Book Launch Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time for Society’s Crimes with Ann Hansen

Join Ann Hansen for a reading and discussion of her new book Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time for Society’s Crimes

When: July 12th from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Where: the AKA Autonomous Social Centre (1-75 Queen Street) in Kingston, Ontario

Please note this is an accessible space with ramp access by at the side of the red brick building

The reading and discussion will explore Ann Hansen’s memoir and the broader Canadian women’s prison industrial complex and specifically the politics of crime and the debate over prison reform versus prison abolition.

As the disparity between rich and poor, white, and non-white deepens; the incompatibility between environmental sustainability and economic growth sharpens; the conflict between the privileged white people in the western world and the rest of the global population intensifies, the need to understand prisons, the global elites’ social control mechanisms, is more important than ever. Ann Hansen has written an account of her time in the Prison for Women (P4W) from 1984-1991, followed by two short stints in Quinte, the Central East Correctional Center in Lindsay and Grand Valley Institution for Women, in order to give people a window into life inside the women’s prison compound of the 1900s and its transformation into an American-style prison industrial complex in the 21st century. An understanding of prisons is essential to any activist or any of the growing population of marginalized peoples. If you are in resistance, or simply poor or marginalized, you will more than likely get a chance to experience this prison industrial complex yourself. In the meantime, it is always good to know your enemy.

Copies of the book will be sold on a sliding scale from $20.00 to $30.00 with profits donated to the P4W Memorial Collective which is creating a memorial at P4W for women who have died in Canadian prisons.

There will also be snacks and drinks.