DETAINED: From Supporting Prisoners to Abolishing Prisons

Human rights violations in Canadian prisons and jails have frequented news headlines leading to ongoing inquests into conditions of incarceration.

Hosted by Osgoode’s Journal of Law and Social Policy, this day-long symposium brings together legal and academic experts, people with lived experience, community organizers, harm reduction workers and students.

Topics to be addressed will include:

• specific forms of incarceration such as pre-trial remand;
• immigration detention;
• psychiatric detention;
• legal and non-legal strategies for reducing the harms of incarceration; and
• looking ahead to prison abolition.

Students, professionals, activists, and community members are all encouraged to attend. We hope that this day will present an opportunity to create connections, foster continued mobilization, identify key research questions, and develop concrete initiatives to respond to the issues raised by incarceration in settler-colonial Canada. The editors plan to publish a special issue of the JLSP on prison law, justice, and abolition arising from this symposium and other interested contributors (with more information to follow after the event).