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Enquiry News Into the Death of Ashley Smith at Hands of CSC Staff

Information and News on Ashley Smith Enquiry

OISE Project Supporting Safer Injection Facilities

Wanted to share our project, Safer, with you all - a docku-art piece (using projection art) advocating for safer consumption services in Toronto, drawing from the TOCSA report and excellently contributed to by some of the THRA members. We are very much open to input, and will be reshooting a couple 'scenes'. Put together by myself, and four other students from OISE.

Click on below link;

Safer Art Installation to Support Supervised Safe Injection Facility in Toronto

Reflections of a Female Prisoner on our Jail and Prison Systems

A former prisoner (Petey) who was incarcerated at the Grande Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario during an overlapping time frame with Ashley Smith, refers to the tragic manner in which Ashley died.  She uses the horror of what happened to Ashley to illustrate some important points about the need for transparency and an effective prisoner complaints system.  What goes on behind prison walls is invisible to the public and indeed in many cases, largely invisible even to those closest to someone inside.  The current direction being taken by our federal government, in pushing for ever greater secrecy and fewer transparent avenues to deal with prisoner complaints and human rights violations inside, will without question lead to more horrific and entirely preventable tragedies.  Such as the succession of "mistakes", and callous decision making which led to the end of Ashley's young life.  Read on for Petey's reflections on this situation.  
Also I would highly recommend following the links within Petey's statement for other written pieces by Petey on her experiences in our prison and jail systems.

Statement from "Petey" at the Demonstration and Vigil for the Death of Ashley Smith

* Read by Jennifer Kilty at the event.

My name is Petey. I am one year older than Ashley would have been, had she not died at the hands of the prison system. I was transferred to Grand Valley Institution for Women two weeks before Ashley Smith’s tragic death took place. 

The Fifth Estate documentary of Ashley Smith’s unfortunate journey through the penal system was given the very appropriate title, “Out of Control”. This is a succinct and precise description of the Corrections Service of Canada. I have been a prisoner in the youth, provincial, and federal systems, and witnessed firsthand the mistreatment of girls as young as twelve to women in their sixties. With them, I experienced oppression and abuse at the hands of prison guards, and felt powerless because it was my word against that of prison personnel. 

One such example is that I spent five illegal months in maximum security at Grand Valley the age of twenty, due to an oversight of the policies that blatantly stated I should not have been there. However, CSC was not interested in informing me about my rights or about policies that would be inconvenient for them to follow. Instead, they hoped I would never notice, and told me that it was “water under the bridge” when I raised objections. This, and many other complaints and grievances that I filed throughout my imprisonment, were strongly discouraged by CSC officials. Asking CSC to follow their own policies is seen as unruliness and noncompliance. Fighting for basic human rights meant that I was labelled as a troublemaker. 

It was a struggle to obtain copies of CSC’s policies and directives, which the public is told are freely available to all prisoners. If successful in obtaining a copy, every single woman in prison would inevitably find sections where the policies were not followed, and where her rights have been trampled. Should she find the courage, and have the skills to fill out a complaint or grievance form, she is seen as Enemy Number One by CSC, and all efforts are put into place to convince her to withdraw the complaint. If the complaint is handled informally or withdrawn, there is no documentation of the transgression, and the public is told that everything is fine; the prison is doing its job, because there is no record of prisoners complaining. 

Unfortunately, these tactics to silence injustice lead to severe breaches of human rights. Ashley Smith’s complaints about her indefinite segregation and excessive number of transfers between prisons and mental health facilities in Canada were left in the complaints box until long after she had died. They were filled out by other people because she was not permitted a pen. It took her death for the public to be made aware that someone at the age of nineteen was being held indefinitely in isolated segregation in a federal prison for women. This is unacceptable. 

It is my sincere hope that this inquest leads to some form of external oversight of CSC, because they are currently not accountable to any authority. They can and do commit any atrocities they deem appropriate, such as transferring someone seventeen times within eleven months, or involuntary injections, under the guise of public safety. This protest is the beginning of a new direction for Corrections, one where the public demands that justice is not synonymous with punishment, and where basic human rights are guaranteed to all Canadians, even the ones in prison.

