The front and back stages of carceral expansion marketing in Canada

This study was produced as part of the Carceral Cultures research initiative (www.carceralcultures.ca), which aims to generate knowledge about Canada’s culture of punishment that informs and gives meaning to related penal policies and practices.

Abstract

This article examines how provincial and territorial government agencies and prison authorities in Canada promote new penal infrastructure initiatives. Through an analysis of press releases, websites, opening ceremonies and open houses to promote jail and prison construction projects, our analysis reveals discourses that are legitimating carceral expansion in the Canadian context including: the pursuit of public safety and institutional security; providing opportunities for rehabilitation and healing; addressing the legacies of colonization through the ‘indigenizing’ of imprisonment; generating economic stimulus through prison-related employment and other financial contributions; and the establishment of ‘environmentally-friendly’ prisons. Drawing from government records obtained using Access to Information and Freedom of Information requests, we also provide examples of how front stage messages communicated to the public are assembled by bureaucrats and marketing firms in the back stage of these punishment campaigns.

Keywords:

• Carceral expansion
• marketing and public relations
• politics
• Canada

Notes

This study was produced as part of the Carceral Cultures research initiative (www.carceralcultures.ca), which aims to generate knowledge about Canada’s culture of punishment that informs and gives meaning to related penal policies and practices.

1. In Canada, provincial and territorial governments are responsible for incarcerating persons awaiting bail determination, trial and sentencing, as well as serving sentences of two-years-plus-a-day, while the federal government and its Correctional Service Canada (CSC) is responsible for administering prison sentences of two-years-plus-a-day.

2. In 2013, Correctional Service Canada decommissioned 1000 prisoner beds with the closure of Kingston Penitentiary, the Regional Treatment Centre, and Leclerc Institution (Piché, 2014).

3. Carceral stimulus is not simply rhetoric, as some jurisdictions like the State of California actively pursued prison expansion as a tactic to reactivate dormant capital in localities ravaged by the flight of agriculture and manufacturing jobs elsewhere in a globalized world (Gilmore, 2007).

4. 27 January 2014 letter from the Honorable Bruce Northrup, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Government of New Brunswick.

5. 9 April 2008 e-mail regarding ‘Inter[redacted] sites’ from a Communicor staffer to various officials from the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. Obtained through provincial FOI request CSCS-A-2010-02007 processed by the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

6. In the 2011–2012 fiscal year, First Nations peoples represented 80% of Nunavut’s adult population, but 100% of its admissions to sentenced custody. In the Yukon, the numbers were even more staggering, with a gross discrepancy between the proportion of adult First Nations in the population (20%) and First Nations sentenced to custody (71%) (Perreault, 2014).

7. A First Nations tradition used to cleanse a person or place of negative spirits.

8. This tradition symbolizes warmth provided by one’s family and community.

9. The ‘Toronto 18’ refers to a group of men accused of planning a terrorist attack in Canada’s largest city during 2006. A national security and police investigation revealed training camps and bomb plots, resulting in several convictions and prison sentences.

10. See http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/San-Francisco-Says-No-to-New-Prison-After-Two-Year-Struggle--20151216-0002.html.