Good Citizens with the Wrong Arguments: A critical comment on Sullivan's Social Diversion

Abstract

Abstract
 In the wake of the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision in R v Sullivan, striking down legislative limits on the extreme intoxication defence in Canada, significant public debate arose about how the intoxication defence applies to sexual assault. Currently, the social debate has focused on implications for individual criminals and victims. This paper will argue the terms of the debate have dodged the larger social issues at the intersection of mental health, addiction, gender, and racial inequity, and poverty. These issues have been sidelined in the social discourse due to the efforts of institutions to divert away from the role they play in the underpinnings of crime and victimization. To affect social diversion, institutions notably leverage harm decisionism rhetoric to uphold existing responsibilization paradigms. Thus, to meaningfully affect social change, the call to action is rather than arguing amongst themselves within the current ideologically driven parameters, activists should deconstruct the discourse to hold institutions accountable for the inequitable social structures they uphold. Analysis of the Sullivan case grounded in social statistics and penal philosophy demonstrates how institutions can covertly pit activists against one another and uphold a socially misinformed status quo. Rather than attack criminals or victims affected by their social circumstance, activists should expose this process of how crime occurs and persists to victimize: institutionally supported responsibilization of disadvantaged groups due to an unwillingness to allocate appropriate resources to address their needs.