The Prison is Always Spreading: Carceral Spaces, Criminalization, and Abolition in the Age of Pandemics

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As social isolation was enforced during the COVID19 outbreak, one common public claim was to compare isolation to being in prison. These comparisons both minimize and erase the social death marked by constant and ongoing human rights violations in Canadian prisons, while also normalizing carceral spaces. This paper examines the state of the prison during COVID19. While prisons became epicenters of disease, at the same time, the virus only exposed what is the day to day condition of the prisons as a place of isolation, abuse, lockdown, and segregation. What does COVID19 reveal about states of confinement in carceral spaces, including immigration detention, forensics facilities, and other institutional sites? How can we build upon release to think about a world beyond bars, and to imagine and work for community sentencing and abolition? How do we push back against the creep of surveillance in a post COVID world? 

El Jones is a spoken word poet, an educator, journalist, and abolitionist living in African Nova Scotia. She was the fifth Poet Laureate of Halifax. In 2016, El was a recipient of the Burnley “Rocky” Jones human rights award for her community work and work in prison justice. She is a co-founder of the Black Power Hour, a live radio show with incarcerated people on CKDU that creates space for people inside to share their creative work and discuss contemporary social and political issues. El was appointed the Nancy’s Chair of Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University for the 2017-2019 term. She is a winner of two Atlantic Journalism gold awards in 2018 and 2019. Her book of spoken word poetry, Live from the Afrikan Resistance! was published by Roseway Press in 2014. El would like to pay tribute to the many nameless and unrecognized women whose work makes it possible for her to be here today. She is incoming Assistant Professor in Political and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University.