Abstract
Since the 1990s, Ontario and Canada at large have seen the rise of the neoliberal state with a concurrent punitive turn in public policy. While academic inquiry has attempted to understand the evolution of penality, the functional linkages that exist between the social assistance and penal apparatus have been largely overlooked. This paper seeks to bridge this gap through examining the way in which community housing is increasingly being envisaged as a mechanism of social control and an exclusionary tactic. Drawing on 150 newsprint media items, reports produced by non-governmental organizations, and Hansard transcripts, the hegemonic discourses surrounding Ontario’s Community Housing Renewal Strategy are explored. Particular attention is given to the proposed amendment which denies individuals criminalized for a ‘serious criminal offence’ from accessing community housing. In conceptualizing criminalized individuals as ‘non-deserving’ citizens, exclusionary tactics are legitimized as ‘crime reduction’ strategies.
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Notes
For the purpose of this paper, the terms community housing and public housing are used synonymously. Some, however, make distinctions between the two with community housing referring to housing that is owned and operated by non-profit housing corporations, housing co-operatives, and municipal governments/district social services administration boards who provide subsidized or low-end-of market rent prices (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing 2019). Public housing was developed though federal and provincial programs in the mid to late 1900s. It primarily entails rent-geared-to-income housing or moderate market rent prices (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing 2019). The CHRS applies to both of these kinds of housing.
By hegemonic discourses, I am referring to where discourses are mobilized to reinforce systems of social power and ideology (Gramsci 1971). Gramsci (1971) posits that to maintain systems of social power built on inequality, it is necessary to construct a ‘common-sense’ consciousness. This refers to the conflict that occurs between those holding different views of reality; because of the power they hold, the most affluent sectors of society are in an advantageous position to ensuring that their views of reality remain the dominant ones (Gramsci 1971). This is precisely how discourses become hegemonic as they work to reinforce systems of social power and ideology, thus maintaining hegemony.
The concept of transcarceration recognizes the fluid nature of power and the ability for it to be dispersed across sources and have varied applications of control (Brown 2019; Johnson 1996). A transcarceral space then refers to where ‘criminal justice’ policies and surveillance are put in place to monitor non-carceral public spaces. In so doing, spaces that were once public are reconstituted into spaces that have meanings that overlap with the carceral through exhibiting both inclusionary and exclusionary tactics (Kilty and DeVellis 2010). This serves to increase the disciplinary power of the state.
There is no additional information regarding what ‘serious criminal offence’ captures and whether this will be left to the discretion of service managers. Based on discussions in the data, particularly the newsprint media, it can be inferred that the ‘serious violence’ being targeted by the CHRS refers to gang, gun, drug, and sex work related ‘crimes’. This is supported by the official CHRS government webpage which states that the aim is to address ‘crime’ and gang related violence (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing 2019). Although the data often makes reference to the purpose of the CHRS as being to evict those committing ‘serious crime’, what this entails is not explicitly discussed. No parameters detail whether simply being charged with, and not convicted of, an offence will be sufficient to result in eviction.
As of September 2019, the CHRS is now in effect and its various components have begun to be enacted. The component of the CHRS allowing for criminalized individuals to be denied future tenancy for having been evicted for a ‘serious criminal offence’ was accepted September 23rd, 2019 (Government of Ontario 2019). No additional information about what has occurred since the proposal was accepted can be found online.
As per Garland (2001), populist punitiveness results from the belief that criminalized individuals are favoured at the expense of their victims and the law-abiding public more broadly. Penal populism, then, entails the privileging of public views in ‘criminal justice’ policy developments. This leads to the creation and implementation of commonsensical policies based on public opinion and emotion rather than academic inquiry (Pratt and Clark 2005; Pratt 2007).
No items were produced prior to 2017 were included as they were focused on the Affordable Housing Strategy which is outside of the scope of this project.
For a complete discussion of the various newsprint media outlets from which the data was collected and how their respective political bends have been taken into account during the analysis, see author r1 (2020). Similarly, a fulsome discussion of the various news items and the way in which each was considered in my analysis can be found in Leblond (2020). Although the data contains newsprint media outlets with different political bends and various kinds of newsprint media items, they all overwhelmingly reinforce neoliberal sentiments, control culture, and work to reproduce hegemony.
During the analysis of the data, both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses were coded. Although counter-hegemonic discourses are prevalent in the NGO reports and the Hansard transcripts (generally espoused by members of the NDP), they are almost entirely absent from all newsprint media sources regardless of their various political bends or the kind of news item examined. This demonstrates how the media works in tandem with the official political debates to legitimate dominant ideology and maintain hegemony. That is, the newsprint media supports the narrative espoused by Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party to garner public support for the CHRS and legitimate its proposal to exclude criminalized individuals having committed a ‘serious criminal offence’. The newsprint media largely ignores the structural contributors to social issues, such as poverty, access to (stable) housing, and access to education, to name a few. Instead, in focusing on sensational ‘crime’, the media frames criminalized individuals as ‘non-deserving’ tenants and makes it seem that excluding criminalized individuals is the common sensical decision to promote community safety; something that is unlikely to bear out in practice in light of research on re-entry barriers. While there was a substantial amount of counter-hegemonic discourse contained in the data, the media narratives work in conjunction with the discourse espoused by the Progressive Conservative Party ultimately resulting in the acceptance of the CHRS.
For a more extensive discussion of the different narratives presented in the various outlets as well as the different kinds of news items, see Leblond (2020) or endnote ii.
The ‘liberal boot’ captures the idea that responsibilization, risk/self-management, politics of fear, and social exclusion are at the forefront of policies (Ratner 1984).
An ‘ideal victim’ is “a person or a category of individuals who—when harmed—are most readily given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim” (Christie 1986: 12).
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Leblond, A. “Life Should be Difficult for the Poor, but Safe”: Exploring the Discourses Used to Garner Support for Transforming Ontario’s Community Housing into a Transcarceral Space. Crit Crim 31, 223–238 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09671-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09671-8