Kelly Hannah-Moffat
University of Toronto
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Featured researches published by Kelly Hannah-Moffat.
Punishment & Society | 2005
Kelly Hannah-Moffat
This article examines the discrepancies between theories of risk and penality and emergent strategies of risk/need identification and management. Working back from the strategies themselves, I argue that the current generations of risk/need technologies are a significant departure from the pessimistic theoretical accounts of risk in criminal justice associated with the ‘new penology’ and ‘actuarial justice’. I argue that risk knowledges are fluid and flexible and capable of supporting a range of penal strategies. The evolution and meanings of risk in correctional assessment and classification are examined to show how understandings of risk have shifted from static to dynamic categorizations. I show how the concept of need is fused with risk, how particular conceptions of ‘need’ and ‘risk’ are situated in local penal narratives, how need reconstructs risk and revives correctional treatment as an efficient risk minimization strategy. I argue that strategic alignment of risk with narrowly defined intervenable needs contributes to the production of a transformative risk subject who unlike the ‘fixed or static risk subject’ is amenable to targeted therapeutic interventions. Newly formed risk/needs categorizations and subsequent management strategies give rise to a new politics of punishment, in which different risk/needs groupings compete for limited resources, discredit collective group claims to resources, redistribute responsibilities for risk/needs management and legitimate both inclusive and exclusionary penal strategies.
Justice Quarterly | 2013
Kelly Hannah-Moffat
This paper discusses the concerns associated with the introduction of, and increased reliance on, actuarial risk tools in sentencing in order to: (1) stimulate cross-disciplinary dialog and research about the impact of incorporating actuarial risk logic into sentencing processes and (2) identify questions requiring further empirical examination. In this article, I recognize that actuarial risk logic offers managerial and organizational benefits, but I also demonstrate that the application of actuarial risk when sentencing offenders is not without important consequences. First, I provide a brief outline of the emergence, logic, and entrenchment of probabilistic reasoning within criminal justice decision-making, and the more recent extension and application of actuarial risk logic to sentencing. Then, I use the following themes to define the limits of using risk sciences in sentencing: (1) the logical structure of risk; (2) the slippage between risk prediction and individual causation; (3) current methodological limits of risk science; (4) the potential for gender and race discrimination; (5) the legal relevance and transparency of risk-based sentencing; and (6) the jurisprudential and organizational impact of various risk technologies. Importantly, the nature and severity of these complications will vary by, and within, the jurisdiction (or sentencing regime) because current sentencing practices are influenced by local jurisdictional needs and sentencing laws.
The Prison Journal | 1995
Kelly Hannah-Moffat
This article examines some of the theoretical and substantive issues associated with the uncritical embrace of selected feminist ideals in recent Canadian attempts to restructure and rethink federal womens imprisonment. The article focuses on the limitations of a woman-centered model of corrections and how these models of punishment fail to depart from more traditional conceptualizations of punishment. The definition and constitution of a woman-centered regime is troublesome because it relies on a problematic category of “woman”; it is insensitive to wider social, economic, and political cultural relations of power; it sets up a false dichotomy between the woman-and male-centered regimes; and it denies the material and legal realities of imprisonment. These concerns illustrate clearly that although the woman-centered model of corrections appears to be less intrusive and less punitive, it is not; further, the oppressive qualities of incarceration are simply obscured by a feminized social control talk.
Punishment & Society | 2010
Kelly Hannah-Moffat; Paula Maurutto
In the past two decades, Canadian policies governing the structure and content of presentence reports (PSRs) have shifted to focus more directly on the systematic identification of offender’s criminogenic risk and needs. In this article, we (1) examine how risk-based approaches to offender management have altered the structure and format of the PSR in Canada, and (2) contrast the structure of risk-based PSRs to Gladue reports for Aboriginal offenders in Canada. Gladue reports are designed to identify the unique systemic race/cultural and historical factors specific to Aboriginal offenders and to recommend alternatives to incarceration. We argue that although risk-based PSRs incorporate recognition of race-related issues, their structure and emphasis on actuarially based risk assessments frames race and risk differently from Gladue reports. In Gladue reports, holistic approaches and cultural impact factors are documented and used to understand risk and need. Finally, we argue that the conceptualization and relevance of race is limited by actuarial risk logic.
Theoretical Criminology | 2012
Kelly Hannah-Moffat; Paula Maurutto
Studies of punishment have focused predominantly on emerging forms of penal governance, and the revival of punitive forms of punishment. Although this research helps to raise concerns about forms of penal excess and neoliberal penal patterns, it does not clarify how these strategies co-exist with, modify and are re-assembled with older and sometimes seemingly contradictory penal strategies. Our article examines how practices used by Canadian specialized courts are changing the parameters of punishment and thereby challenging the prevailing theories about neo-liberal punishment. Specialized courts are motivated by therapeutic and preventative goals, and they rely on relationships with local community groups to create a new range of interactions with the court and the offender. Our analysis of how bail strategies and techniques are altered in specialized courts provides a valuable context in which to analyse emerging theoretical issues associated with the management of risk, community/court interactions, the connotation of ‘therapeutic justice’ and the subtext of punishment and penal change.
Probation Journal | 2000
Margaret Shaw; Kelly Hannah-Moffat
Margaret Shaw and Kelly Hannah-Moffat consider the discriminatory implications of risk-based classification systems and of actuarial risk assessment tools in the Canadian correctional system.
