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In Criminal justice, the presentence report informs the judiciary about the young person and his or her social context prior to sentencing. In Quebec, those who craft these reports are psychosocial workers. Few studies sufficiently address organizational realities that stand between policies and the work of these professionals. This article highlights that the writing of presentence reports sits between two antagonistic logics of action. One is influenced by organizational strategies to standardise the reports and the other by contextual pressures experienced by the professionals. The article concludes that the ongoing clash of these logics generates discrepant signals culminating in an undebated tension. Confronted with such undiscussed tensions, professionals opt for reconciliation of the tension that open the door to creative practices.

Une fièvre populiste semble actuellement se propager sur plusieurs démocraties occidentales. S’intéressant plus spécifiquement à l’inflexion du populisme dans le champ pénal, cet article offre un portrait des composantes constitutives d’une approche pénale à caractère populiste. De la manipulation de la volonté populaire jusqu’à la mésestime des experts et des connaissances acquises en passant par l’instrumentalisation de la victime, cet article détaille l’architecture singulière du populisme pénal. A populist fever seems to be spreading across several Western democracies. Focusing more specifically on the inflection of populism in the area of Criminal justice, this article provides an overview of the components of a populist penal approach. From the manipulation of the general public’s will, to the willful ignorance of expert opinion and extant knowledge, and the instrumentalization of victims’ rights discourses, this article details the unique architecture of penal populism.

This collection of essays grew out of the workshop Critical Prison Studies, Carceral Ethnography, and Human Rights: From Lived Experience to Global Action held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (Oñati, Spain) in June 2016. The papers explore some of the challenges and possibilities of critical prison research, ranging from issues arising in university research ethics reviews to the limitations of penal reform efforts to end the practice of solitary confinement. Each essay is embedded in a different penal context: Australia, Italy, Russia, Canada, and the United States; and each contributes to broader discussions of critical prison research, utilizing new and old methods and sources, including the ‘netnography’ of prisoner websites and the archives of anti-carceral feminist campaigners. Collectively, the essays bring new insights and methods into scholarly and activist conversations aimed at understanding and responding to the harms of incarceration. Esta colección de ensayos se originó del seminario Critical Prison Studies, Carceral Ethnography, and Human Rights: from Lived Experience to Global Action, celebrado en el Instituto Internacional de Sociología Jurídica (Oñati, España), en junio de 2016. Los artículos analizan algunos de los desafíos y de las posibilidades de la investigación crítica penitenciaria, desde problemas relativos a la revisión ética de la investigación en universidades a las limitaciones de las reformas penales para acabar con el confinamiento aislado. Cada artículo tiene un contexto penal diferente – Australia, Italia, Rusia, Canadá y los Estados Unidos – y cada uno realiza una aportación al debate sobre la investigación crítica penitenciaria, utilizando métodos y fuentes que incluyen la netnografía de sitios web de prisioneros y los archivos de feministas anticarcelarias. Se aportan nuevos métodos y visiones a la conversación académica y activista encaminada a responder a los perjuicios del encarcelamiento. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3182310

L’étude des carrières criminelles a permis, jusqu’à présent, d’identifier les mécanismes qui conduisent un individu à commettre des crimes. Or s’il est connu que la grande majorité des contrevenants cessent un jour leurs activités criminelles (en référence à la courbe de la criminalité), ce n’est qu’au cours des dernières années que les chercheurs se sont intéressés à la dernière phase de ces carrières criminelles : soit le moment où elles se terminent. Si l’on connait un peu mieux comment les incarcérés et les probationnaires se désistent du crime, aucune étude portant sur le désistement du crime des sursitaires n’a pu être répertoriée. En outre, on retrouve dans la littérature trois principales théorisations du processus de désistement, mais aucune ne fait consensus. À partir des limites inhérentes aux théories existantes, cet article propose un nouvel angle conceptuel permettant d’appréhender le désistement du crime. Par la suite, il s’agit d’illustrer de quelle manière la confrontation de ce nouveau cadre conceptuel aux données qualitatives recueillies auprès de 29 sursitaires québécois permet de mettre en exergue trois processus distincts (le converti, le repentant et le rescapé) qui conduisent à l’arrêt des comportements criminels., The study of criminal careers has made it possible, up until now, to identify the mechanisms that lead a person to commit crimes. However, although it is well documented that the vast majority of offenders will one day cease their criminal activities (reference to the crime-curve), only in recent years have scholars focused on the last phase of these criminal careers: the moment at which they end. While desistance processes have been studied for probationers and prisoners, little is known about the desistance process of offenders on conditional sentence. At the present time, there are three main theories of desistance in the literature on which no consensus has been reached. Highlighting the limitations of these theories, this paper offers a new conceptual angle with which to understand desistance from crime. By applying this new conceptual framework to qualitative data collected from 29 offenders on conditional sentence in Quebec, the paper brings to light three separate processes (the convert, the repentant and the rescued) that contribute to stopping criminal behavior.

