CRM 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Public Health, Solitary Confinement, Correctional Service Of Canada
19 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CRM100
Week 9
Behind Bars: Incarceration in Canada
- Judges try to look for alternatives to divert from incarceration
- Media tends to discuss/debate policing but other topic that comes up a lot is incarceration
- When people enter the CJS, it is a minority amount of people serving time behind bars
- Not everyone who commits a crime spends time behind bars
- Social issues around incarceration
- Prisons are dynamic institutions, change to reflect changing social ideas, societies values
etc. PRISONS CHANGE
- What do we expect out of publicly financed institutions (taxpayers pay for prisons)
- A lot of people think prisons are a place to punish people, to put people away to say we
do not approve of
- Prisons are used as security, lock up people who pose dangers to our society
- Prisons are used as rehabilitation, to deter people from committing crime again, to
rehabilitate people to return to communities
- What can we do to ensure when peoples sentences come to an end they do participate in
criminal activities- counselling, therapy, substance abuse programs etc.
- Some people engage in criminal behaviour because they come from a poverty
background and do not know anything else to do to make ends meet
- Prison gives them skills to do something ese with their lives, so they are more productive
citizens
- Does incarceration serve sufficiently as a warning to people to deter from crime, stops
people from committing crime
- Prison as a deterrent to engage in criminal activity, research shows deterrence does not
work that way, prison is not the only reason people do not rob banks
- Incarceration pillar of how we deal with people who engage in criminal activity
- Prisons provide us a snapshot of social problems
- Disproportionate presence of people of colour and aboriginals in Canadian prisons- why
are we getting this presence of racialized communities in prisons that far represent their
presence in communities- what can be done to stop it
- We have to realize that incarceration as an institution is not politically neutral
- If you have a disproportionate presence of POC in prisons- social problems
- Disproportionate presence of people who suffer from poverty, mental illness, addictions
- Researches see these issues as social problems
- Canada has deep issues with poverty, race, mental health- prison shows these are bigger
problems than we think
- We seem to think these are American problems and we do not have it- but prison
snapshots show us we have this problem and need to solve it
Historical prison
- When somebody committed a crime and posed a danger to society, you lock them up in a
cell
- Little attention paid to prospect of reforming people
- Place to separate offenders for protection of community
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Enlighten
- Major idea stemming from enlighten is emerging of idea that human beings can be
reformed
- You can change individuals from criminals
- Philosophers, theorist, political thinkers begin to think about how you can return
offenders to productive citizens
- Two models of incarceration that come out of this are Pennsylvania model and auburn
model
- Essential thought is why do people commit crime and how can you turn them away
- Thought was they are lazy, lack values around things like hard work etc.
- Prison was a place to change these things away, instil values into people
- A lot of moral, religious education
- Attempts made to help change people’s life around
- Corporal punishment- people whipped, prisoners dragging ball and change, corporal
punishment big part of this
- Move away from corporal punishment- studies said you are not going to reform people
by whipping them, new ideas emerge on how to rehabilitate people
Pennsylvania model
- Instead of cloaking people in cells, we are going to create a modern prison
- Building where people housed collectively in complete silence and isolation
- Life of people who engaged in criminal activity was chaotic and if they were in complete
isolation they’ll think about how to turn life around
Auburn Model
- More focused on work
- sometimes complete silence and isolation
Moral architecture
- Some philosophical but a lot of thought went into how do you design these institutions
The Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham
- Middle of 19th century
- Circular design of prison, people could be under surveillance, nowhere to hide
- Constant surveillance
- People are not actually under constant surveillance, require too much staff
- Prisoners do not know when they are under surveillance, have to assume they are always
under surveillance
- Presence of prison guard obscure to them
- Creates internal discipline
- Influences architect of prison
- Creation of internal discipline- hospitals start to use them
- We have to assume we are under surveillance at all time- security cameras etc.
- We create internal discipline because of possibility of surveillance
- Idea of architecture of prison has a much larger influence on our society
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Judges try to look for alternatives to divert from incarceration. Media tends to discuss/debate policing but other topic that comes up a lot is incarceration. When people enter the cjs, it is a minority amount of people serving time behind bars. Not everyone who commits a crime spends time behind bars. Prisons are dynamic institutions, change to reflect changing social ideas, societies values etc. What do we expect out of publicly financed institutions (taxpayers pay for prisons) A lot of people think prisons are a place to punish people, to put people away to say we do not approve of. Prisons are used as security, lock up people who pose dangers to our society. Prisons are used as rehabilitation, to deter people from committing crime again, to rehabilitate people to return to communities. What can we do to ensure when peoples sentences come to an end they do participate in criminal activities- counselling, therapy, substance abuse programs etc.
