The summer of 2020 was one of unprecedented mass protest and a growing critical awareness around the racist operation of criminal justice systems in North America. Consequently, criminal justice systems have been placed squarely at the forefront of struggles for racial equality and social change. While activists, critical researchers, and legal experts have argued racial justice requires a diversion of communities and resources away from criminal justice systems, the focus in mainstream policy, media, and academic circles has been on reform. In Canada, a focus on reformist responses to this racial violence has been justified through a distorted view of Canada’s criminal justice system. Drawing on the concept of penal nationalism, I argue that Canadian carceral practices must be understood as constitutive of the settler-colonial state and its ideological, material and institutional mooring in racial whiteness as the locus of settler power and sovereignty. To this end, it is not enough to reform specific penal practices, while leaving intact the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in general. What is at stake is the very definition and protection of a national identity, which in the settler colony is predicated on colonial whiteness, Indigenous erasure, and racialized exploitation.

2020 年夏天是史无前例的大规模抗议之一，也是对北美刑事司法系统种族主义运作日益增长的批判意识之一。因此，刑事司法系统被直接置于争取种族平等和社会变革斗争的最前沿。虽然活动家、批判性研究人员和法律专家认为种族正义需要将社区和资源从刑事司法系统中转移出去，但主流政策、媒体和学术界的重点一直是改革。在加拿大，通过对加拿大刑事司法系统的扭曲看法，对这种种族暴力的改革主义反应的关注是合理的。借鉴刑事民族主义的概念，我认为，加拿大的监禁实践必须被理解为定居者-殖民国家及其意识形态、物质和制度的组成部分，种族白人是定居者权力和主权的所在地。为此，仅仅改革具体的刑事实践，同时保持刑事司法系统的整体合法性是不够的。危在旦夕的是民族身份的定义和保护，在定居者殖民地中，民族身份是建立在殖民地白人、原住民抹除和种族化剥削的基础之上的。