A Better Justice?

A Better Justice? Synopsis

Women are the fastest growing group of incarcerated people in Canada. While feminist criminologists advocate for community alternatives to imprisonment, they often do so without offering a corresponding analysis of existing community programs. A Better Justice? blends the best of both feminist and critical criminology together in a concise analysis of alternative justice programs for criminalized women.

Using Winnipeg as a test case, Amanda Nelund draws on staff interviews and archival documents to reveal the complexity that underlies the governance of criminalized women. She finds that alternative programs successfully avoid some dominant justice system norms while failing to provide the comprehensive change called for by feminist criminologists. Imperfect in many ways, these alternatives point the way toward the more just treatment of incarcerated women.