When the State Promotes "Alternatives to Immigration Detention": Instiutional Co-optation and Condition-Based Carcerality

Abstract

The penal landscape is expanding in many ways, one of which is through the spread of immigration detention. In Canada, while detention is legally justified as an administrative measure to control the presence of people deemed to represent a security risk, a flight risk, or whose identity could not be confirmed, it is often experienced as a form of punishment. The impact of immigration detention on mental health, families and children have led some advocates to promote alternatives to detention as a positive reformist project while also calling for an end to immigration detention. As part of the Canadian government's reform of immigration detention, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) started rolling out its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program in JUly 2018. While decarceration stratgies are important, I argue that we should be concerned when electronic monitoring, voice reporting, and community supervision are presented as alternatives. In this article, I draw on Access to Information (ATI) and public records to review the CBSA'S new ATD program, analyze it as a co-optation strategy premised on a form of condition-based carcerality that further expands the penal/carceral landscape, and argue that we should support practical decarceration strategies while at the same time refusing an expansion of the penal landscape disguised as a humane alternative.