Jaywalking to Jail: Capitalism, mass incarceration and social control on the streets of Vancouver

Abstract

The criminalization of the poor is supported at the municipal level by police budgets that continue to rise rapidly despite a falling ‘crime rate’; at the provincial level by an expansion of prison capacity across the country and increasing numbers of people in remand, especially on ‘administration of justice’ and drug related charges; and at the federal level by ‘tough on crime’ mandatory minimum legislation.  It is one component of a broad strategy of mass incarceration and social control aimed at the poor, Indigenous people, im/migrant and refugee communities of colour, and labour, environmental, anti-war and anti-capitalist organizers who challenge the system.

There is an urgent need to link the local resistance to these policies of criminalization in different Canadian cities and to build a cross-country network of organizations capable of exposing and opposing them, and linking them to the underlying system of capitalist exploitation and oppression.