In 1996, the Canadian government introduced progressive sentencing law reforms that called for special consideration of the conditions in Aboriginal communities as legacies of colonialism and to limit the use of incarceration. At the same time, feminist-inspired law reforms sought compulsory criminalization and vigorous prosecution of gendered violence. Since that time, there has been a doubling of the rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal women, and gendered violence is three and a half times greater in Aboriginal communities. Using the sentencing decisions of two cases involving Aboriginal women convicted of manslaughter, the author explores the practice of law as a site of backlash and an appropriation of feminist-inspired antiviolence strategies. The author draws on feminist and critical race studies of restorative justice in the context of gendered violence to examine why the victimization-criminalization continuum has not been fully recognized in the practice of restorative justice.

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In 1996 Canada introduced progressive sentencing law reforms, such as: restorative non-carceral alternatives for offenders to serve their prison sentence in the community under strict conditions for up to two years; and special consideration of Aboriginal offenders so that courts may take into account the detrimental effects of colonialism such as residential schools, family breakdown and substance abuse. This article is a quantitative examination of 168 reported sentencing decisions to assess the impacts of these reforms upon Aboriginal men and women convicted of violent offences. Findings presented here suggest that the potential of sentencing law reforms is realized unevenly across Canada, pursued most often in sexual assault cases, and seldom on behalf of Aboriginal women. I suggest sentencing law reforms are insufficient strategies to address the incarceration spiral of Aboriginal women when the conditions of their lives are contoured by legacies of trauma and neglect.

In this article, I explore the routinized practices of prisoner discipline: searching bodies and cells in four Canadian federal women's prisons. Through an analysis of post-search reports as well as reported incidents of use of force, I discuss three key findings: searching and confiscation patterns across institutions are not dictated by size of the inmate population or security level of the institution; the redaction of information by prison authorities is an increasing and pervasive tactic of penal governance legitimated through an inter-legality of privacy and security; and that the searching of prisoner bodies and cells suggests a highly discretionary use of searching authority across women's federal prisons that produces a gendered organizational logic. The text of the reports implies how women prisoners continue to be censured for their errant behaviour through the confiscation of personal items deemed to be unauthorized. These data also illustrate the ways in which women prisoners seek to achieve agency and self-determination within limited means.

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