Abstract

Fighting prison expansion is a social justice issue, as the prison is a key site reproducing and compounding social marginalization. On 27 August 2020, the Government of Ontario announced the Eastern Region Strategy, a series of new prison infrastructure projects, including the Eastern Ontario Correctional Complex, a 235-bed prison to be built in the small town of Kemptville. Drawing on five years of research and of activism by the authors working with Kemptville residents as part of the Coalition Against the Proposed Prison, this study examines the long and short-term contexts from which the prison plan emerged. To this end, the paper brings into focus four social forces that shaped the emergence and contours of the Ontario government’s recent prison building strategy, including settler colonialism, capitalist restructuring, penal reform, and abolitionist organizing. We end with a discussion of the need for anti-prison organizing that features a broad range of groups and individuals with different points of entry into social justice struggles working together to oppose prison expansion.