Depuis quelques annees deja, certains auteurs luttaient pour faire reconnaitre l’utilisation d’Internet comme un objet potentiel de « dependance » a inclure dans la cinquieme version du Manuel diagnostique et statistique des troubles mentaux (DSM-5) alors que d’autres ne partageaient pas cet avis. Par le prisme d’un regard critique, cet article trace les principaux discours des acteurs sociaux qui participent a la construction sociale de la « cyberdependance ». Plus specifiquement, les affrontements, conciliations et fronts communs qui se constituent et se metamorphosent au sein de deux spheres d’influence importantes sont mis en lumiere, soit celles de la science et de l’intervention sociale.

The process underlying desistance is still a strong subject of debate. This article seeks to introduce several core concepts of Archer’s morphogenic approach to study how people desist from crime. At first, it discusses the primary existing theories of desistance. Then, this article demonstrates the usefulness of this approach by presenting empirical evidence drawn from semistructured interviews collected with 29 men who desisted from crime in an eastern province of Canada. The study demonstrates how this alternative approach allows for the consolidation of existing knowledge on desistance. Then implication of these findings for both theory and practice are discussed.

In the last two decades, Indigenous lobbies have pointed a harsh finger at the endemic overrepresentation of Indigenous individuals in prisons in Canada and abroad. In reaction to such a condemnatory critique, correctional authorities in Canada have sought to 'aboriginalize' prisons. This paper addresses some of the prison's adaptation schemes to shed light on three contradictory logics of risk-based management: (1) high-risk aboriginal offenders have little access to risk-reducing programmes; (2) aboriginality undergoes an ontological mutation that occurs during the process of risk assessment; and (3) aboriginal correctional staff play a contradictory role in the (re)production of 'aboriginal risk'. To what extent, then, does the aboriginalization of prisons constitute a valuable transformation?

This article reflects on the confession as a traditional focal point of criminal law and penal theories. Specifically, it questions the privileged status traditionally conferred to the confession within the hierarchy of legal proof and punishment as a remnant of Christian influence which should be made visible. This reflection draws on the case of Robert Latimer, one of the few judicial cases historically to have polarized Canadian public opinion. After serving seven years in a federal penitentiary for the ‘mercy killing’ of his 12-year-old severally handicapped daughter, Saskatchewan farmer, Robert Latimer, was denied day parole by the National Parole Board of Canada on 5 December 2007. Despite in-prison psychological and parole reports confirming Latimer’s low risk to reoffend, parole board members denied his request on the apparent sole basis that he had not developed sufficient remorse. This case highlights how remorse, as a particular discursive transaction, is an obligatory passage point or an oral corroboration indispensable to complete the written demonstration (i.e. psychological and parole reports) of an offender’s successful integration of the ‘truth’ about her and her crime. Hence, remorse may constitute the only valuable way for offenders to re-take their place within the ritual of ‘Truth’ production.

Dominant Western paradigms of the social work profession have largely failed to integrate Aboriginal traditional knowledges and practices on healing and helping. This paper contributes to the promotion of a context-based approach to social work in prison by examining Aboriginality from both institutional and individual points of view. Drawing on documentary analyses and interviews with Aboriginal women prisoners in Canada, the paper sheds light on the prison’s endorsement of a hegemonic vision of Aboriginality, and on social work practitioners’ inclination to adhere to it. Conversely, we argue that Aboriginal women prisoners negotiate their passage into prison through Aboriginal self-identification configurations that often have little in common with the prison’s vision of Aboriginality. Service delivery in prison may be enhanced by considering individual modes of resisting identity-based oppression in prison, and by challenging prisons’ master narrative on Aboriginality.

Prisons exhibit many of the characteristics of modernity, in which time and space are central preoccupations. This article discusses findings of a recent study on the segregation (solitary confinement) of incarcerated women in Canada. Specifically, it examines the notions of time and space as they are practised by the prison and experienced by women. It argues that operators of time normally used inside the prison (meals, visits, head counts, recreation time, etc.) are de-structured when a prisoner enters segregation cells where she will face a discipline of the temporal minuscule that tends to blur culturally relevant temporal benchmarks that are necessary for the prisoner's reintegration into society. It also argues that prison segregation is a form of spatial confinement that particularly exacerbates the sacredness of personal objects and of housing, which, in turn, impinges on the maintenance of one's habitus as well as of a space necessary for identity formation.

