Settler colonialism and prisons: a comparative case study of Canada, Palestine, and Australia

ABSTRACTThrough an examination of the history of settler colonial violence against Indigenous peoples and lands in Canada, Palestine, and Australia, this paper exposes the links between colonialism and the penitentiary, across borders. This paper interrogates the differences and similarities between the use of prisons as a tool in settler colonial expansion in these three states. As a contribution to abolitionist thought and theory, this paper highlights the need for an intersectional analysis of the overlapping consequences of settler colonialism and international carceral regimes. Efforts to resist carceral expansion around the world must include efforts to resist colonial expansion, and the voices of Indigenous peoples must be centred throughout this process.KEYWORDS: Settler colonialismprisonabolitionIndigenousdecolonizationsocial justice Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Vicki Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times: Indigenous Incarceration and the Links between Colonialism and the Penitentiary in Canada’, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 61, no. 3 (2019): 68.2 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409.3 Radio Ambulante, ‘Berta and the River – Translation’, Radio Ambulante, https://radioambulante.org/en/translation/berta-and-the-river-translation4 Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land, ‘Resisting “Progressive” Carceral Expansion: Lessons for Abolitionists from Anti-Colonial Resistance’, Contemporary Justice Review 20, no. 4 (2017): 404–6.5 Nichols (2014) in Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 68.6 Thomas (1994) in Juan M. Tauri and Ngati Porou, ‘Criminal Justice as a Colonial Project in Contemporary Settler Colonialism’, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 8, no. S1 (2014): 20–37.7 Tauri and Porou, ‘Criminal Justice as a Colonial Project’, 21.8 Ibid., 25.9 Lisa Monchalin, The Colonial Problem: An Indigenous Perspective on Crime and Injustice in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 74.10 Patrick Horton, ‘Carceral Spectres: Hyperincarceration and the Haunting of Aboriginal Life’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2022): 35.11 Azeezah Kanji, ‘Canada and Israel: Partners in the “Settler Colonial Contract”’, Yellowhead Institute, https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2021/05/21/canada-and-israel-partners-in-the-settler-colonial-contract/12 Elizabeth S. Barnert et al., ‘How Does Incarcerating Young People Affect Their Adult Health Outcomes?’ Pediatrics (Evanston) 139, no. 2 (2017): 1–11; Dylan B. Jackson et al., ‘Police Stops Among At-Risk Youth: Repercussions for Mental Health’, Journal of Adolescent Health 65 (2019): 627–32; Michael J. McFarland et al., ‘Police Contact and Health Among Urban Adolescents: The Role of Perceived Injustice’, Social Science and Medicine 238 (2019): 1–9.13 Schwan and Lightman (2013) in Cesaroni et al., ‘Overrepresentation of Indigenous Youth in Canada’s Criminal Justice System: Perspectives of Indigenous Young People’, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52, no. 1 (2019): 121.14 Elizabeth A. Sullivan et al., ‘Aboriginal Mothers in Prison in Australia: A Study of Social, Emotional and Physical Wellbeing’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 43 (2019): 241–47.15 American Medical Association, ‘What is Racial Capitalism?’ American Medical Association, https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/health-equity/what-racial-capitalism.16 Susan Koshy et al., Colonial Racial Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022), 7.17 Koshy et al., Colonial Racial Capitalism, 12–13.18 Harvey (2007) in Sai Englert, ‘Settlers, Workers, and the Logic of Accumulation by Dispossession’, Antipode 52, no. 6 (2020): 1656–57.19 Goldstein (2022) in Koshy et al., Colonial Racial Capitalism, 66–68.20 Marx (1887) in Justin Paulson and Julie Tomiak, ‘Original and Ongoing Dispossessions: Settler Capitalism and Indigenous Resistance in British Columbia’, Journal of Historical Sociology 35, no. 2 (2022): 155.21 Paulson and Tomiak, ‘Original and Ongoing Dispossessions’, 154.22 Ibid., 159.23 Ibid., 161.24 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minnepolis: U Minnesota Press, 2015).25 Sai Englert, ‘Settlers, Workers, and the Logic of Accumulation by Dispossession’, Antipode 52, no. 6 (2020): 1660.26 Ibid., 1659.27 Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2021), 95–96.28 Rowse (2014) in Shino Konoshi, ‘First Nations Scholars, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous History’, Australian Historical Studies 503 (2019): 301–2.29 Cacho & Melamed (2022) in Koshy et al., Colonial Racial Capitalism, 166.30 Robert Nichols, ‘The Colonialism of Incarceration’, Radical Philosophy