To Hurt or To Heal

Last week, in honour of Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie who died May 27th in Oslo, I posted “Prison and Its Alternatives” a ten-hour series that was broadcast on Ideas in 1996.  The series responded to a request from Professor Christie that I help him to publicize the grave political emergency that he feared would be an inevitable consequence of rising rates of imprisonment in almost every industrialized country.   (I’ve posted some reminiscences, and a brief appreciation of Christie’s work in the blog section of the site.)  My ten programmes began with an investigation of the reasons why prison rates took such a dramatic U-turn in the 1980’s, after trending down for the thirty years that followed World Two.  Later shows in the series went on to canvas a variety of alternatives to imprisonment that were then being practiced and put forward under the banner of Restorative Justice.  Some time after the broadcast, I got a call from David Cole, an Ontario Court Judge.  He commended my work but invited me to “come and watch the parade” in his Scarborough court-room with a view to giving me a closer acquaintance with the day to day operations and dilemmas of the criminal justice system.  He followed up this lesson with an invitation to a conference of the Canadian Criminal Justice Association in Saskatoon, where the pros and cons of restorative justice would be considered.   So began “To Hurt or To Heal” a five hour sequel to “Prison and Its Alternatives,” that was more “balanced”, more focused on Canada and more concerned with practical issues in criminal justice than its predecessor.   I’ve listed the participants below, giving their qualifications as they were at the time of the broadcast in 2,000…

Part One – Edward Bayda, Chief Justice, Saskatchewan; John Braithwaite, author of Crime, Shame and Reintegration;  Cleve Cooper, Director of the RCMP’s Contract, Community and Aboriginal Policing Services; Bria Huculak, Saskatchewan judge; Danny Graham, Halifax lawyer, Nova Scotia restorative justice initiative

Part Two – Priscilla de Villiers, victims’ rights advocate; Lorraine Berzins, Church Council on Justice and Corrections; Jamie Scott, Collaborative Justice Project

Part Three – Kent Roach, law professor, University of Toronto; Julian Roberts, professor of criminology, University of Ottawa; David Paciocco, University of Ottawa, author of Getting Away With Murder; David Cole, Ontario judge

Part Four – Murray Sinclair, Manitoba judge; Sa’ke’j Henderson, Native Law Centre, University of Saskatchewan; Carol Laprairie, researcher on aboriginal justice issues; Jonathan Rudin, Director, Community Council, Aboriginal Legal Services, Toronto

Part Five – Tony Doob, professor of criminology, University of Toronto; Mary Campbell, Director, Criminal Justice Policy, Ministry of the Solicitor General; Ole Ingstrup, Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada; Jim Gouk, Reform/Alliance M.P. for Kootenay-Boundary-Okanagan; Allen Manson, professor of law, Queen’s University; Paul Gendreau, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, University of New Brunswick, St. John

Prison and Its Alternatives

In 1993 on Ideas, I presented a three hour profile of Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie called “Crime Control as Industry.”  (You can find it on this site under his name or the series title.)  The days I spent in Oslo doing the interviews for this series marked the beginning of a long friendship, but one that initially presented quite a challenge.  Two years after we first met, in 1995,  Nils called from Oslo.  Could I come to a conference he was organizing on the crisis of rapidly rising rates of imprisonment?  He needed my help, he said, to make the public aware of the grave political emergency this increase represented.    At the time, I had just cleared a big backlog of work and was eager to get started on some new projects I had in mind.  The prison crisis, serious as I knew it was, was not on my agenda.  However a little reflection made me realize that my whole career as a broadcaster had been built on people saying yes to me when I called out of the blue.  Now the shoe was on the other foot.  Could I say no?   I said yes and never regretted the decision.  Using the conference in Oslo as a starting point, I began building up a series of programmes that eventually grew, in size and scope, beyond anything I had yet done for Ideas.  The ten-hour series called “Prison and Its Alternatives” was broadcast in 1996.  At the time, Canada was facing a decision about whether to expand our prison capacity to accommodate a gradually but steadily rising number of prisoners.   Happily, the government refused this option, and Canada’s prison rate trended slightly down through the later 90’s and into the early 2,000’s until the Harper government began to force it up again.  The responses I received during and after the broadcast of  “Prison and Its Alternatives” made me believe that the series played its small part in creating the climate of opinion in which the government could make this decision.   The broadcast was also consequential for me personally and led to several sequels, notably a further investigation of  the pro’s and con’s of restorative justice called “To Hurt or To Heal” (I'll post it here soon), a book entitled The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives (House of Anansi, 1999, still in print), and a brief career as a lecturer on these themes.  

