Carceral experiences and custodial lifeworld of prisoners’ families: The impacts of ion scan technology in Canadian prisons

Brianna Garneau,Sandra Lehalle

doi:10.1177/26326663211005251

Abstract

The effects of imprisonment have been well-documented to go beyond the walls of carceral institutions and beyond the individual subjected to confinement. This article analyzes the expansion of carceral experiences in the lives of family members of Canadian prisoners, focusing on the use of the Ion Mobility Spectrometry device during prison visits. Drawing on testimonies, this article explores how the ion scanner not only affects the experiences of families in carceral spaces but also how the impacts are carried out into their everyday lives outside prison walls. The socialization undergone due to “secondary prisonization” leads family members to adopt a “custodial citizenship” which ultimately shapes how they interact and navigate the world—a citizenship and way of life that is unique to having an incarcerated loved one.

Highlights

Experiences of imprisonment are largely shaped and defined by the carceral policies put in place, most of which are security oriented
Expanding on the work of Comfort (2003), we argue that these processes of socialization, in the contexts of visitation and submission to the ion scanner, contribute to the ‘‘secondary prisonization’’ of family members
We argue that the use and misuse of the ion scanner extend the pains of imprisonment felt by prisoners onto their family members, who are forced to learn the policies of the prison and adapt their lives to its disciplinary controls

Summary

Introduction

Experiences of imprisonment are largely shaped and defined by the carceral policies put in place, most of which are security oriented. The use of the ion scanner on families of prisoners has been analyzed in the literature as extending the harms of suspicion, penal punishment, and stigma of criminality onto the families of those incarcerated (Chamberlain, 2015; Comfort, 2003; Hannem, 2011; MacKenzie, 2019; McCuaig, 2007). The suspicion of family members as potential drug carriers is exemplified within the CSC policies that regulate the ion scanner, which make it mandatory for family members visiting their loved one to be searched with this device, while exempting prison staff from passing through the ion scanner (CSC Commissioner’s Directive #566) This demonstrates the ways in which CSC actively responsibilizes family members for the drug crisis inside federal institutions. The ion scan technology appears to be one of the security tools that plays its part in creating the collateral consequences of incarceration experienced by families, shaping their lives both within and beyond the physical walls of prisons

Methods and conceptual framework

Conclusion