Did Prisons Ever Work? A Growing Movement Believes it's Time to Stop Putting Women in Jail

 Link to Article

"...Sandra Bucerius heads the University of Alberta Prison Project and is a professor of sociology and criminology at the school. She has interviewed over 600 prisoners in one of the largest qualitative studies on the challenges facing inmates worldwide. Dozens of women have told her that incarceration is better than the alternatives: going hungry, living on the street, being beaten by partners, being unable to afford medication, or facing addiction without access to treatment. But, as Bucerius points out, prisons were never designed to be stand-ins for mental health support, addiction care, employment services, or shelters. Instead, they are structured around ideas of punishment, places where we 'lock ’em up'—'them' being Canada’s dangerous and undesirable. Even as notions of reform and healing have muddled their purpose, the ugly truth is that prisons warehouse people we don’t want or don’t know what to do with—people our society has failed to support."

No comments: