Springing Amir

For a 2016 article on immigration detention in Canada, I co-created a composite case study named Amir. At the end of writing, I left him indefinitely incarcerated. This article provides an opportunity both to suggest more ethical ways to research detention, and to query White scholarly acquiescence to anti-Black racism and the build-up of detention systems. To spring Amir, I slide a series of four, interrelated doors: (1) discretionary release; (2) a writ of habeas corpus; (3) the end of anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-refugee discrimination in Canada; and (4) the abolition of detention. I conclude with a reflection on promising methodological directions leading toward a new horizon of immigrant and racial justice.

The Entanglement of Parole and Pardoning in the Progressive Era

The rise of the expert, emphasized in most histories of progressive penology, was marked in New York; however, this chapter draws on parole board hearing records to reveal the enduring personal nature of discretionary release. Whereas governors dispensed mercy according to traditional criteria (favoring persons of previous good character, the infirm, and prisoners for whom respectable citizens were willing to vouch), comportment and deference mattered in parole hearings. Above all the Parole Board’s discretion hinged on the promise of work (for men) and a stable home (for women). Gubernatorial clemency became a resort for individuals who could not qualify for parole, but governors continued to court controversy when individual pardons favored the rich and influential.

Pardon and Parole in the Empire State

Historians influenced by Foucault’s reading of the transition from sovereign justice to disciplinary society have misread parole as the successor to executive mercy. This book shows that parole’s history stretches back to the Revolutionary era, and that the power of life and death remained in the chief executive’s hands in the twentieth century. Despite the building of penitentiaries, the ascendance of Progressive penology, the establishment of reformatories and the rise of medical and psychiatric expertise, pardoning continued to play a pivotal role in the discretionary release of prisoners. The chapters, arranged chronologically, trace the entanglement of pardoning and parole as closely related forms of discretionary justice, which have played a central yet neglected part in the development of penal modernity.

From the Dark to the Light: The Open Government Debate in Britain

ABSTRACTThe campaign in Britain to reduce official secrecy has had a number of broad and ill-defined objectives. This article argues that four basic values underpin demands for more open government: to promote more ethical conduct; to enhance executive accountability; to advance more informed policy-making; and to help individual citizens and groups advance particular rights and interests. This analytical framework is then applied to the three main strategies of open government that have so far been pursued. First, it is argued that the reform of Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, while legally desirable, will not promote any of the above values. Second, a freedom of information act would principally satisfy the fourth objective, while providing more executive accountability on a pragmatic basis. Finally, an analysis of official publications released under the Croham Directive reveals that the British interpretation of open government, the discretionary release of consultative documents, has been designed and implemented to reinforce the dominant policy style of bureaucratic accommodation.