Theorizing a way out of reformist reforms: Gladue reports and penal abolition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
One of the central concerns of abolitionists is not falling into the trap of implementing reforms in the criminal punishment system that maintains hegemonic, oppressive power structures. The challenge is determining which reforms lead toward abolition and which are reformist reforms, entrenching the status quo. This critical, narrative study analyzed a reform in Canada, Section 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code (e.g., Gladue), intended to remediate systemic anti-Indigenous racism at sentencing by requiring judges to consider all alternatives to incarceration when sentencing Indigenous peoples. Yet despite the reform in place, Indigenous incarceration rates continue to rise precipitously in Canada. How is it that the Canadian state, even when claiming “remediation,” keeps producing the same—oppressive—result toward Indigenous peoples? Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with judges from the Ontario Court of Justice ( n = 12) and Gladue report writers ( n = 9) about the utility of Gladue reports. The findings indicate that Gladue is mostly a reformist reform. The article theorizes that a way out of the reformist reform of Gladue, toward abolition, is through honoring Indigenous self-determination and providing reparations in support of Indigenous-led justice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.035 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.082 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".