To Right Historical Wrongs

A bold new perspective on the impact of culture-based sentencing as a means of trying to ameliorate disproportionate incarceration rates for historically disadvantaged groups.

A bold questioning of culture-based reparative justice initiatives – the political culture that inspired them and their efficacy in an age in which historically marginalized people are disproportionately represented in Canadian prisons.

Following World War II, liberal nation-states sought to address injustices of the past. In keeping with trends in other countries, Canada’s government began to consider its own implication in various past wrongs, and in the late twentieth century it began to implement reparative justice initiatives for historically marginalized people. Yet despite this shift, there are more Indigenous and racialized people in Canadian prisons now than at any other time in history. In To Right Historical Wrongs, Carmela Murdocca brings together the paradigm of reparative justice and the study of incarceration to examine this disconnect between the political motivations for amending historical injustices and the vastly disproportionate reality of the justice system – a troubling reality that is often ignored. Drawing on detailed examination of legal cases, parliamentary debates, government reports, media commentary, and community sources, Murdocca presents a new perspective on discussions of culture-based sentencing in an age of both mass incarceration and historical amendment.