Monstrosity, correctional healing, and the limits of penal abolitionism

Abstract

Despite gaining significant cultural and academic currency, penal abolitionism remains unable to radically problematize the punishment of individuals found responsible of exceptionally disturbing acts of criminalized violence. Through an empirical examination of a recent Canadian controversy over penal governance articulated to the transfer of a “monster” to a correctional healing lodge, the article makes legible our difficulties in communicating about appropriate responses to exceptional criminalized incidents which would forgo the use of afflictive sanctions as retaliatory harms. Engaging penal abolitionism empirically, theoretically and normatively, the article notably suggests that the limits of penal abolitionism can be explicated by the fact that its critique is premised on an instrumentalist conception of penalty which neglects the communicational function of punishment.

Canada's Aging Federal Prison Population

“…When being considered for release from prison, be it for eligible parole, statutory release, or compassionate release, many face obstacles and public scorn. Significant public criticism tends to focus on those so-called “monsters” who have been convicted of particularly egregious crimes, what Carrier (2022) described as “the dangerous few,” especially if or when they are released from prison or transferred to lower security settings. Such perceptions and constructed subjectivities affect even the most aged and frail IPs convicted of sexual offenses.…”

Confined in the Binary: The Colonial (Re)production of (Trans)Gender Normativity in Cases of Trans Imprisonment

“…Some comment that the Canadian government's failure to implement alternatives to incarceration, such as those proposed by the TRC and the National Inquiry (2019b), exposes the hollow nature of Canada's commitment to "reconciliation" (Beaudin and Piché, 2020). The politics of reconciliation might only have a menial effect on the settler penal system due to public and political demands for retributive punishment (Carrier, 2023). The shift towards a more humane and healing-oriented form of punishment is antithetical to modern penal rationality which demands retributive justice, particularly for those who are deemed violent and dangerous (Carrier, 2013).…”

“…Others that embolden Indigenous communities' control over the administration of justice via prison programming and community-operated alternatives have the potential to contribute to the goals of reintegration and decarceration (TRC, 2015b). Yet anti-colonial demands are institutionalized, and therefore neutralized, by a Western approach to justice that demands punitiveness (Carrier, 2023) and which is entirely oppositional to Indigenous traditional approaches (Monture, 1995). The efforts of grassroots groups, like Native Brotherhood and Sisterhoods, that prompted the Indigenization of federal prisons are mobilized through an anti-colonial spirit that challenges the entire basis of the Western system of punishment (Solomon, 1990).…”