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Understanding Systemic Racism in Law Enforcement and Justice Systems Study Guide

This guide explores the pervasive issue of systemic anti-Blackness within Canada's criminal justice system. It delves into how law enforcement practices, judicial processes, and incarceration policies disproportionately impact Black communities. Topics covered include police violence and impunity, racial profiling and carding, sentencing disparities, the role of the "War on Drugs," and the mental health implications of solitary confinement. The guide also touches upon the growing movement for pr

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Cultures of Risk and Social Control

Risk, Discipline, and Crime Control

An examination of how culture defines salient risks and the transition from disciplinary practices to a culture of control.

  • Salient risks
  • Panopticism
  • Disciplinary practices
  • Culture of control
  • Penal welfarism
  • Expressive punishment
  • Endemic insecurity

Cultures of Risk and Control

An analysis of liquid modernity, securitization, and the rise of the security state through surveillance and the state of exception.

  • Liquid modernity
  • Securitization
  • Responsibilization of risk
  • State of exception
  • Crimmigration
  • Security state
  • Surveillance

Law-and-Order Policing and Neoliberalism

Law-and-Order Policing and Neoliberalism

Law-and-order policing promotes neoliberal economic and political aims by targeting behaviors that resist the re-imposition of market relations and the wage relation.

  • law-and-order policing
  • neoliberalism
  • wage relation
  • indigence
  • gentrification
  • market relations
  • zero-tolerance policing
  • coercive welfare policy

Law-and-Order Policing and Neoliberal Labor

Law-and-order policing targets low-level forms of public disorder to enforce market relations and the neoliberal ethos of wage labor.

  • Broken Windows theory
  • Zero-tolerance policing
  • Ontario Safe Streets Act (OSSA)
  • Neoliberal re-composition of wage labour
  • Market discipline
  • Lean production/Lean person ethos
  • Squeegeeing
  • Economic restructuring

Arrested (In)justice and Racialized Surveillance

Policing Black Lives and State Violence

An analysis of how Canada's criminal justice system manages Black and Indigenous populations through racialized surveillance, policing, and incarceration.

  • racialized surveillance
  • criminal justice system
  • state violence
  • Black criminality trope
  • settler colonialism
  • incarceration rates
  • economic subordination
  • dispossession

Policing Black Lives and Racial Profiling

An analysis of how racial profiling and over-surveillance function as tools of settler colonialism to criminalize Black communities in Canada.

  • racial profiling
  • systemic racism
  • over-surveillance
  • criminalization
  • settler colonialism
  • carding
  • street checks
  • state violence
  • self-fulfilling prophecy

Policing Black Lives and the War on Drugs

The systematic criminalization of Blackness through racial profiling, surveillance, and the War on Drugs in Canada.

  • racial profiling
  • over-surveillance
  • War on Drugs
  • criminalization of Blackness
  • Operation Pipeline
  • Black incarceration
  • Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
  • moral panic

Racial Disparities in Drug Policing

The text examines how drug laws and enforcement practices contribute to the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of Black persons and youth.

  • racial disparities in imprisonment
  • mandatory minimum sentences
  • militarized intervention
  • policing discretion
  • heightened surveillance
  • drug-based arrests

The Impact of Drug Prohibition and Policing

Harmful Effects of Drug Prohibition

Drug prohibition contributes to loss of life, human rights violations, and social devastation for racialized communities.

  • drug prohibition
  • racial bias in policing
  • harm reduction
  • decriminalization
  • economic inequality
  • social isolation
  • systemic economic marginalization

The Security State and Settler Colonialism

The Security State and Indigenous Surveillance

The security state utilizes surveillance, intelligence databanks, and policing to suppress Indigenous movements that challenge settler colonialism and extractive capitalism.

  • settler colonialism
  • security state
  • surveillance regime
  • Indigenous sovereignty
  • war on terror
  • extractive capitalism
  • national security
  • social control
  • fusion centre approach
  • logic of elimination
  • post-colonial imaginary
  • self-determination

Security State and Indigenous Policing

The security state utilizes the war on terror and notions of Aboriginal extremism to expand surveillance and policing of Indigenous movements to protect settler colonial order and extractive capitalism.

  • war on terror
  • Aboriginal extremism
  • settler colonialism
  • extractive capitalism
  • critical infrastructure protection
  • surveillance society
  • reproduction of settler colonial order
  • Indigenous sovereignty
  • decolonization
  • national security policing

Policing, Judicial Disparities, and Incarceration

Systemic Anti-Blackness in Canadian Policing

The documentation examines the disproportionate impact of law enforcement, judicial processes, and incarceration on Black communities in Canada.

  • Police violence and impunity
  • Racial profiling and carding
  • Pre-trial detention disparities
  • Sentencing inequality
  • Black incarceration rates
  • Solitary confinement
  • Prison abolition
  • Mental health and policing

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