Beyond Incarceration - Dundurn

Beyond Incarceration

Safety and True Criminal Justice

Published November 2017

Description

A call to replace Canada’s incarceration model, which has proven destructive, discriminatory, expensive, counterproductive, and — most of all — unnecessary.

Imprisonment developed in the Western world as the punishment to suit all offences, from violent assault to victimless drug use. Centuries ago, incarcerating convicts represented progress on society’s part, since it came as a replacement for capital punishment, maiming, and torture.

Our current model — taking away convicts’ freedom and holding them in degrading and unhealthy prison conditions — promotes recidivism and jeopardizes public safety. It is highly discriminatory, with disproportionate numbers of ethnic, indigenous, mentally ill, drug-dependent, poor, and otherwise marginalized people imprisoned. It is also ruinously expensive.

Elsewhere, alternative correctional systems successfully rehabilitate offenders while treating them with dignity and respect. This book lays out the case for a complete overhaul of Canada’s ineffective incarceration model of criminal justice and for a new approach.

Reviews

Contributors

Paula Mallea

Paula Mallea practised criminal law for fifteen years in Ontario and Manitoba. While in Kingston, she defended inmates in nine different penitentiaries, spending hundreds of hours at Millhaven’s Special Handling Unit, Kingston Penitentiary, and other institutions, in the process gaining intimate knowledge of prison conditions.

Catherine Latimer

Catherine Latimer is the executive director of the John Howard Society

Book Details

Paperback
November 2017
5x8 in
192 pp
9781459738522
ePub
November 2017
-
192 pp
9781459738539
ePub
November 2017
-
192 pp
9781459738546