Review 17, no. 2 (2014): 448.31 Monchalin, The Colonial Problem, 61–63.32 Sara E. Hunt, ‘Law, Colonialism and Space’, in Witnessing the Colonialscape: Lighting the Intimate Fires of Indigenous Legal Pluralism. Dissertation (Vancouver; Simon Fraser University, 2014), 63.33 Heidi K. Stark, ‘Criminal Empire: The Making of the Savage in a Lawless Land’, Theory & Event 19, no. 4 (2016): 1–4.34 Hunt, ‘Law, Colonialism and Space’, 58.35 Ibid., 63.36 Stark, ‘Criminal Empire’, 7–10.37 Ibid., 11–12.38 Monchalin, The Colonial Problem, 74–78.39 Stark, ‘Criminal Empire’, 1.40 Thalia Anthony, Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment (London: Routledge, 2013), 34.41 Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 72–73.42 Ibid., 75.43 Jeffrey Monaghan, ‘Settler Governmentality and Racializing Surveillance in Canada’s North-West’, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 38, no. 4 (2013): 499.44 Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 78.45 Ibid., 72.46 Ibid., 74–75.47 Michaela M. McGuire and Danielle J. Murdoch, ‘(In)-justice: An Exploration of the Dehumanization, Victimization, Criminalization, and Over-Incarceration of Indigenous Women in Canada’, Punishment & Society 24, no. 4 (2021): 15.48 Scott Clark, ‘Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Canadian Criminal Justice System: Causes and Responses’, Department of Justice, 2019, https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/index.html49 Jamil Malakieh, ‘Adult and Youth Correctional Statistics in Canada, 2018/2019’, Statistics Canada, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00016-eng.htm.50 Department of Justice, ‘Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Canadian Criminal Justice System: Causes and Responses’, Department of Justice, 2020, https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/p3.html51 CBC, ‘Use of Full-Body Restraint While in Youth Detention “Left Me Broken,” Sask. man says’, CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/the-wrap-restraint-youth-use-1.6885941.52 Jeff Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State (London: Pluto Press, 2021), 16–17.53 Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, 19.54 Ibid., 40.55 Ibid., 41.56 Omar J. Salamanca et al., ‘Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): 1.57 Amnesty International, ‘Palestine (State Of)’, Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of/report-palestine-state-of/#:~:text=Palestinian%20authorities%20in%20the%20West,human%20rights%20violations%20remained%20elusive.58 Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2019).59 Erakat, Justice for Some, 7.60 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Childhood: A Universalist Perspective for How Israel is using Child Arrest and Detention to further its Colonial Settler Project’, International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 12, no. 3 (2015): 229.61 Ritta Giacaman and Penny Johnson, ‘“Our Life is Prison”: The Triple Captivity of Wives and Mothers of Palestinian Political Prisoners’, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 56.62 Giacaman and Johnson, ‘Our Life is Prison’, 54.63 Haidar Eid, ‘Solidarity with Anti-Apartheid Resistance in Post-Oslo Palestine’, Socialism and Democracy 28, no. 1 (2014): 119.64 Giacaman and Johnson, ‘Our Life is Prison’, 59–61.65 Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh and Adah Kay, Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2004), 162.66 Cook et al., Stolen Youth, 84–86.67 Middle East Eye, ‘Stolen Childhood: Life after Prison for Palestinian Minors’, Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net/features/stolen-childhood-life-after-prison-palestinian-minors68 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Childhood’, 224.69 Ibid., 235.70 Ibid., 237.71 Daniel Black, ‘Settler-Colonial Continuity and the Ongoing Suffering of Indigenous Australians’, E-International Relations (2021): 1.72 Jacob van der Walle, ‘The Settler and the Land: Using Patrick Wolfe’s Logic of Elimination to Understand Frontier Violence in Australia’s Colonial Era’, Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies 4 (2018): 45–50.73 Anna Haebich, ‘Neoliberalism, Settler Colonialism and the History of Indigenous Child Removal in Australia’, Australian Indigenous Law Review 19, no. 1 (2015): 23.74 United Nations Association of Australia, ‘Australia’s First Nations Incarceration Epidemic: Origins of Overrepresentation and a Path Forward’, United Nations, https://www.unaa.org.au/2021/03/18/australias-first-nations-incarceration-epidemic-origins-of-overrepresentation-and-a-path-forward/.75 Amy Nethery, ‘Incarceration, Classification and Control: Administrative Detention in Settler Colonial Australia’, Political Geography 89 (2021): 1–2.76 Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2020: Australia’, Human Rights Watch, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/australia.77 Benjamin Madley, ‘From Terror to Genocide: Britain’s Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia’s History Wars’, Journal of British Studies 47, no. 1 (2012): 77–106.78 Barry Godfrey, ‘Prison Versus Western Australia: Which Worked Best, The Australian Penal Colony or the English Convict Prison System?’ British Journal of Criminology 59 (2019): 1141.79 Madley, ‘From Terror to Genocide’, 78.80 Ibid., 84.81 Ibid., 87.82 Kristyn Harman and Elizabeth Grant, ‘“Impossible to Detain … Without Chains”? The Use of Restraints on Aboriginal People in Policing and Prisons’, History Australia 11, no. 3 (2014): 158.83 Harman and Grant, , ‘Impossible to Detain’, 160–64.84 Ibid., 176.85 Michael R. Griffiths, ‘The White Gaze and its Artifacts: Governmental Belonging and Non-Indigenous Evaluation in a (Post)-Settler Colony’, Postcolonial Studies 15, no. 4 (2013): 415–35.86 Audra Simpson, ‘The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty’, Theory and Event 19, no. 4 (2016).87 Michaela Sahhar and Michael R. Griffiths, ‘Inquiry Mentality and Occasional Mourning in the Settler Colonial Carceral’, Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 32, no. 4 (2018): 452.88 Amnesty International. ‘Indigenous Justice’, Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org.au/campaigns/indigenous-justice/.89 BBC, ‘Australian Boy, 13, Spent Six Weeks in Solitary Confinement’, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64960479.90 Al Jazeera, ‘The Fight to Keep Indigenous Australian Children Out of Jail’, Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/10/29/the-fight-to-keep-indigenous-australian-children-out-of-jail.91 Eileen Baldry, Bree Carlton and Chris Cunneen, ‘Abolitionism and the Paradox of Penal Reform in Australia: Indigenous Women, Colonial Patriarchy and Cooption’, Social Justice 41, no. 3 (2012): 7.92 Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 67–89.93 Lily George et al., Neo-Colonial Injustice and the Mass Imprisonment of Indigenous Women (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 95.94 Monchalin, The Colonial Problem, 293–97.95 Ibid., 315.96 Heather Dorries et al., ‘Beyond Safety: Refusing Colonial Violence Through Indigenous Feminist Planning’, Journal of Planning Education and Research 40, no. 2 (2020): 213.97 Dorries et al., ‘Beyond Safety’, 214–15.98 Mafalda Young, ‘The Art of Resistance: Art and Resistance in Palestine’, in Thematic Dossier The Middle East. Local Dynamics, Regional Actors, Global Challenges (2021), 18.99 Young, ‘The Art of Resistance’, 19.100 Ibid., 21–22.101 Timothy Seidel, ‘‘We Refuse to be Enemies’’, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 12, no. 3 (2017): 29.102 Vox, ‘Israeli Soldiers Routinely Detain Palestinian Children for Throwing Rocks’, Vox, https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/27/18511367/palestinian-children-arrested-throwing-rocks-israeli-military103 CBC, ‘Meet 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, the New Face of Palestinian Resistance’, CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meet-17-year-old-ahed-tamimi-the-new-face-of-palestinian-resistance-1.4513800104 Monchalin, The Colonial Problem, 275.105 Ibid., 285.106 Ibid., 280.107 Ibid., 285.108 CBC, ‘How a Peacemaking Circle Program Born in the Yukon Became a Key Element in North American Justice Reform’, CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-passionate-eye/how-a-peacemaking-circle-program-born-in-the-yukon-became-a-key-element-in-north-american-justice-reform-1.6678806.109 Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation, ‘Restorative Justice’, Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation, https://nanlegal.on.ca/restorative-justice/.110 Winnipeg Sun, ‘Restorative Justice Programs Showing Positive Results in Manitoba’, Winnipeg Sun, https://winnipegsun.com/news/news-news/restorative-justice-programs-showing-positive-results-in-manitoba.111 Leanne B. Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 237.112 Eileen Baldry, Bree Carlton and Chris Cunneen, ‘Abolitionism and the Paradox of Penal Reform in Australia: Indigenous Women, Colonial Patriarchy and Cooption’, Social Justice 41, no. 3 (2012): 171.113 Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 78.114 Dobchuk-Land, ‘Resisting “Progressive” Carceral Expansion’, 405–6.115 Ibid., 410.116 Ibid., 416.117 Nichols (2014) in Dobchuk-Land, Bronwyn (2017).118 Dobchuk-Land, ‘Resisting “Progressive” Carceral Expansion’, 416.119 Erica R. Meiners, For the Children?: Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 193.120 Ibid., 28.121 Chartrand, ‘Unsettled Times’, 72–73.122 Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), 135.123 Natsu T. Saito, Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 4.124 Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle.