Call For Proposals for an Edited Collection
Working Title
Alternative Criminal Justice Rehabilitation: Arts & Physical Engagement
Dr. Wesley Crichlow (Faculty of Social Science and Humanities)
&
Dr. Janelle Joseph (Faculty of Education)
Black youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system and that’s also
true of our clinic. It is a reflection of the system, but it’s also true that almost all
of the youth that we see come from impoverished backgrounds.” (News Insight
Toronto Star. Unequal Justice: Few youth get the mental health help they need.
(http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/03/01/unequal_justice_few_youth
_get_the_mental_health_help_they_need.html)
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) highlight which youth are at the centre of the crisis. The work
of Michelle Alexander (2010) on Black male imprisonment in her text “The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” 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 Justice Rehabilitation: Arts & Physical
Engagement” will illustrate how alternative rehabilitation and early intervention strategies
are necessary to transform rates of reoffending, improve community safety and make the
whole youth blossom. This will be the first authoritative work to provide a truly
comprehensive description and analysis of the topic of alternative rehabilitation for youth.
The collection aims to move away from the pathologizing discourse that “nothing works”
and towards studies of programs that enable youth to triumph over the debilitation
imposed by institutions and oppressive social conditions. This book brings together
multiple perspectives on alternative rehabilitation as a contested and contestable space,
and in doing so, we 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 saliency of social identities, including but not limited to class, race,
ethnicity, gender, sexuality and ability.
Youth Alternative criminal rehabilitation has many benefits. Social, cultural, political,
economic, and environmental factors are now known to impact on recidivism and inmates’
senses of well‐being. Recognising the inadequacy of incarceration, this text promotes a
more holistic approach to rehabilitation as an alternative to imprisonment.
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 brings 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) youth
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 treatment art therapies
- Specific populations (e.g. Black, 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
- Urban 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.
About the editors
Dr. Wesley Crichlow Is a Tenured Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Science &
Humanities, within the criminology specialization, at the University of Ontario Institute of
Technology (www.uoit.ca). Wesley is an interdisciplinary youth scholar and community
activist who works with socially and economically disadvantaged youth, engaging in youth
and community empowerment. His current and ongoing research interests in the following
areas: 1) Youth Alternative Rehabilitation; 2) Caribbean Masculinity & Sexual Violence; 3)
Black Youth Gangs & Violence Prevention; 4) Cyber‐Bullying & Ethical Use; 5) Incest &
Sexual Violence in The Caribbean; 6) Educational Rehabilitative Programs & Opportunities
for Black Criminalized Youth; and 6) Critical Race Theory & Education.
He is the author of the first published Black Canadian gay scholarly book titled Buller Men
& Batty Bwoys: Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax’s Black Communities. Published by the
University of Toronto Press 2003.
Wesley holds a Ph.D from the University of Toronto (Ontario Institute for the Studies in
Education) and certificates in Alternative Dispute Resolution I & II and a certificate in
Ontario Civil Justice Review from the combined program offered with the law firm STITT
FELD HANDY ‐ Toronto & the University of Windsor Faculty of Law, 2004. Family
Mediation: Theory and Skills Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo,
Ontario‐Canada.2006.
Dr. Janelle Joseph’s research program investigates the rehabilitative role of Afrocentric
Physical Activity (APA), that is, embodied movement practices that preserve African
diasporic cultures. In her work with youth, aged 10‐18, she uses martial arts and dances of
African‐Brazilian origins, specifically capoeira and maculelê, to transform prosocial skills
and enhance criminal justice rehabilitation. This research represents the first
interdisciplinary study in Canada to merge theories of youth studies, Afrocentricity,
criminology, dance therapy, and physical cultural studies.
In previous work, Dr. Joseph has documented the centrality of culturally significant sport
for older adults from the Caribbean and has also published her research on the transnational and diasporic dimensions of Brazilian martial arts in journals such as Ethnic
and Racial Studies, Sociology of Sport Journal, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. She is the Co‐editor of Race and Sport in Canada: Intersecting Inequalities.
Janelle completed her PhD in Exercise Science at the University of Toronto, and was a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand before accepting a Banting
Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada. Her Banting award is hosted by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Faculty of Education.
