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16 Punishment & Soc'y 3 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/punscty16 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Penal reform 'Canadian style': Fiscal responsibility and decarceration in Alberta, Canada Punishment & Society 16(1) 3-31 @ The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1462474513506272 pun.sagepub.com $SAGE Cheryl Marie Webster University of Ottawa, Canada Anthony N Doob University of Toronto, Canada Abstract To fulfil a political promise to eliminate the provincial fiscal deficit, the (conservative) Premier of Alberta cut all budgets by roughly 20 per cent in 1993-1994. As an unantici- pated by-product, this political solution to a political problem resulted in a 32 per cent decrease in provincial imprisonment between 1993 and 1997. Economic imperatives created the catalyst for changes in imprisonment policies. However, the types of change and the mechanisms for achieving them reflected Canada's specific history, culture and politico-legal structures. Decarceration was consistent with core Canadian values rooted in the long-standing belief in the need for restraint in the use of imprisonment and a lack of faith in its effectiveness as a crime control strategy. On the surface, this case study is yet another example of decarceration. However, the interactive and multi- factorial explanatory model underlying Alberta's reduction in its prison population raises questions about not only single factors or simple additive models as explanations for changes in penal policies but also uni-dimensional solutions to jurisdictions in need of fiscal restraint. The historical and cultural embeddedness of Alberta's decarceration alerts us to its country-specific nature and the need to situate imprisonment in a broader set of concerns. Keywords Canada, decarceration, values Corresponding author: Anthony N Doob, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3K9, Canada. Email: anthony.doob@utoronto.ca

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