the social conditions that produce trauma and the problems, conflicts and dilemmas that bring women into the criminal justice net. In Coming Back to Jail, Comack shows how--despite recent moves to be more "gender responsive"--the prisoning of women is ultimately more punishing than empowering. What is more, because the sources of the women's trauma reside in the systemic processes that have contoured their lives and their communities, true healing will require changing women's social circumstances on the outside so they no longer keep coming back to jail."--
While criminologists have made the case that a "punitive turn," spurred on by penal populism, is being witnessed in several Western countries, some have argued that Canada is the exception to this trend. But recent developments in Winnipeg, Manitoba suggest that a made-in-America crime control strategy—zero-tolerance policing—has been imported into the Winnipeg context to combat the pressing problems of drugs, gangs, and violence in inner-city communities. Can this development be interpreted as evidence of a punitive turn? Has penal populism found its way into a Canadian jurisdiction? Drawing on interviews with inner-city residents, businesspeople, and community workers, we show that people in Winnipeg's inner city have a sophisticated understanding of the causes of social problems in their neighbourhoods and a very clear vision of what they believe the role of police in the inner city should be: one in which the police work with the community as part of a wider effort of community mobilization. These findings do not support the view that Winnipeg is a Canadian exception to the punitive turn. Rather, they suggest the presence of community resistance to aggressive "get tough" strategies of crime control, and of the potential to fashion radically different solutions to the complex problems confronting inner-city communities.
Résumé. Bien que les criminologues aient établi le bien-fondé qu'un «virage punitif», incité par un populisme pénal, se manifeste dans plusieurs pays occidentaux, certains prétendent que le Canada fait exception à cette tendance. Or, les récents développements à Winnipeg, au Manitoba, portent à croire qu'une stratégie américaine de lutte contre le crime, c'est-à-dire un maintien de l'ordre avec tolérance zéro, a été importée à Winnipeg pour régler les problèmes pressants de drogues, de gangs de rue et de violence dans les communautés des quartiers centraux de la ville. Ce développement peut-il être interprété comme preuve d'un virage punitif? Le populisme pénal est-il entré dans la juridiction canadienne? À partir d'entrevues avec des résidents, des gens d'affaires et des travailleurs des communautés des quartiers centraux, nous démontrons que les habitants de ces quartiers de Winnipeg comprennent bien les causes des problèmes sociaux qui y existent et qu'ils ont une vision très claire de ce que le rôle de la police devrait être dans ces quartiers, à savoir que la police devrait travailler avec la communauté dans le cadre d'une mobilisation communautaire plus large. Ces conclusions ne prouvent pas que Winnipeg soit l'exception canadienne au virage punitif. Au contraire, elles suggèrent la présence d'une résistance communautaire aux stratégies disciplinaires agressives de lutte contre le crime et la possibilité d'arriver à des solutions tout à fait différentes aux problèmes complexes auxquels les communautés des quartiers centraux des villes font face.
An attempt is made to utilize the recent capital punishment debate in Canada as a way of clarifying theory on the role of law-&-order issues in the Canadian context. More specifically, it is argued that the defeat of the capital punishment motion in the Canadian Parliament did not signal a failure of the political Right in Canada. The timing & structure of the debate indicate that the issue was introduced not to bring about a more repressive state response to violent crime, but rather, to deflect attention away from potentially more damaging concerns. Thus, the capital punishment debate could be termed an instance of the successful management of a law-&-order issue by the Canadian state. 25 References. Modified AA
Contemporary Marxist theorizing on law has produced a number of different ways of conceptualizing the class character of law within a capitalist society. The main focus of these approaches has largely been on the role of law in maintaining and reproducing an unequal, exploitative system. As a consequence, the issue, even the possibility of using law as a mechanism for securing substantial social change has been downplayed and, in some cases, precluded.The purpose of this paper is to argue for a rethinking of law, especially in terms of its potential as an agent for social transformation. The discussion will be divided into two main sections. The first involves theoretical considerations. Problems encountered with existing approaches to law vis-à-vis their implications for change will be examined and the direction in which a theoretical reformulation might proceed will be outlined. The second involves practical considerations. Here the focus will be on the kinds of legal strategies and particular forms and conditions of law that could be extended or developed in order to move in the direction of a socialist society.
