Criminal Justice and Intersectionality Review

These flashcards review key concepts from the lecture on criminal justice, intersectionality, and their implications for Indigenous and marginalized communities.

How would intersectionality explain the over-policing of Indigenous women?

Intersectionality shows Indigenous women face overlapping racial, gendered, and class-based oppression, producing unique vulnerability to surveillance, victimization, and criminalization.

How does settler colonialism help explain MMIWG?

Settler colonialism creates structural conditions of displacement, devaluation, and institutional neglect that increase violence against Indigenous women and reduce state protection.

Why is MMIWG considered structural rather than isolated violence?

Because systemic institutions create and sustain the conditions enabling violence, neglect, and impunity.

How does Collins’ Matrix of Domination apply to policing?

Policing reproduces inequality structurally through laws, disciplinarily through surveillance, hegemonically through stereotypes, and interpersonally through officer interactions.

How does Potter critique traditional criminology?

It treats race, gender, and class separately and ignores how power shapes experiences at their intersections.

How does McGuire argue criminal justice reproduces colonialism?

By replacing Indigenous legal systems, punishing colonial harms as individual risk, and maintaining settler control over Indigenous peoples.

How does risk assessment perpetuate colonial harm?

It labels colonial trauma, poverty, and addiction as risk factors and punishes Indigenous people for conditions created by colonialism.

Why are fake solutions criticized in colonial justice reform?

Because symbolic reforms may change appearance while leaving colonial/state power structures intact.

How does the Highway of Tears illustrate structural racism?

Infrastructure neglect, poverty, and institutional indifference create heightened vulnerability for Indigenous women while their safety is deprioritized.

Why does over-policed and under-protected describe a paradox?

Communities face intense surveillance but inadequate protection when they are harmed.

How does investigatory policing shape citizenship?

It signals who is viewed as suspicious and who is treated as a legitimate societal member.

Why can policing be racist even without racist officers?

Institutional incentives, policies, and stereotypes can produce racial disparities regardless of personal intent.

How do Black families engage in mothers managing masculinity?

They teach sons survival strategies for police encounters due to racialized stereotypes and risk of violence.

How does carding undermine police legitimacy?

Repeated unjustified contact reduces trust and signals police act as enforcers rather than protectors.

Why is Canada’s multicultural image criticized in CRT?

It masks systemic racism and makes inequality harder to acknowledge or prove.

How does bail function as social control?

It regulates accused persons through surveillance, restrictions, and punishment-like conditions before conviction.

How does bail criminalize poverty?

Poor individuals struggle more to meet conditions and are more likely to be detained or charged with breaches.

How does procedural hassle theory explain bail?

Legal processes test accused persons through compliance demands and punish perceived failure.

How does crimmigration demonstrate law is not neutral?

It shows law is used politically to exclude and control outsiders rather than simply punish wrongdoing.

How does membership theory explain migrant exclusion?

Rights and protections depend on perceived belonging, so non-members receive fewer protections.

Why is immigration detention considered a form of punishment?

It deprives liberty and uses prison-like controls despite being framed as administrative.

How do detention centres enforce social exclusion?

They physically and symbolically separate non-members from society.

Why are migrants increasingly criminalized?

Political narratives frame migrants as threats, justifying harsher enforcement and exclusion.

How does imprisonment function beyond punishment?

It manages marginalized populations and reinforces broader systems of social control.

Why is women’s imprisonment rising significant?

It suggests structural changes in punishment and criminalization beyond crime rates.

How does victimization lead to criminalization for marginalized women?

Trauma, abuse, homelessness, and addiction often precede and shape criminal justice involvement.

How can alternatives to incarceration still be carceral?

They may expand surveillance/control instead of reducing punishment.

How does transformative justice challenge criminal justice assumptions?

It rejects punishment as the default response to harm and focuses on healing/root causes.

Compare restorative justice and transformative justice.

Restorative justice repairs harm between parties; transformative justice also seeks to change structural conditions producing harm.

What is the overarching course thesis?

Criminal justice institutions are not neutral; they reproduce power, inequality, colonialism, and exclusion through interconnected systems of control.

What are the three pillars of the criminal justice system?

Policing, Courts, and Punishment/Corrections (e.g., prisons).

