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Authors: Vicki Chartrand, Associate Professor, Sociology, Bishop’s University; Dawn Moore, Professor, Criminology, Carleton University; Jose A. Brandariz, Associate Professor of Law and Criminology, Universidade da Coruna, and Maximo Sozzo, Professor, Sociology and Criminology, Universidad Nacional del Litoral
Novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky once famously said:
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
And yet most of us know very little about prisons. In fact, gaining entry or even insight into prisons as an outsider is quite rare. In Canada, only parliamentarians and judges cannot be denied access to federal prisons.
If the measure of civil society is based on how it treats its most vulnerable members, why are we not only keeping people locked up in prisons, but keeping the community locked out?