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Transcarceral lawscapes enacted in moments of Aboriginalisation: a case-study of an Indigenous woman released on urban parole

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2021

Joshua David Michael Shaw*
Affiliation:
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The field of carceral geography was lately developed by critical human geographers grappling with the spatiotemporal modes of social control and coercion particular to institutions of incarceration (Moran et al., 2018; Moran and Schliehe, 2017). This has included – in keeping with Michel Foucault's (1991) genealogy of the carceral as an art of disciplinary power – studying the disparate ways in which carceral techniques proliferate from and beyond the built site of the prison, becoming incorporated into other spatial formations. Carceral geographers have characterised this extension as transcarceral (Moran, 2014) or heterotopic (Gill et al., 2018; Moran and Keinänen, 2012). However, despite frequent references to law and legal institutions, carceral geographers generally do not theorise about law. Through a case-study involving an Indigenous woman paroled in Toronto, the author theorises about how carceral spaces are expressed through legal forms and techniques, affecting how paroled individuals, particularly those Aboriginalised, are emplaced within urban space.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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