Description:
Rethinking Community Sanctions: Social Justice and Penal Control redresses the invisibility of community sanctions in a popular imaginary dominated by the prison, resulting in their being seen as 'not prison', 'not punishment', a 'let off', or expression of mercy.
Based on insights from interviews with key participants in 3 Australian jurisdictions, case studies of selected programmes and policies, and the international literature, the authors focus on the effects of community sanctions among groups vulnerable to penal control: First Nations peoples, women, and those with disabilities, along with those at the intersections of these groups.
Arguing that developing a better, more democratic politics around community sanctions requires coming to terms with the wider carceral web in which vulnerable groups are ensnared, they demonstrate the importance of connecting criminal legal system struggles with broader movements for community control, self-determination, and sovereignty.
Review Quotes:
A compelling, comprehensive conceptual and empirical analysis of the social, political, and legal nuances of community correctional practices in Australia, this book shows how the risk episteme underpinning community sanctions is limited and has differential effects on women, people with disabilities, and racialized and Indigenous populations. The authors challenge us to reflect on the administrative and operational limits of these sanctions, binaries of community/custody, welfarist/risk, and harsh/ 'soft' penalties. Readers are asked to scrutinize how technological, sociopolitical, and populist rationalities reconfigure supervision, while simultaneously remaining hopeful about the potential of 'community' sanctions.
--Kelly Hannah-Moffat