The punitive turn? Assessing the impact of the Harper government's tough on crime legacy
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Date
2017
Authors
Burgher, Shanise
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Abstract
Prison populations in Canada have been increasing in recent years while crime rates have been on a steady decline. Critical criminologists have addressed such issues in terms of the emergence of a “new punitiveness” that emphasizes incarceration as a response to crime. Some commentators, however, have argued that Canada has been exempt from this punitive turn. Nevertheless, the “tough on crime” policies introduced by the Harper government during its tenure in power from 2006 to 2015 suggest otherwise. Using the safety of the public as its main justification for “getting tough on crime,” the Harper government introduced an enormous number of bills and legislation that cracked down on Canadian crime laws, while simultaneously executing budget cuts that made it more difficult for the Correctional Service to operate at an acceptable standard. To assess the impact of the Harper government’s “tough on crime” strategy, 16 frontline workers were interviewed to add a missing piece to the discussion surrounding these policies. These workers have seen first-hand what the impact of the Harper government’s policies have been, providing evidence that the punitive turn has now taken hold in Canada. There has been a dynamic shift in the penal landscape of Canada from rehabilitation to toward the warehousing of prisoners. This shift is informed by a New Right rationality that places individualized responsibility onto offenders, while concurrently increasing state interventionism by warranting strict penalties for those who do not operate within society’s desired moral ideals. Moving forward, the challenge for the new Liberal government will be to resist the punitive rhetoric of the Harper government’s legacy that has taken hold on the Canadian landscape.
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Keywords
Punitive, Incarceration, Harper, Government, Crime, Canadian, Legislation