“Say Their Names”

Katherine Bischoping and Amber Gazso (2016) use the notion of a “good story” to evaluate how successfully the storyteller conveys their message to the reader. The goal of this observational reflection paper is to explore whether the same criteria of good storytelling (i.e., good reportability, good liveability, good coherence, and good fidelity) can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of narratives told by prisoner rights protestors. I draw on my firsthand experience of a protest outside the Central East Correctional Facility in Lindsay, Ontario to develop my evaluation and conclude that the stories I observed can be analyzed using this criterion.

Salinas, Raúl

The poetry, memoirs, essays, letters, prison journalism, and other forms of writing by Raúl Salinas (1934–2008) were grounded in his commitments to social justice and human rights. He was an early pioneer of contemporary Chicano pinto (prisoner) poetry whose work was characterized by a vernacular, bilingual, free verse aesthetics. Alongside other notables like Ricardo Sánchez, Luis Talamentez, Judy Lucero, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, Salinas helped make Chicana and Chicano prisoner rights an integral part of the agenda of the Chicana/o Movement through his writing and activism while incarcerated (1959–1972) and following his release. He was also a prolific prose writer in prison, and much of his journalism, reflective life writing, essays, and letters from his archives were published following his release. As important as his literary and political production in prisons was for establishing his literary recognition, it is important to note that the scope of his writing expands well beyond his prison experience. Though his literary and political interventions were important to a still emergent Chicana and Chicano literary, cultural, and political aesthetic, he was influenced by, but was not limited to, American and Latin American literary traditions. Given the scope of his life’s work, his indigenous and internationalist commitments, Salinas’ literary output make him a Xicanindio (indigenous identified Chicano) poet, a Latino internationalist, as well as a spoken word jazz and hip-hop artist whose work engaged, adapted and transformed elements of the American literary canon.

‘Embarrassing the State’: The ‘Ordinary’ Prisoner Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–6

This article explores the early years of the campaign for ‘ordinary’, not politically-aligned, prisoners’ rights in Ireland. It argues that this campaign has often been overshadowed by the activities of ‘political prisoners’, who only constituted a small minority of prisoners in the period. The article follows the development and changing tactics of the ordinary prisoners’ movement, through the rise and fall of the Prisoners’ Union (PU) (1972–3) and into the early years of the Prisoners’ Rights Organisation (PRO) (1973–6), which would become the longest-lasting and most vocal penal reform organisation in Ireland, until the formation of the Irish Penal Reform Trust in 1994. It argues that the movement constantly adapted its tactics to address emerging issues and opportunities. Ultimately, it contends that by 1976 the PRO was an increasingly legitimate voice in Ireland’s public discourse on prisons. It shows that, although the campaign did not achieve any major penal reforms in this period, it had a significant impact on public debates about prisons, prisoners’ mental health, the failures of the penal system, and prisoners’ entitlement to human rights.

Sentencing Enhancements

Sentencing enhancements are policies that mandate that people who are convicted of criminalized behaviors while engaging in generally non-criminalized behaviors—such as being in a school zone—or having generally non-criminalized traits—such as having a prior conviction—receive longer and surer sentences than those who are convicted of the same criminalized behaviors without engaging in these generally non-criminal behaviors or having these traits. Some sentencing enhancements apply to all underlying crimes; this is true of the bias enhancement of Washington, DC. Other sentencing enhancements apply to all crimes of a certain category. Alabama’s firearm enhancement applies to all people convicted of drug crimes who are eligible for gun enhancements. For example, if someone is arrested while carrying ten grams of cocaine and a registered gun they will be charged with cocaine possession and given a firearm enhancement, even if they have a conceal and carry permit and thus their carrying of the firearm would have been legal absent their possession of the cocaine. A final set of sentencing enhancements apply only to a single underlying crime; one federal recidivist enhancement that applies only to the underlying crime of illegal re-entry is an example. Furthermore, some sentencing enhancements are embedded in sentencing guidelines while others are statutory. In 2005, the US Supreme Court’s Booker decision rendered guideline enhancements advisory. Nonetheless, the best available research suggests that judges still apply guideline enhancements to the abundance of defendants, saving their now available leniency for defendants without prior convictions or other defendants who they view as least culpable. Moreover, while many practitioners and policymakers have argued that the Booker decision helps to limit punitiveness and disparity in processing, others argue that this decision increases prosecutors’ power by making important factual disputes elements of the crime and depriving defendants sentencing hearings—the only hearings most were likely to have in this era of guilty pleas. Furthermore, while judges are still bound by statutory enhancements, the 2005 Shepard decision increases the kinds of evidence that judges may consider, restoring some judicial discretion even in this context. A preponderance of research suggests that sentencing enhancements play an important role in the production of the prison boom, increase racial disparities, and are disproportionately punitive toward women, leading these policies to be widely critiqued by scholars and prisoner rights groups. Moreover, while some studies suggest that sentencing enhancements have a marginal deterrent effect, other scholars note that even if this impact exists it is likely offset by the ways in which sentencing enhancements and other punitive policies increase crime by helping to produce concentrated racialized incarceration and thus destabilizing families and communities. As all of this suggests, sentencing enhancements raise a number of legal and ethical concerns; some of these concerns derive from their uneven implementation while others are implicit in their design. Changing case law has highlighted but not resolved these concerns.

Solitary Confinement, Prisoner Litigation, and the Possibility of a Prison Abolitionist Lawyering Ethic

This paper considers the role that litigation might play in ending the human rights crisis of solitary confinement in Canada while also examining the relationship of prisoner rights litigation to broader, anti-carceral social movements. The paper proceeds in four parts. The first section provides a brief overview of the widespread use of solitary confinement in Canada’s federal prisons and in provincial and territorial jails. Next, current litigation seeking an end to solitary confinement in the federal prisons system is located in the context of a long history of prisoner rights litigation in both the US and Canada. The third section considers the possibilities and challenges of pursuing prisoner rights litigation with broader critiques of the carceral state in mind. The paper ends with examples of anti-carceral lawyering efforts and identifies some elements of a prison abolitionist lawyering ethic.

Making Prisoner Rights Real

In this chapter, Lisa Kerr provides a case study of the dynamic Sharon Dolovich identifies: U.S. courts’ failure to extend maternal rights into the prison context. Focusing on the interest incarcerated mothers have in retaining custody of their newborn infants, the chapter illustrates how courts drain the content of mothers’ constitutional rights in response to the most minimal justifications advanced by prisons and state officials. Canadian courts have largely adopted the same deferential approach to prison officials as have American courts. But one recent Canadian case—Inglis v. British Columbia—sharply diverged from this tradition. Not only did the judge in Inglis rule on the side of the prisoners, but her reasoning departed significantly, even radically, from what one typically sees in judicial rulings on prisoners’ constitutional claims, even while resting on wholly recognizable and noncontroversial legal principles. In this way, Kerr argues, Inglis potentially offers a new model for judicial review of prisoners’ constitutional claims.