- "Petey"

  Reflections on My First Free Prisoner Justice Day

 After finally escaping from the clutches of maximum security, I was bunked with a young girl who slashed herself up something fierce two weeks later. I was woken up at one in the morning and instructed to leaveour cell so it could be sealed for investigation. My cellmate was shipped toa psychiatric hospital and my nightmares got worse.I asked to please be moved to a single cell, but instead got another cellmate, who I was told was more “stable”. Ten days later, I came back to find she was gone. When I asked what happened, it turned out she wasin segregation on suicide watch. I was starting to think that there was something wrong with me because everyone around me was sick of living. I had no idea how to handle this kind of guilt. Guards in the prison treated these situations as normal and that I should just get used to it. I could not wrap my head around that kind of thinking, so I was left alone, hurt and confused. Several women died while I was at GVI and the injustice of them dying away from their families really weighed heavily on me.Here is a quote from Correctional Service of Canada. by Petey scribd-Reflections on First "Free" Prisoner Justice Day

Former Prisoners Denied Re-integration Through Discrimination

An American blog providing advice to former prisoners who are trying (against all odds) to find work and move on with their lives.  I really like the idea of allowing people to write in directly and get a response directly on specific situations encountered.  These sorts of services are few and far between.  

Making this blog an especially important service is the fact that employment or rather lack of it, is the number one factor preventing people from escaping the revolving door of the legal system.  In fact, given the enormous barriers to escaping the prison system, one can reason that the powers that be, prefer to keep the powerless right where they are.  Without marketable skills, without close family ties, without hope.  Marcs referred to these folks and others  similar to them as surplus labour.  Their existence goes a long way to driving down labour market wages, benefits and to discouraging people from organising, forming unions, and demanding improved working conditions.

How does that work some of you are asking.  People working in lower paying, precarious forms of employment, or people who dont yet have permanent resident status, etc are afraid that the retributive hand of the government will come down on them next.  And there are plenty of examples.  Immigration programmes are designed to ensure workers are kept in the most precarious of working conditions with the ever present threat of separation from families, incarceration and deportation.

The USA and Canada less so (so far) have found ways to make prisoners themselves a commodity to be used for the express benefit of corporate America.  Prisoners are contracted out to the lowest bidder on construction or materials production contracts.  And prisoners are paid no more than 5.00 a day and often nothing at all.  They are forced to participate in some of the most dangerous forms of work, iwthout proper safety training or even adequate safety equipment (similar trials faced by immigrant, and trafficked women and children) Think the BP oil spill.  Prisoners who refused to work lost good time, yard time, reduced shower, phone, and visitation "privileges".
Trading in the bodies of those deemed as less than "worthy" is but one form of prison comodification which has come to be known as the prison industrial complex

I have a personal quip however with the usage of the word "Felon" in the title.  Or the words "offender" and "ex offender" throughout the content.  I'm not sure what the thought process has been around this - perhaps a reclaiming of the language the criminal legal system uses?  In any case I'm completely against using the language of the oppressor.  Its something we've been tuaght to do and without question.  As though this type of language is based within the fact of the situation and it simply has nothing to do with fact based language, and everything to do with "othering" those outside the status quo.

Forgive me if I'm coming across in a judgmental fashion.  My intention is simply to speak my mind and get others thinking about this issue - how and why we use language.  When I first started doing writing around criminal legal issues, I found that i was continuously coming across language that made me cringe, but did'nt have alternatives in my immediate repertoire.  

So I decided to ask my self, "what is the truth of the topic/situation I'm talking about?"

For instance 'criminal justice system"  Never does this system render justice for anyone.  I saw some people using "injustice" system.  This was the truth but didn't fit for professional writing.  So what is really happening here, what is the truth of this situation?  Its not a criminal justice system - It is a criminal legal system.
The criminal, offender, felon (this last is a word we dont really use in Canadian context anyways)..What do these words mean?  If we consider the fact that crime is a social constuct, then it seems inappropriate and even detrimental to refer to a person this way.  Who are we to decide if something is "criminal"?  And "offender" is intended to dehumanise, to render other, less than, different from "us".

