D08 - Workshop: Law and the Carceral State I - Policing Bodies and Reproduction
Date: Jun 3 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:
Joint Session / Séance conjointe : Canadian Politics; Race, Ethnicity and Indigenous People and Politics
Supporting Incarcerated Parents as Citizens and Caregivers: Michael Sullivan (St. Mary's University)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue in favor of restorative justice approaches that aim to rehabilitate and reintegrate convicted offenders into their communities whenever possible (Braithwaite 2002; Golash 2005). This marks a departure from the imposition of “preventive” sanctions that some political scientists and legal scholars have compared to the colonial sanction of “civil death,” by placing barriers on community and workforce participation by those who have completed their sentence (Ewald 2002, 1059; Manza and Uggen 2006, 23, 210; Chin 2012; Mayson 2015, 303). Reintegration involves preparing a former offender to take on more productive roles and responsibilities in society. For parents, the goal is to minimize collateral consequences of punishment by allowing offenders to maintain family relationships in which the parent can provide for his dependents emotionally while incarcerated, with the goal of restoring the offender to his roles as a caregiver and provider upon release (Lippke 2007, 185; Muth 2018, 17-18). To this end, criminal justice and child welfare systems should facilitate family unity wherever possible through visitation, flexible sentencing, and sanctions that aim at reintegration, rather than retribution of offenders (Lippke 2007, 183-188).
Cruel and Unusual: On Incarceration and the Regulation of Reproduction: Alana Cattapan (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: Incarceration limits the reproductive capacity of not only individuals, but generations of “biopolitically devalued populations” (Taylor 2018). Using the lens of reproductive justice, this paper argues that the carceral practices of the Canadian state are a means of undermining the autonomy of marginalized communities, namely Indigenous peoples, people struggling with mental illness, people of colour, and people living in poverty. To do so, it examines three ways that restrictions on reproductive autonomy occur in Canadian prisons. First, there is a widespread lack of reproductive health care in prisons, including access to contraceptives, prenatal care, and support in labour, which not only limits reproductive decision making, but also results in complications both for women and the children they bear. Second, many who give birth while incarcerated are not given the chance to parent their child(ren), and if children are apprehended by the state, parents are not given the opportunity to make decisions about who will raise their child(ren) and are subject to legal barriers that impede future family reunification. Third, existing health disparities, exposure to infectious disease, and difficulties accessing effective, coordinated primary care may result in subfertility and infertility in what is largely a young population, impeding reproductive decision making even after release. In its conclusion, the paper identifies the multiple ways that incarceration in Canada serves as a tool of contemporary eugenics, through the ongoing regulation of the reproductive practices of marginalized populations.
Mothering, Resistance, and Incarceration in Canada: Ciara Mclean (York University)
Abstract: According to Little’s (1998) conception of the historical moral regulation of single mothers in Ontario as it relates to social provisioning, and Swift’s (2010) theory of the construction of single mothers as ‘risky’, incarcerated and criminalized single mothers constitute a deeply stigmatized population in Canada. I am interested in the way that children of incarcerated mothers have their care needs met by institutions, family members and relations or through other sources. This study will be mindful of the settler colonial context and Canada’s history of disrupting Indigenous kinship relations and communities, and the over-incarceration of Indigenous women.
I situate this work within Black feminist theory and disability justice theory as these fields offer counter arguments to Eurocentric and heteropatriarchal notions of interdependence and family structures. Actors within networks of care who respond to the incarceration of mothers in Canada, often in an improvised manner act as knowledgeable agents (Tungohan). In this way, mothers and the relatives and relations who care for children while their mothers are incarcerated, constitute agents who can utilize their standpoint to resist the oppressive structures in which they find themselves.
I propose approaching this study through a review of literature on incarcerated mothers in Canada and the United States. I would like to situate this scholarship alongside theories of mothering and how motherhood is contested, regulated and politicized. I contend that incarcerated mothers are subject to an extension of the same patriarchal norms which constrain incarcerated and nonincarcerated women’s choices across Canada.
Participants: Alana Cattapan (University of Waterloo)Ciera Mclean (York University)Michael Sullivan (St. Mary's University)