CFP: Alternative Criminal Rehabilitation: Arts & Physical Engagement

Call For Abstracts for an Edited Collection

Working Title: Alternative Criminal Rehabilitation: Arts & Physical Engagement
Dr. Wesley Crichlow (Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, University of Ontario Institute of Technology) & Dr. Janelle Joseph (Faculty of Education, University of Ontario Institute of Technology)

There is a crisis in the criminal justice system in North America. The recent Toronto Star Newspaper article “Unequal justice: Aboriginal and Black inmates disproportionately fill Ontario jails” (2013/03/01) highlights which youth are at the centre of the crisis. The work of Michelle Alexander on Black male imprisonment in her text The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (2010) and the McMurty and Curling 2008 report The Roots of Youth Violence clearly explain that the current practices and policies of the criminal justice system, which focus almost exclusively on punishment, are racialized and are not only failing but also have become expensive. Alternative rehabilitation and early intervention strategies are long overdue and fundamentally necessary to reduce recidivism, especially in generating healthy individuals and safe communities. Studies on “Alternatives to Incarceration Programs” have demonstrated that these programs generate prosocial attitudes; improve mental, physical and spiritual health; and play an integral role in dispute resolution.

Our proposed Book “Alternative Criminal Rehabilitation: Arts & Physical Engagement” will bring together multiple perspectives on alternative rehabilitation as a contested and contestable space, and in doing so, highlight the complex interplay of social, creative, technical, economic and political factors that construct the landscape of alternative criminal rehabilitation today. This book will focus its attentions on the North American context and highlight the critical importance of arts, physical activity, and achievement for at-risk youth. We will detail how social media and digital technologies are essential for program development, sharing and evaluation.

We encourage abstracts that analyze multiple dimensions of (in)justice within criminal justice, therapeutic, and educational contexts within frameworks that recognize the salience of social identities, including but not limited to class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and ability. Anchored in empirical evidence, this book will provide case studies of innovative and influential rehabilitative  interventions – from dance therapy, to music therapy, to mental health treatment through physical cultures. This comprehensive text will bring together a selection of internationally-recognised scholars to provide an overview for students and practitioners working in or concerned with Youth Alterative Criminal Rehabilitation models and best practices around the globe.

This call is seeking abstract submissions for chapters from any disciplinary area related to the themes of this book.  Possible chapter topics include (but are not limited to) criminal rehabilitation and:
•  Sport, dance, arts engagement, and art therapy programs
•  Physical activity community interventions
•  Arts therapies or interventions and achievement in at-risk youth
•  Clinical art/movement therapies
•  Specific populations (e.g. Black and racialized youth, mentally ill, women, Indigenous peoples)
•  Grassroots resistance
•  Program evaluation
•  Virtual/gaming intervention projects & supervision
•  Gamification
•  The role of the state/private interests
•  Changing paradigms of education/therapy
•  Urban education, physical education, and gang prevention
•  Issues of transnational information flows related to criminal (in)justice
•  Issues of informed consent and research with at-risk populations
•  Pre-trial diversion programs
•  Ethno-culturally specific interventions & programming
• Government housing-to-prison pipeline
•  School-to-prison pipeline

Please send a title, 300-word (max) chapter proposal, a 100-word bio, and references for two recent publications to janelle.joseph@uoit.ca and wesley.crichlow@uoit.ca by September 30 for consideration by Routledge Press. Complete chapters of 5000-6000 words will be due Dec 31, 2013. Please contact the editors with any questions.