Handing Over the Keys: Indigenous Peoples and Carceral Injustice

By Linda Mussell

An urgent examination of the intergenerational imprisonment of Indigenous people in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Generations of Indigenous people have experienced the injustices wrought by institutional confinement. Widespread criticism calls Canadian prisons the new residential schools, and Australian ones a national tragedy. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the government itself has suggested the Maori people may be the most incarcerated in the world. Handing over the Keys compares three countries with enduring records of confining Indigenous people.

Intergenerational imprisonment--the legacies of institutional confinement in an array of settings--leaves a long shadow. Linda Mussell seeks the keys to transformative change through rigorous policy analysis and interviews with frontline practitioners, policy professionals, and people who have lived experience of imprisonment. Her goal is policy transformation to address both Indigenous hyper-imprisonment and intergenerational impacts.

This necessary study proposes ways to hand over the keys that unlock the doors of confinement for future generations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0774871261
• ISBN13: 9780774871266
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
• Length: 304 Pages