Standardizing ‘Corrections’: The Politics of Prison Expansionism and Settler Colonial Representations of Punishment in Nunavut

Abstract

In the past few years there has been much governmental and media attention paid to the dismal conditions of penality in Nunavut, which has been explained by colonial representations of Indigenous penality as non-standard. In this article I draw on field research and document analysis to discuss an Inuit ethos of community-centred penality in contrast to settler colonial state-administered penality. My research problematizes these mainstream representations of Inuit justice and critiques the institutionalization of inequalities and colonial legacies of carceral penality in Nunavut. I examine the dilemma resulting from a decontextualized demand for standardized penality in the midst of deeply entrenched social and economic deprivations. I demonstrate, contrary to widely accepted beliefs that penal standards produce ethical forms of punishment, how penality in Nunavut is (at best) characterized as substandard. However, this substandard penality should be understood as a combined product of the ongoing colonial dominance of the Canadian state in Nunavut and Canada’s carceral norm and not as something inherent to Nunavut as portrayed in government reports and mainstream media. I argue that penal government and carceral expansion in Nunavut ought to be understood as a political strategy of settler colonialism that works to maintain the structures of domination and a politics of elimination foundational to settler Canadian modes of government. Whereas, penal reforms led by Indigenous (Inuit) peoples and guided by Inuit conceptualizations of justice and punishment would operate as a tactic to decolonize the politics of penal government in Nunavut.