Shelter bed, We Want You To Listen: Shelter Video Project
Prisons are the main mechanism ruling elites use to scapegoat and victimize those they do not want or need.”
- Ann Hansen, Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time For Society’s Crimes.
From Shelters to Prison: Resisting the carceral continuum
The Carceral Continuum Post-Doc project involved a series of virtual gatherings (June-July, 2022) with folx with lived expertise of the shelter system and of imprisonment. KJM (activist academic: UBC/Capilano U) helped facilitate while the group members remain anonymous.
During the gatherings we discussed our conceptions, experience, and analysis of the carceral continuum and our responses to it. As folx in the carceral continuum often move between institutional sites and/or are engaged with multiple sites simultaneously, a variety of other institutions, besides prisons and shelters, were addressed.
Our meetings were recorded and transcribed, and the transcript given to each member before the following meeting as a resource and reference. We also worked with these transcripts to highlight important themes, ideas, phrasing. In following gatherings, we gave time for each group member to fully express their ideas and feelings to the rest of the group who then gave feedback, responses and questions.
This method was intended to hone individuals knowledge as to their experiences, thoughts, analysis and response to the carceral continuum in preparation for presentation to the public.
Following the virtual gatherings, we organized a panel discussion.
CO-WRITING PROJECTS
A part of this post-doc work involves the co-authoring of articles with folx with critical lived expertise of the carceral continuum. This work is ongoing.
“I was incarcerated as a mental health patient because I have PTSD. I was hospitalized for an incorrect diagnosis at the time. Diagnosis is one way that you lose identity. The diagnosis labels a person. It's very complicated. I was diagnosed incorrectly over and over. Which not only meant they couldn't help me, regardless, but, also, for example, the first time, I had a doctor who was very sexist and thought we'd all feel better if we wore dresses and makeup.”
— Angela Browning
“Another dimension of the Downtown Eastside is the SRO, (single room occupancy hotel) which is also prison like in many ways and thus can be examined as part of the carceral continuum. SRO’s are generally really badly maintained and cleaned, they are infested with vermin and bugs, as well as having many issues with traumatizing events, lateral violence, od’s etc.”
— Anonymous
“That's the story I was told about my grandfather. That he desperately wanted to come here to Canada and he couldn't get a visa, couldn't get this, couldn't get that. So he signed up to be a soldier and that's how he got his citizenship. And that's how my father got to be born in Canada. Yeah, my grandfather on my father's side comes from Jamaica, which is another lineage from Ghana.”
— Anonymous
Articles
Jackson, K., Bariteau, W. and Cates, B. (2022). “Guerin v. Canada: Exposing the Indentureship of Prison Labour.” Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 31(2), 16-36.
Jackson, K., Berry, S. Guinard, S., Lavoie, L., LeBlanc, L., Nima, M., M.B. Stickings & Sparks, O. “We Want You to Listen: Shelter Video Project.” Population Control: Logics of (De)Institutional Violence. Editors: Rinaldi J. & Rossiter, K. McGill University Press (forthcoming).
Jackson, K. Mapping the carceral continuum, its history, logics and characteristics: towards a decolonial abolition praxis (not submitted)
Jackson, K. and McIlveen, K. (2022). The Carceral Continuum, The Membrane, and Prison Abolition. (not submitted)
Jackson, K. and Browing, A. (2022). My World Collapsed: Institutionalization in Carceral Spaces is my Lived Reality. (not submitted)
We Want You to Listen: Shelter video Project
A feature length experimental documentary made by a collective of people with lived expertise of poverty, the shelter industry and being unhoused - along with their allies. At great risk of stigmatization, collective members speak out on the institutional violence, negligence and indignity of the shelter system in Toronto in hopes of changing the system towards a just society.
This research was funded by SSHRC-CMHC Post-Doc through Wilfrid Laurier University, Faculty of Social Work, Supervisor: Shoshana Pollack