Nils Christie, without whom none of this would have happened, died in Oslo on May 27th  at the age of 87.   (I’ve posted an essay in memoriam in the blog section of the site.)  I’m bringing back "Prison and Its Alternatives" here in his honour.   Many statistics will be out of date.  The ideas, I think, remain pertinent.  Here’s an outline in which I’ve described the participants by the positions they occupied at the time of the broadcast:   

Programme One – the prison boom - Nils Christie, University of Oslo; Marc Mauer, the Sentencing Project; Jerry Miller, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives; Al Bronstein, American Civil Liberties Union

Programme Two – the relationship between crime and imprisonment - Johannes Feest, University of Bremen; Nils Christie, University of Oslo; Andrew Rutherford, University of Southampton; Thomas Mathiesen, University of Oslo; Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds

Programme Three – prison reform - Maeve McMahon, Carleton University, K. J. Lång, Director General of Prisons, Finland; John Edwards, Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada

Programme Four – why prison rates vary -  Vivien Stern, Prison Reform International, Julita Lemgruber, former director of prisons in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Nils Christie, University of Oslo; Thomas Mathiesen, University of Oslo; Jerry Miller, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives; Judge Heino Lilles, Yukon Territorial Court, Canada

Programme Five –  historical and cultural roots of contemporary attitudes to imprisonment - Louk Hulsman. Erasmus University, Rotterdam; John Haley, Asian Law Program, University of Seattle; Ivan Illich, independent scholar

Programme Six – life in prison - Jim Cavanaugh, Prison Fellowship Canada, former prisoner; Monty Lewis, Cons for Christ Prison Ministry, former prisoner; Jeff Doucette, correctional officer, former head of the Emergency Response Team at Millhaven Institution in Eastern Ontario

Programme Seven – restorative justice initiatives - Dave Worth, Director, Mennonite Central Committee, Ontario;  Dave Gustafson, Director, Community Justice Initiatives, Langley, B.C.; Matt Hakiaha, Youth Justice Coordinator, New Zealand; Howard Zehr, author, Changing Lenses

Programme Eight - more restorative justice initiatives - Doug Call, attorney, Genesee County, New York; Dennis Wittman, Director, Community Service and Victim Assistance Office, Genesee County; John Strange, young offender on diversion, Genesee County; Glen Morton, Genesee County Judge; Robert Noonan, Genesee County District Attorney; Glen Purdy, defence lawyer, Sparwoood, B.C.; Jake Bouwman, Commander, Sparwood RCMP Detachment; Joanne Barnaby, Dene Cultural Institute; Joan Ryan, University of Calgary

Programme Nine – aboriginal justice initiatives in Canada - Harold Gatensby, former prisoner, proponent of circle sentencing, Carcross, Yukon; Barry Stuart, Judge, Yukon Territorial Court; Rupert Ross, assistant Crown Attorney, author, Dancing With a Ghost; Burma Bushie, Manitoba Department of Child and Family Service, Hollow Water, Manitoba; Mary Crnkovich, Ottawa lawyer, consultant to Pauktuutit, Innuit Women’s Association; Cunliffe Barnett, British Columbia Judge

Programme Ten – Christianity and crime - Harry Nigh, Mennonite pastor, Hamilton; Sally Boyles, rector, Holy Trinity Church, Toronto, former prison chaplain; Pierre Allard, Director of Chaplaincy, Correctional Service of Canada; Hugh Kierkegaard, community chaplain, Correctional Service of Canada; Stella Woock, retired nurse, Hamilton