Interdisciplinary Justice Research

“It can feel like an abusive relationship”: A Sensory Psychosocial Investigation of Frontline Domestic Violence Shelter Workers’ Experiences

Cristina Ariza — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

In response to the call for a sensory exploration of law, crime, and justice, this article draws on phenomenological research conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) and provides a psychosocial case study of the sensory effects that frontline domestic violence (DV) shelter workers face. Shelter workers implement and make tangible the plans and missions made by leadership and statute to provide support, as part of the process of justice, for victim-survivors of DV. They provide a hands-on, often intense practical and emotional praxis in an environment that aims to promote a feminist and repowerment ethos, working at the intersections of crime and justice. Psychosocial criminology framings give insight into how the crimes experienced by shelter residents can affect the workers tasked with aiding their recovery from DV. New conceptualizations made possible by this interdisciplinary approach provide a means of critically examining the convergence of value betrayal and burnout experienced by workers at the frontline.

"Would you want a jail on your street?" Sensing Opposition and Support for a Youth Detention Centre in Ottawa

Elizabeth Venczel, Justin Piché — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This study aims to make sense of past opposition and support for prison building in and around Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, by examining the last new facility construction project of its kind in the region – the William E. Hay Youth Detention Centre (WHYDC). Engaging with literatures on prison siting and Ben-Moshe’s (2020) conceptualization of political and affective economies that contribute to the entrenchment of imprisonment, we argue that opposition based on a Not In My Backyard sentiment expressed vis-à-vis the WHYDC at the time of its placement offers insight into potential fissures that can be mined and shifted in current struggles against prison construction premised on Not In Any Backyard arguments that reject carceral expansion altogether, creating other ways of sensing and doing justice that challenge and serve as alternatives to criminalization and punishment. To this end, this paper begins by reviewing literature on prison construction followed by a brief note on method. From there, we trace the rise of the WHYDC, along with arguments advanced by opponents and proponents of the project. We then end with a discussion on what can be learned from the WHYDC experience and how that can be applied to the current campaigns to stop carceral expansion, including the proposed Kemptville prison.

Tuning In: Sound, Listening, and the Development of an Aural Criminology

Michael S. Mopas — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This paper takes up Keith Hayward’s (2012) call for criminologists to pay greater analytical attention to sound. I present the case for the
further development of an aural criminology that not only examines the ways sounds are regulated or mobilized to govern specific populations, spaces, and things, but also considers various ways of listening as part of this inquiry. How we hear, connect with, and make sense of sound shapes our understandings and responses to crime. This focus on sound and listening will open new sites of empirical research and provide an alternative epistemological framework for studying a variety of topics. The paper provides an overview of sound studies and discusses what criminology can gain from adopting some of the theoretical and methodological insights from this field. I conclude by highlighting some of the ways that criminologists and sociolegal scholars can benefit from paying closer attention to sound and listening.

Problematizing Perpetual Punishment: Tensions and Impacts Across News Reports and Lived Realities of the Canadian Life Sentence

Nyki Kish , Tamara Humphrey — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Life sentences are poorly understood across public and policy spheres; however, the sentence’s application continues to rise. Presently, 27.8% of the federal prison population are sentenced to life imprisonment. To generate insight into the sentence and address the dearth of research surrounding it, this paper presents findings from a qualitative content analysis of 46 news articles about life-sentenced people gaining parole. Media analysis is a fertile ground for this investigation, as media is a powerful, socially-organizing force with the potential to sway public opinions and influence policy. Results demonstrate that news media does not focus on the actual context of the sentence, nor the composition of who receives it. Instead, life-sentenced people are portrayed as archetypal killers who commit egregious violence and who are purported to present indefinite risk. Ultimately, this study finds that the news reports analyzed here seek to communicate a systemic failure in the application of justice, which functions to legitimatize calls for increased state power and punitiveness

Writing for the Courts: Attending to Settler Colonialism, Senses, Social Algorithm, and Neurodiversity on a Gladue Writing Team

Michelle Stewart, Robyn Pitawanakwat, Elisabeth Girard, Rouhullah Mohammadi — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This article discusses the experiences of four members of a Gladue writing team who work collectively to write trauma-informed court reports used in show cause/bail hearings and sentencing hearings for Indigenous individuals in Canada. The team reflects on what it means to “sense justice” as one of Canada’s only Gladue writing teams and one that is comprised of neurodiverse / neurodivergent1 individuals. By focusing on the lived experiences of Gladue Writers, this article describes what it means to sense justice and how these senses change between settings for those who are embroiled in doing the work of justice in a settler state. This article explores the sensory work of conducting trauma-informed interviews, and writing and representing documents in court. Insights will be from a team writing for a settler-colonial justice system while attending to their own sensory needs, and the social algorithms that surround justice encounters. Different strategies used by the team members will be discussed along with what it means to means to sense justice from divergent social locations

Excavating Toxic Colonial Violence and Resistance at the Dump: A Research Note On Sensory Method and Analysis

Steven Kohm, Anita Lam — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This research note offers some conceptual and methodological insights for studying atmospheres in the context of colonialism’s slow
violence and wasting practices. By exploring how the senses shape our understandings and experiences of wasting practices, we examine the toxic effects of white settler colonialism, traces of which can be revealed when we attend to the convergence of two overlapping forms of slow violence: the degradation of Winnipeg’s land, and murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people (MMIWG2S+). While colonial systems exercise power through discarding and wasting (Liboiron, 2021), they may sometimes be threatened by the discarded things and people they produce (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). Consequently, an emerging sensory criminology should attend not only to the ongoing damage of colonialism in Canada, but also to resistance initiatives that refuse to accept people being treated like waste. This research note argues that sensory methods and forms of analysis that draw centrally, and sometimes metaphorically, on the senses have the potential to uncover new, critical insights on seemingly untouchable issues of injustice for Indigenous peoples. To illustrate the utility of a criminology fully attuned to atmospheres of control and resistance, we offer some observations on taking a sensory approach in an ongoing study of colonial violence and pollution in Winnipeg.