… just getting started, a group of about 20 people who have been meeting in Surrey, which is here on the unceded and shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie and Semiahmoo peoples.
We formed after a workshop in October 2018 with Dr. Catherine Kellogg, visiting from Edmonton, who shared some of the experiences they had with the formation of a “Prison, Teaching and Social Justice Research Group” through work within prisons and in connection with the University of Alberta and other institutions.
Though we have begun regularly meeting at KPU, the people in our network come from a variety of backgrounds not only academic, but also social and legal services workers and advocates, and different interested community members, including several former prisoners and organizers experienced with other diverse prisoner support groups over the years, such as Joint Effort, and the IWW (see some Vancouver area committees here or on facebook here); & some of our current participants are re-starting the KPU “Inside/Out” program as teachers, and also as criminology students, some are with the KPU Prison Justice Club; some faculty coming out regularly work with The Social Justice Centre (our mailing address, below), and others, both faculty and community members with Critical Criminology Working Group.
We want to make the circle larger and stronger, and as we have only just begun, we are now reaching out to various federal institutions’ inmate committees by mailing introduction letters, and we are hoping to build our contacts inside (and among newly released folks) as well as build up this website and our resources available to meet their needs. Solidarity!
You can get in touch with us here, and our mailing address is:
Prison Justice Network,
c/o Michael Ma, Department of Criminology,
Kwantlen Polytechnic University,
12666 72 Avenue,
Surrey, BC,
V3W 2M8