What is the point of imprisoning women for minor crimes, in Quebec as elsewhere? “Scientific studies tend to conclude that the criminalization profile of women rarely justifies their imprisonment,” writes Joane Martel, retired professor of criminology. She recently published Incarcerated women, a work in which she denounces “institutional inertia in imprisonment in Canada and Quebec”.
In an interview, Joane Martel does not budge. “I realized that, since the end of the 19the century, nothing had really changed. The living conditions for these women in prisons have remained, in fact, almost unchanged. However, they are denounced at regular intervals. »
In Quebec, sentences of two years less a day are imposed. The women who experience them have in common that they are almost all in precarious social situations. Their sentences have the effect of destabilizing them even more, according to the criminologist. At least three quarters of these sentences result from what the criminologist calls “survival crimes”: shoplifting, prostitution, petty theft, including social assistance fraud.
These women tend to be convicted of crimes of survival. Their criminalized actions, Joane Martel explains, stem directly from their poverty, low education, their indigenous ancestry and unsustainable living situations, which involve, for example, domestic violence, substance abuse problems, mental mental health. These very unfavorable living conditions lead to exclusion, which results in homelessness, psychiatric hospitalizations and social assistance benefits. Ultimately, are prison sentences a way to change these conditions? No, says Joane Martel.
Nothing changes
“For more than a hundred years, the overwhelming majority have been women in a very vulnerable state who have found themselves in prison. They experienced poverty, sexual violence, incest, etc. Then, they are imprisoned… What will change? We punish them because they are in a vulnerable state rather than helping them to get out of it. Result ? They leave prison with even fewer social markers. » And no one is any further ahead in the end. Not to mention the costs of such management of the marginalization of these women. “When they come out of prison, the system would like them to find a job. Their priority is usually to find their children left behind by social services. »
“Prison handicaps these women. They come out of there with even fewer references and fewer social skills. They lose social skills in prison. They come out even more “pucked” than before, as they often say. Rather than prison, these women would need supervised apartments, organizations for social reintegration, integration and protection. Probation, with community supervision, so they don’t lose contact, is necessary. » But these social services, left in the hands of underfunded organizations, often managed by volunteers, are not prioritized. It is rather the institution of the prison which is financed at great cost by the public authorities.
A bad path
“We continue as before! It seems that we are unable to escape from an institutional vision of prison. This is what, in my book, I call “the path”. » What does that mean? “We are still dependent, as a society, on the path we have traveled. When something doesn’t work, we tend to look behind the traces we have left in our path to try to find a solution, to know where our steps are leading. When prisons do not work, we look at what has been done before. The answer we find is always the same: we had built a new prison. So we think that building yet another prison will be a solution! »
According to Joane Martel, we should finally allow ourselves to look aside and differently. “We must remember that criminal justice has chosen to prioritize punishment as a method of reparation in society. Which means revenge and revenge. It was the idea of “doing justice” that was prioritized. Is this necessarily the most effective way to improve society? Plenty of data shows no. We could think about more restorative justice. »
Prison handicaps these women. They come out of there with even fewer references and fewer social skills. They lose social skills in prison.
Punishment as a priority is outdated, explains the criminologist. “It’s an old way of thinking. There were other possible options for a long time. There is still some left. What does it mean to punish poverty and misfortune? No more poverty and unhappiness… People had to pay, as they say. But does making them pay like this change anything profound? » One thing is certain, Joane Martel does not believe it.
“We punish more than we repair. It is not for nothing that the conditions of the prisoners remain execrable. They are regularly denounced. This was the case for Tanguay prison. This is still the case at the Leclerc Institute. The solution we found? Build a new prison! The costs are likely to be enormous. We are now promised new technical means to monitor women! It’s always the same thing repeating itself. Every time, we say it’s new. But the principles remain the same. And they don’t work. »
Questioning prison
The system shows itself incapable of questioning itself, thinks Joane Martel. “Rather than looking laterally, rather than taking a step aside, it is understood in advance that we must continue the same path, continue to advance on the same path, in ways that we would like to make believe renewed […]. This is why we continue to incarcerate. And this is why the living conditions of these women continue to be execrable. We have locked our conception in the face of what we call delinquency. The path to prison has become dominant. »
Her research shows that, in a majority of cases, incarcerated women are first and foremost victims themselves. They carry within them a strong distress, which leads them to forms of subjugation and marginalization which contribute to their criminalization, in a spiral that incarceration does not stop. On the contrary.
“How is it that in the 21ste century, after more than a hundred years of recurring denunciations of disastrous living conditions in prisons for women in Canada, Quebec women still suffer detention conditions as desolate as those which were recently documented at Leclerc prison? » The idea that prison, confinement, for women accused of minor crimes, is a social norm to maintain goes against mountains of studies, believes the academic.
Joane Martel notes with regret an increase in the incarceration rates of women and the targeting of racial groups. In fact, there will be more space in the new women’s prison that Quebec intends to build. “I can assure you that we will rush to fill these places and that nothing will be changed. »