Theoretical Criminology | 2012
Kelly Hannah-Moffat; Mona Lynch
Over the past few decades, a body of work known as ‘punishment and society’ has emerged at the juncture of the interdisciplinary fields of criminology and law and society. This line of scholarship has theoretical roots that date back to Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, but it was Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish that stimulated theoretically attuned studies of punishment. In 1990, David Garland’s Punishment and Modern Society provided punishment scholars with a blueprint for theorizing contemporary punishment, by integrating classical and contemporary thinking about the role of penality in our social world. Despite its inter-disciplinary commitment and ‘place’ in the scholarly world, the subfield of punishment and society has been somewhat constricted by its own success. Specifically, it is predominated by macro-level sociological approaches to theorization. Such works have come to define the level of analysis in much of the theoretical scholarship; they have also mapped out the definitional boundaries of the category of ‘punishment’. These contributions have been immensely valuable in revealing the complexities of contemporary penality and its social purposes, but they tend to neglect a number of questions about what constitutes punishment in diverse settings, and are limited in their ability to explain on-the-ground punitive practices, particularly in contexts that challenge traditional understandings of the penal realm. Our goal with this special issue is to expand and invigorate the theory and substance of ‘punishment and society’ scholarship. The articles in this volume explicitly question the taken-for-granted boundaries of punishment, and provide ideographic accounts of penal practices that challenge how objects, subjects, and levels of analysis are defined in most sociological work on contemporary penality. Together, they begin to remake substantive, theoretical, and disciplinary boundaries by directly confronting a number of questions: How have states expanded punitive power through ostensibly non-punitive means, and how do these innovations complicate theorizations about contemporary punishment? Where and how does state punishment overlap with the logics and practices of contemporary immigration control, and do these phenomena differ by locale? Is state punishment really distinct from the processes that precede it—law enforcement, adjudication, and sentencing—and how can punishment theory and empirical scholarship benefit from more fully engaging in these predecessor stages? How can non-sociological analyses be more fully integrated into the theoretical work on punishment? What do all of these things 443303 TCR16210.1177/1362480612443303EditorialTheoretical Criminology 2012
Feminism & Psychology | 2004
Kelly Hannah-Moffat
A major turning point in Canadian federal1 women’s corrections occurred nearly 14 years ago when the federal government accepted the report of The Taskforce on Federally Sentenced Women (TTFSW, 1990). This report mandated a new women-centered and culturally sensitive approach to the management and organization of federal women’s prisons. Yet many of the difficulties identified by the taskforce still exist (Hannah-Moffat and Shaw, 2001) and are subject to ongoing evaluation by state and non-state agencies, including the Auditor General (Auditor General of Canada, 2003) and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.2 A major concern for Canadian researchers is the potential for systemic discrimination resulting from gender-neutral risk assessment practices that ineffectually account for gender and cultural differences (see also Van Voorhis and Presser, 2001, for the USA context). Risk tools have an intuitive appeal to practitioners because they ground decisions in statistical (thus objective) relationships (Feeley and Simon, 1992). Strategically, such tools are used to inform service rationalization and to increase professionals’ accountability in decision making in the named efficient and just management of a range of risks (recidivism, suicide, self-harm, violence, escape). Whilst risk assessments may be considered by some practitioners (institutional classification officers, parole board members, probation officers and case managers) as a ‘matter of common sense’, such a discourse is not persuasive in court or at inquests, so a standardized risk assessment ensures a decision is defensible should something go wrong: ‘they back you up if something goes wrong – you can demonstrate that you used a standardized approach that is empirically based’.3
Punishment & Society | 2011
Kelly Hannah-Moffat; Carolyn Yule
The discretion that is inherent in legal decision making creates ambiguity about the reasons for parole boards’ decisions. Although research has documented some of the factors shaping parole decisions for male prisoners, the release process for female prisoners remains largely unexplored. This study asks: What characteristics of violent female offenders and their offences do parole boards emphasize in their decision to release? We employ a multi-method approach to (1) determine the association between parole release and individual, offence and institutional characteristics, (2) clarify the issues that parole boards emphasize when determining whether a prisoner is ‘ready’ to return to the community and 3) analyse how parole board members reconcile past and unalterable factors in a woman’s criminal background with concerns about her future dangerousness by assessing her degree of insight into her crime/s, criminogenic factors and triggers and whether she has learned alternative strategies for managing her potential risk. Data from federally sentenced women in Canada suggest that a parole board’s assessment of a violent offender’s ability to ‘change’ positively emerges as a central concern in whether she will be granted parole. Despite their discretionary power, parole boards thus appear to reinforce a dominant correctional logic that requires women to take responsibility for their choices and target dynamic risk factors in order to reduce the likelihood of recidivism.
Theoretical Criminology | 2015
Rosemary Ricciardelli; Katharina Maier; Kelly Hannah-Moffat
Expressions of masculinity in prison are most often characterized as being structured in response to an environment that encourages displays of stoicism, bravery, physical prowess and violence/aggression. However, we found that the antagonistic, precarious and risk-prone environment of the prison shapes prisoners’ behaviours and the constitution of ‘normative’ and hegemonic masculinities in more nuanced ways than prior research suggests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 56 male parolees, we explored how these men perceived and responded to risk while incarcerated, as well as how prison masculinities are linked with experiences and management of risk to their personal (legal, physical and emotional) safety. In this article, we focus on how prisoners mobilized and negotiated their masculine subjectivities to handle the uncertainty of imprisonment and the various risks they encountered in prison. We argue that penal risks and prison masculinities are mutually constitutive; risk is linked to perceptions of physical and emotional vulnerability, which shape prisoners’ masculine embodiment. Simultaneously, prisoners try to respond to uncertainty and perceived risk in ways that present their masculinity as empowered rather than submissive. Our findings advance the conceptualization of prison and hegemonic masculinities, penal environments and risk/uncertainty.