Conservative Politics, Sacred Cows, and Sacrificial Lambs: The Role of ‘Evidence’ During Canada’s Prison Farm Closures

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Punishment and Incarceration 1

Abstract

Recent developments in Canada’s criminal justice arena seem to defy simple descriptions. On the one hand, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's federal government has been stridently conservative in its “law and order” rhetoric. On the other hand, discourse is not the same as practice: the reality of Canadian criminal justice is more variegated than one might guess from listening to federal politicians and correctional administrators opine about victims and the need to hold “offenders” “responsible” or “accountable” for their conduct. To make sense of these complicated (perhaps even enigmatic) recent developments in Canada’s penal field, we discuss a diverse array of political battles (e.g., over safe injection sites, the long-form census, terrorism, and the long-gun registry) to situate punishment policy as one among many arenas in which the Harper government has used, and misused, evidence to position itself as both ideologically conservative and pragmatic, capable guardians of good government. We then examine in detail a case study of the political penal drama surrounding the government’s 2009 decision to close Canada’s federal prison farms (Goodman and Dawe forthcoming). Again, our analyses focus on the use, and misuse, of evidence. We argue that when it comes to criminal justice, Canadian criminal justice is distinctly Canadian, and that until reformers and critics in Canada find a way to more convincingly shame the government for its misuse of science and evidence, the Harper government may continue to win at least some successes in its efforts to transform Canada into a more punitive country.

Authors

• Meghan Dawe, University of Toronto

• Phil Goodman, University of Toronto