Résumé
The expanding prison began as a series of ten broadcasts for CBC radio's Ideas program. The series examines the history of crime and punishment, then reveals new ways of construing crime and considers alternatives to imprisonment. In particular, the series notes that The United States has quadrupled its prison population since 1970. Imprisonment in Russia has more than doubled since 1989. Canada's federal prisons are now 30% over capacity. In The Expanding Prison, David Cayley provocatively argues that these increases reflect the changing character of society, not an increase in crime. The decline of the welfare state has left a social policy vacuum, and the merging global economy threatens to produce a permanently unemployed underclass. In this anxious climate, political majorities have relied on the criminal justice system to address ills ranging from drug abuse to shattered communities. Mass media then amplify popular anxieties by oversimplifying the question of crime. Prison growth is dangerous, Cayley suggests, because it is likely to foster crime rather than deter it. Prisons are notorious as schools of crime, and societies that rely on them open the way for other forms of authoritarianism. Cayley considers a variety of effective alternatives to imprisonment, used in communities throughout North America and elsewhere, which emphasize more civil, settlement-oriented techniques over punishment, and move us towards a vision of justice as peace-making rather than one of vengeance.