ABSTRACT
As stated previously, the United States has shifted from a “welfare state” to a “penal state” (Wacquant, 2001). So have other countries, including Canada, a nation deemed by many people around the world as much more progressive than the United States. For example, staunch “law and order” advocate and Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament Stephen Harper was elected Prime Minister in 2006. Not coincidently, Canada’s incarceration rate increased for the first time in more than a decade in 2005/2006. An average of 33,123 adults and 1,987 youths were then in custody, which was 3 percent more than in 2004/2005 (Statistics Canada, 2007b). Imprisonment is also racialized in Canada. While men of color constitute only 0.02 percent of Canada’s population and 0.03 percent of the province of Ontario’s population, they account for more than 5 percent of the federal institution population and 11 percent of Ontario’s institution population (DeKeseredy, 2009a; Griffiths, 2007). Aboriginal people are also overrepresented in Canadian
penal institutions. Aboriginals account for only 2 percent of the adult Canadian population, but they represent 14 percent of federal inmates and 18 percent of their provincial/territorial counterparts (Terrill, 2007). Chesney-Lind’s (2007) commentary on the shift from welfare state to penal state in the United States is therefore also relevant to Canada: “Along with this shift, of course, comes public attitudes about crime issues and criminals that reinforce prison as a viable ‘solution’ to the many social problems associated with this nation’s long struggle with racial justice and income inequality” (p. 212). Note that although the Canadian homicide rate dropped by 10 percent in 2006 compared to 2005 (Li, 2007), one of the Harper government’s slogans at that time was “Serious Crime = Serious Time” and it passed the omnibus Tackling Violent Crime Act on February 28, 2008, parts of which “mimic failed US methods” (Travers, 2007), such as the “three-strikes, you’re out” sentencing law.2
