Ex-prisoners, activists, artists and scholars will come together to discuss gender roles in the prison system during a daylong symposium hosted by Brock University.

The event, called Women, Punishment and Prison Abolition: How Gender Structures the Prison System, takes place Monday, March 6 in Pond Inlet from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Held in honour of International Women’s Day, the symposium will include discussion of strategies to abolish the prison industrial complex.

Three panels will be held throughout the day covering the following topics: gender and sexualities inside and outside of prisons; health and criminalization; and the arts and abolition, moving beyond institutionalization.

“This symposium is important because it advances critical dialogue and reflection on incarceration,” said Sociology Associate Professor Tamari Kitossa.

“The reality is that imprisonment is great for punitive vengeance directed mostly at our society’s castoffs.”

Every major Canadian report about incarceration “tells a sordid tale of an institutional culture that promotes abuse and violence,” he said.

“We desperately need informed public conversation that addresses the public’s indifference to the perpetual nature of the prison industrial complex and provides sober reflection on the abject moral and political failure of attempting to incarcerate our way out of social problems.”

Women’s incarceration is statistically outpacing that of men, a trend that has continued since the early 1990s.

Women make up five per cent of all prisoners in Canada, but that number is growing.

Among other issues, this leads to overcrowding, underfunding of in-prison health resources, low emphasis on in-prison programs and pre-release planning, high recidivism due to under-resourced post-release programs, and negative impacts for women’s families and communities.

The symposium explores and challenges the practices, policies and ideologies that normalize the destructiveness of the prison as an institution.

Registration for the free event begins at 8 a.m. followed by opening remarks at 9.

To see a full schedule or for more information, visit brocku.ca/prison-abolition.

The event is being supported by the Brock University Faculty Association, CUPE — 4207, MA in Critical Sociology, MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies, Social Justice Research Institute, Student Justice Centre, and Women and Gender Studies.