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Human Rights Law

The Peter A. Allard School of Law

Prisons

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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes Jan 2007

A Prisoners' Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

This paper examines over twenty years of prisoner litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beginning with a brief consideration of the social and political context for prisoners into which the Charter was entrenched in 1982, before moving on to consider a variety of successful and unsuccessful prisoners' Charter claims. The author notes some ways in which the impact of the Charter has been diminished at the prison walls, including through a lack of full and meaningful access by prisoners to courts or other means of independent review of prison decisions and conditions, as well as by the …


Ballot Boxes Behind Bars: Toward The Repeal Of Prisoner Disenfranchisement Laws, Debra Parkes Jan 2003

Ballot Boxes Behind Bars: Toward The Repeal Of Prisoner Disenfranchisement Laws, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

This paper takes seriously the objection that allowing prisoners to vote may have an impact on the outcome of elections or on the development of law and policy, given the extraordinarily high incarceration rate currently a reality in the United States. The reality that prisoners may have an impact on the outcome of elections is an argument in favour of allowing them to vote rather than against it. A progressive critique or constitutional challenge of prisoner disenfranchisement should call attention to the instrumental, as well as symbolic and constitutive functions of voting, and must defend the importance of having the …