Negotiating a coercive turn: Work discipline and prison reform in Ontario

Abstract

Prisons and crime are still widely seen as concerning fields of state action that are distinct from social or labour-market policy. This article looks at the way neoconservative attacks on the remnants of the Keynesian welfare state reflect a ‘penal management of poverty’ that blurs such distinctions. This approach presages a dramatically increased role for state and state-contracted coercion aimed at labour and the poor. But such escalations do not happen automatically, and are still vulnerable to effective resistance, as this article will show.

Invested in Prisons: Prison Expansion and Community Development in Canada

“…It also undertook ambitious efforts to consolidate bureaucracies and local governments into much bigger, more centralized operations (McElligott, 2007). Everywhere the Harris Conservatives displayed an extraordinary faith in the capacity of buildings and machines to change people's character.…”

“…The rationale for this arrangement was that it better reflected the harsh realities of the outside world, where participation in the legitimate labour market purportedly guaranteed self-sufficiency and other rewards (CSC RP, 2007). But given the context in Ontario and elsewhere, the effect would likely have been to make those realities even harsher -by driving down work expectations among prisoners, former prisoners and other marginalized workers (McElligott, 2007).…”

“…The Panel offered few suggestions about the internal organization of these complexes, but in Ontario and elsewhere the new centralized prisons followed the "tough, no frills" model of the US supermax (Hannah-Moffat & Moore, 2002;McElligott, 2007McElligott, , 2008. The huge size of these buildings, and their heavy reliance on walls, automation, and other impersonal forms of control, meant that every prisoner -regardless of their security level -would likely be treated more brutally than in older institutions.…”

“…Related improvements probably vary from prison to prison, and if inadequate measures are taken they can actually harm the local community by overloading sewers, roads, etc. (McElligott, 2007). In any case, this kind of work was tallied with the construction contracts considered above, and, like them, was reduced by the decision not to build new prisons from scratch.…”

A Tory High Modernism? Grand Plans and Visions of Order in Neoconservative Ontario

“…Such attacks on the laws and institutions that protected workers, especially low-paid workers, signaled that the Tory response to globalization would rely heavily on cheap labour, market inequality, and a generally more disciplined workforce (McElligott 2007). This signal was amplified by a declaration on the province's website that Ontario was now ''open for business,'' and by the crusade against social indiscipline (discussed below).…”