This article situates Canadian critical criminology within the ethos of neo-liberalism and in relation to early-twenty-first-century scholarship. Toward this end, we attempt to establish what is critical about “critical” criminology. We argue that it extends critique beyond current ontological limits without laying down foundational content that would (re-)stitch new fabric onto the old. We acknowledge that “critical” scholarship is becoming increasingly restrained by an almost all-encompassing neo-liberal ethos. Scholars working under the critical rubric are finding sources of data defensively guarded, and publishing and funding opportunities increasingly difficult to locate. As a result, several iconic critical scholars have migrated away from “criminology.” However, despite a certain malaise and pessimism surrounding critical criminology, we hope that this article (and the accompanying special issue) will inspire new “critical” horizons in criminology.

Among modern exclusionary strategies (state sponsored or otherwise), prison segregation-the isolation of individuals from general inmate populations-is a particularly camouflaged form of exclusion with considerable impact on identity formation. Drawing from extensive documentary and nominal sources, as well as 45 interviews with women having experienced segregation in Canadian prisons from 1995 to 2003, this paper argues that the regimented and predictable time-space continuum of the prison's 'ordinary' life flies into pieces in segregation where (1) arbitrary timeframes, and (2) fluid and frugal spatiality keep women on the margin of collective memory. Such time/space configurations engender a loss of ascendancy on individual and collective sense of time/space, leading to the use of multifarious resistance strategies to negotiate personally suitable identities.

We would assume that mass newspaperdom which is slowly introduced by the end of the XlXth century was tributary to the dominant conception of liberties which attributed rights to the householder and garanteed the privacy of the home. The evocation of these rights would then give rise to hesitations to intervene publicly in family quarrels. But, a documentary research of the Quebec daily La Presse reveals, on the contrary, that it proceeded to expose virulently cases of domestic violence in such a way that husbands became the main target of sarcasm. Therefore, unlike the ideological positions generally conceded to the Victorian project, the general tendancy to reduce the Victorian moralism to two main angles — being the purification of sexual behaviors and the promotion of a holy, asexual and family image of women — is questioned. The social project of the XlXth century appears more complex than what is generally thought since it proceeds not only to subject women but looks concurrently to “civilize” and moral-he the conduct of men.

This article draws on the sociology of knowledge literature to bring to light several social mechanisms used to police the production and circulation of criminological knowledge. The discussion draws from actor-network theory and feminist analyses in science and technology studies to make visible mechanisms of construction, filtering, negotiation and appropriation. By way of illustration, the article draws on an actual case of scientific, political and media marginalization of disquieting research findings on prison conditions in Canada. Taking these reactions as a starting point, the analysis discusses, among other things, the hierarchy of paradigms and the gendered structures that affect researchers’ admission into a scientific community and their access to discursive resources.

New bio-technologies are currently forcing medicine to cross boundaries that might have seemed insuperable sometime ago. Specifically, they now help to prolong human life beyond its natural process and to maintain it almost indefinitely. Consequently, death takes on new meanings. For some it simply appears like an eventuality that can be postponed while, for others, death become synonymous to extended suffering, to dehumanization and to anguish. This apprehension gives rise to a wave of compassion for the dying person which is being translated into a new discourse around the notions of “quality of life” and “dying with dignity”. In this movement, the question of assisted suicide resurfaces. Through an extensive study of the Sue Rodriguez case in the Supreme Court of Canada (1993), the author shows that this particular case forced the Canadian society to rethink some of its long-standing socio-legal boundaries. First, the current social debate on assisted suicide poses new demands on Criminal Law, particularly on the judicial tradition since the courts are presently ill-equipped to respond to cases which demand to give content to new “human rights” that do not yet have a legal substance. Second, the Rodriguez case revealed the emergence, on the judicial and political scenes, of certain community groups that restructures the traditional power relations linked to the social regulation of assisted suicide. Finally, the study shows a change in the boundaries surrounding the accepted use of Criminal Law toward an administrative (risk management) rather than punitive use.

After her intense battle for the decriminalization of assisted suicide in the Supreme Court of Canada, Sue Rodriguez committed suicide with medical assistance in 1994. Following her suicide, government and law representatives remained silent and no criminal charges were ever brought against the person(s) who presumably assisted Ms Rodriguez in her death. This apparent non-intervention of criminal law is examined in view of the useful role that the Rodriguez event may have played in a possible shift in the dominant morality. It is argued that the Rodriguez assisted suicide may have been a useful 'crime' (in the Durkheimian sense) in that it brought to the fore the possibility that social conditions - which made the 'crime' possible - may no longer be in harmony with conventional morality. Similarly to Socrates' crime, the Rodriguez case can be seen as an anticipation of a new morality. It can be analysed as a prelude to alterations, as directly preparing the way for changes in the dominant morality. The role of criminal law as a preferred mode of moral regulation is also examined in relation to the moral demands and expectations that arose during as well as after the judicial saga.