What is criminalization?

The process by which societies define certain behaviours as criminal and regulate them through law.

What are carceral logics?

Underlying rationales that promote punishment, surveillance, and carceral fixes for social problems.

What is critical criminology?

A perspective that examines power structures, challenges dominant narratives, and critiques how criminal justice systems reproduce inequality.

Define intersectionality.

The study of how multiple axes of social difference intersect with power to create unique experiences of oppression and privilege.

Who developed intersectionality?

Kimberlé Crenshaw.

What are the four dimensions of Collins’ Matrix of Domination?

Structural, Disciplinary, Hegemonic, and Interpersonal.

What is decoloniality?

Challenging colonial systems, white hegemonic thought, and Eurocentric frameworks.

Define settler colonialism.

An ongoing structure aimed at displacing Indigenous peoples and replacing them with settler society.

What are McGuire’s three processes of colonialism?

Dispossession, Dependency, and Oppression.

What is slow violence in settler colonialism?

Ongoing, normalized structural harm through systems like prisons, policing, and child welfare.

What does over-policed and under-protected mean?

Communities experience heavy surveillance/criminalization while receiving inadequate protection when victimized.

What is MMIWG?

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Why is the Highway of Tears significant?

It illustrates how structural neglect and settler colonialism create conditions for violence against Indigenous women.

What did the National Inquiry into MMIWG conclude?

That settler colonial structures enabled an ongoing genocide.

What are investigatory stops?

Police stops based on suspicion/curiosity rather than evidence of a specific crime.

Why are investigatory stops criticized?

Most produce no evidence of crime but create distrust and feelings of discrimination.

What is self-policing in racialized communities?

Altering one’s behavior to avoid police attention.

What is carding/street checking?

Police stopping, questioning, and documenting individuals without charges or formal suspicion.

What is police legitimacy?

Public belief that police are fair, trustworthy, and rightful authorities.

What is bail?

A legal mechanism allowing an accused person to remain out of custody while awaiting trial, subject to conditions.

What are the three official purposes of bail?

To ensure court attendance, protect public safety, and maintain confidence in the justice system.

Why is bail criticized in critical criminology?

Because it often functions as punishment before conviction.

What is meant by bail as punishment before trial?

Bail conditions and detention impose punitive burdens before guilt is established.

What does Feeley mean by the process is the punishment?

The legal process itself imposes punishment through stress, delay, supervision, costs, and restrictions before sentencing.

What is crimmigration?

The merging of criminal law and immigration law into overlapping systems of punishment and exclusion.

Who developed the concept of crimmigration?

Juliet Stumpf.

What is membership theory in crimmigration?

Rights and protections depend on whether someone is treated as a societal member or outsider.

What is immigration detention?

Holding non-citizens in custody while awaiting deportation or immigration decisions.

Why is immigration detention considered punitive?

It restricts liberty and resembles imprisonment even if officially framed as administrative.

How are detention centres similar to prisons?

Locked facilities, security staff, restricted movement, surveillance, institutional control.

Why is imprisonment studied sociologically?

Because prison serves broader political, economic, and social control functions beyond punishment.

Why is women’s imprisonment a major focus in critical prison studies?

Because women’s incarceration is increasing rapidly and reveals gendered dimensions of punishment.

What is criminalization of vulnerability?

Structural disadvantages become treated as criminal problems.

What are carceral spaces beyond prisons?

Foster care systems, reserves, detention centres, and other institutional spaces of surveillance/control.

What is transformative justice?

A framework addressing harm by transforming root causes and relationships rather than relying on punishment.

How does transformative justice differ from traditional criminal justice?

It focuses on healing, accountability, prevention, and structural change rather than punishment.

What is net widening?

Reforms/alternatives expand control over more people rather than reducing punishment.

What is structural racism?

Racial inequality produced through institutions, policies, and systems rather than individual prejudice alone.

What is hyper-surveillance?

Excessive monitoring and scrutiny of specific populations.

What is hyper-criminalization?

The process by which marginalized groups are disproportionately subjected to criminal suspicion/intervention.

What is the biggest meta-theme of the course?

Criminal justice institutions produce and manage inequality through interconnected systems of power, control, and exclusion.