Penal nationalism in the settler colony: On the construction and maintenance of ‘national whiteness’ in settler Canada
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | Jessica Evans |
| DOI | 10.1177/14624745211023455 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Penal nationalism in
the settler colony:
On the construction
and maintenance of
‘national whiteness’
in settler Canada
Jessica Evans
Ryerson University, Canada
Abstract
The summer of 2020 was one of unprecedented mass protest and a growing critical
awareness around the racist operation of criminal justice systems in North America.
Consequently, criminal justice systems have been placed squarely at the forefront of
struggles for racial equality and social change. While activists, critical researchers, and
legal experts have argued racialjustice requires a diversion ofcommunities and resources
away from criminal justice systems, the focus in mainstream policy, media, and academic
circles has been on reform. In Canada, a focus on reformist responses to this racial
violence has been justified through a distorted view of Canada’s criminal justice system.
Drawing on the concept of penal nationalism, I argue that Canadian carceral practices
must be understood as constitutive of the settler-colonial state and its ideological, mate-
rial and institutional mooring in racial whiteness as the locus of settler power and sov-
ereignty. To this end, it is not enough to reform specific penal practices, while leaving
intact the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in general. What is at stake is the very
definition and protection of a national identity, which in the settler colony is predicated
on colonial whiteness, Indigenous erasure, and racialized exploitation.
Keywords
nationalism, penal nationalism, penal reform, settler colonialism, white supremacy
Corresponding author:
Jessica Evans, Department of Sociology, Ryerson University, Canada.
Email: Jessica.evans@ryerson.ca
Punishment & Society
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745211023455
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
2021, Vol. 23(4) 515–535
Introduction
The summer of 2020 was one of unprecedented mass protest and a growing critical
awareness around the racist operation of criminal justice systems in North
America. While the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis catalyzed
mass protests across the U.S., similar protests erupted in Canada in response to
the police murders of D’Andre Campbell, Rodney Levi, and Ejaz Choudry, among
others (Flanagan, 2020). Consequently, 2020 was a year in which criminal justice
systems were placed squarely at the forefront of struggles for racial equity and
social change (Fernandez, 2020; Willis, 2020). While activists, critical researchers,
and legal experts have argued racial justice requires a significant (if not complete)
diversion of communities and resources away from criminal justice systems the
focus in mainstream policy, media, and academic circles has been on reform.
In Canada, discourse around the need for prudent (reformist) responses to the
criminal justice systems’ racial violence has been justified by a distorted view of
Canada’s criminal justice system. This sanitized reading of Canadian history is
grounded in a form of exceptionalism which claims Canada’s penal system does
not have the same roots in slave patrols, segregation, lynching and voter suppres-
sion as in the United States, so is not systemically racist, and therefore reformable
(Connolly, 2020; Murphy, 2020). This ‘Canadian exceptionalism’ is patently false,
and it is misleading to use the U.S. as a baseline for assessing the degrees of
systemic racism in Canada’s penal system (Jones, 2020; Maynard, 2020). Indeed,
as Katherine McKittrick has shown, Canada’s selective and comparative narra-
tives surrounding racism and the disappearance of racialized bodies from
Canadian popular memory is functional to settler nation building itself
(McKittrick, 2006). As such, it is necessary to understand the historically and
geographically specific roles criminal justice systems play in constructing and
reproducing white supremacy in Canada. It is on this basis – showing the enduring
and constitutive relationship between policing, prisons, and the elevation of white
rule – that arguments for penal reform might be dismantled, in the interests of
enduring change through alternative justice systems.
The argument I advance is that Canadian carceral practices must be understood
as constitutive of the settler-colonial state and its ideological, material and institu-
tional mooring in racial whiteness as the locus of settler power and sovereignty
(Evans, 2018). Taking settler colonialism as the starting point reveals the ways in
which penal practices are central in the shaping of national membership. Carceral
systems are, at base, systems for sorting between those deserving of membership to
the ‘nation’ and those whose membership must be mediated, suspended, or
removed entirely. These practices - from policing, to sentencing, prisons and cor-
rectional practices - are not simply a reflection of ‘the nation’ but are instead
central in constituting ‘the nation’ itself. This focus on the constructive power
of penal systems adds to the sizeable body of critical race and settler colonial
scholarship documenting the destructive power of penal systems. The seemingly
contradictory and dual role of penal systems – as both productive and destructive,
516 Punishment & Society 23(4)
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