Le présent article expose les résultats d’une étude qualitative portant sur les effets de l’incarcération provinciale sur la trajectoire de vie de sept femmes autochtones au Québec. Au début du cycle de vie, trois répondantes évoluent dans un milieu familial relativement stable, quatre vivent dans un milieu familial connaissant de multiples problèmes sociaux. Ces distinctions se maintiennent pratiquement jusqu’aux expériences de détention, mais s’estompent considérablement après le passage en détention. Le stigmate du casier judiciaire et les règles d’accès aux programmes dits de réinsertion sociale sont les effets égalisateurs les plus perceptibles des conditions de vie de notre groupe de répondantes. Ils contribuent à niveler vers le « bas » les conditions de vie des interviewées. Ainsi, le casier judiciaire contribue à exclure définitivement les répondantes du marché de l’emploi, rend plus complexe l’accès au logement et provoque la marginalisation des femmes dans leur communauté d’origine. Le poids de l’incarcération est donc important dans la mise en marge des femmes autochtones. Cependant, il doit être relativisé dans la mesure où il s’ajoute à des conditions et à un contexte de vie qui précède la prise en charge pénale., This article presents the results of a qualitative study on the effects of incarceration on the social exclusion in life stories of seven Aboriginal women in Québec. Findings indicate that, at the beginning of their life trajectory, three women evolved in a relatively stable family while four others lived in families experiencing multiple social problems. These group distinctions were practically maintained until initial contact with imprisonment, but grew increasingly blurred after the women’s contact with criminal detention. In final analysis, the weight of incarceration is significant in the exclusion of Aboriginal women. However, it must be correlated to individual living conditions as well as particular life trajectories which precede the actual prisoning process. These results put in perspective the postulate on which the studies on the effects of incarceration are usually based., Este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio cualitativo sobre los efectos del encarcelamiento en la trayectoria de vida de siete mujeres autóctonas de Quebec. Al inicio de su ciclo de vida, tres de las entrevistadas evolucionaron en un medio familiar relativamente estable y cuatro vivieron en un medio familiar con múltiples problemas sociales, diferencia que se mantiene prácticamente igual hasta el momento de la detención, para atenuarse paulatinamente luego de la experiencia de encarcelamiento. El estigma de los antecedentes penales y las reglas de acceso a los programas denominados de reinserción social resultan los efectos igualadores más importantes de las condiciones de vida de nuestro grupo de entrevistadas y contribuyen a igualar a la baja sus condiciones de vida. Así, los antecedentes penales contribuyen a excluirlas definitivamente del mercado laboral, dificultan su acceso a la vivienda y provocan su marginalización en sus comunidades de origen. El peso del encarcelamiento es, pues, importante en la marginalización de las mujeres autóctonas, pero se le debe evaluar junto con otras condiciones y el contexto de vida que le precede.

Nous avons dressé le portrait général des publications parues au cours des dix dernières années de manière à mettre en exergue comment sont représentés les grands courants de la criminologie au sein la revue Criminologie. L’analyse des 188 publications parues depuis 2008 a permis de constater : 1) qu’on dénombre plus de publications s’inscrivant dans les criminologies traditionnelles que critiques ou zémiologiques ; 2) que les méthodologies quantitatives demeurent privilégiées par les auteurs qui se situent dans les courants traditionnels ; et 3) que cette tendance est encore plus forte chez les doctorants et les professeurs de l’École de criminologie de l’Université de Montréal. Nos analyses permettent donc de conclure à un « effet École de criminologie de Montréal » selon le prisme des parutions parues dans la revue Criminologie., This paper provides a global description of the articles published over the last ten years in the journal Criminologie, highlighting how the main criminological currents have been represented. Analysis of 188 articles published since 2008 shows that: 1) more publications are informed by mainstream criminology than by critical paradigms or by zemiology, 2) quantitative methodologies continue to be favored by authors working in mainstream criminology, and 3) this trend is stronger among doctoral candidates and faculty affiliated with the University of Montreal’s School of Criminology. Our analyses lead to the conclusion that there is a “Montreal School of Criminology effect” in the journal Criminologie., El presente artículo constituye un esbozo general de las publicaciones de los últimos diez años, con el fin de resaltar cómo están representadas las grandes corrientes de la criminología en el seno de la revista Criminologie. El análisis de 188 publicaciones aparecidas desde el 2008, permitió constatar que: 1. Existen más publicaciones que se inscriben en las criminologías tradicionales que en las críticas o en la semiología; 2. las metodologías cuantitativas siguen siendo privilegiadas por los autores que se sitúan en las corrientes tradicionales; y 3. esta tendencia es todavía más fuerte en los candidatos a doctores y en los profesores de la Escuela de Criminología de la Universidad de Montreal. Nuestros análisis conducen a concluir que existe un « efecto Escuela de Criminología de Montreal » según el prisma de las publicaciones de la revista Criminologie.