Kara Brisson-Boivin - PhD Sociology
The Matter of Penal Standards: The material Politics of Penal Government in Haiti
Penal standards aim to measure, manage, and steer the conduct of penal governments, practitioners, and prisoners. My research analyzes penal standards as the primary means through which liberal democratic states manufacture carceral institutions in two cases of penal governmental intervention: Canada’s role in the penal aid and reconstruction effort in Haiti; and the federal investigation into sub-standard penality in Nunavut, Canada. A unique contribution of the research emerges from my empirical focus on the material politics of penal standards: that penal standards matter as evidenced by the matter of penal standards (such as the prison toilet). This talk will present three core arguments regarding the material politics of penal standards in Haiti and Nunavut: first, that penal standards promote technical punishment rather than the actualization of prisoner human rights; second, that penal standards aim to disembed a penal government’s relationship with a specific locality or culture; and third, that penal standardization results in the paradox of punishing inequality—how to maintain democratic penal institutions, or penal legitimacy, without subjecting prisoners to inhumane conditions and practices within geopolitical contexts of significant marginalization and inequality.