So this brings us back to my original critical questions on language in the criminal legal complex.
"what is the truth of the topic/situation I'm talking about?"

What is really happening here?  What do we mean when stating that someone is a criminal, has committed a crime?  How can I phrase this situation honestly in my writing without needing to use a paragraph or more to explain/be honest?  I chose to use "lawbreaker", "person who has broken the law, person who the law has come into conflict with.

Inmate is another no-no.  People who are forcibly confined against their wills in jails and prisons are prisoners.  But that is not all they are.  None of us can be defined so narrowly.  So what about "person in prison".  Try to think from an anti-oppression, anti-racist theoretical framework.  Person living with a disability.  Person of colour.  Woman who stays at home/works at home. etc.

Now I've gotten completely of topic.  I think 

How felons can get jobs 

is a blog well worth looking at, even from Canada.  Many of the issues to overcome in seeking work with a criminal record are similar here in Canada as in the USA.  And where issues differ, perhaps this is an opeing for someone to take on a project such as this from the canadian perspective!

PRISONER WRITES FROM THE PROVINCIAL PRISON FOR WOMEN

Recently my life has taken some interesting turns to places I really thought were long behind me forever.  I was arrested and held for 25 days at Vanier (provincial jail for women in Milton) before an amazing and true friend who lives what she believes in, bailed me out.  I wrote a little about my experience below.

POWERFUL PIECE BY RENEE ACOBY

RENEE IS A FEMALE PRISONER WHO HAS BEEN HELD IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR MANY YEARS, SUBJECTED TO A BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION TECHNIQUE CALLED THE "MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL" WHICH AMOUNTED TO NOTHING LESS THAN TORTURE

RENEE TALKS ABOUT LIFE IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT;

Solitary – by Renee Acoby

Reposted from http://joanr73.wordpress.com/:
Posted on November 22, 2012 by joanr73 

Many people have asked me what it was like to live in solitary confinement for years on end under the infamous “management Protocol” that CSC designed for unruly federal females.You wonder what right you have to feel angry about your confinement because it was your own actions/reactions that led to your conditions. So, you solder up and tell yourself to deal with it…until you find yourself in a tangled web of carceral politics and loopholes that rendered indefinite solitary justifiable. You submit the customary grievances and rebuttal at every thirty day segregation review, inwardly questioning if you’re closet-case masochistic. Experience dictates that Regional and national levels in CSC will only regurgitate prior findings at institutional hearings, which in turn lead to frustration, anger and the millionth self-proclamation for abandoning the internal grievance system forever. Of course, you never do give up on submitting grievances because, ha ha, maybe someone will eventually listen.
Then you have those renegade days where you wake up feistier than the notorious Black Widow on a geriatric ward. Ten squares of toilet paper? Fuck you. One book for four hours? Fuck you, I have my imagination. So it goes. You push back to reclaim your so-called dignity, know it’s one word with a dictionary definition, especially on the rare days you opt for a nude Mexican stand-off. Ironic how you used to attribute weakness to the heads and bug cases that used to wild out for human contact, only to find yourself on the same trip, minus the lovely baby doll attire.
Your mood fluctuates. Although some staff acknowledge that instability in mood is common for long-term degradation, most are quick to opine that mood swings are indicative of a major incident. You try to avoid the intake of endless CSC reports because the general consensus is at odds with what you and your loved ones know to be bona fide about yourself. You are categorized as a number and compared to inanimate/volatile objects, ie; “handle her as though you are carrying a can of gasoline in one hand and a lighter in the other.” The asshole aspect of you wonders if the clowns are making a double-entendre about your brief juvenile gig as a pyromaniac.
Your body bounces back and forth between healthy and unhealthy, with a dash of grey pallor to highlight your chiseled cheekbones. Your friend is quick to tell you that in medieval era; political prisoners were very gaunt and pale, likening these sickly characteristics to noble suffering?! Only a dear friend could romanticize such ugliness, and you smile at the loyalty. You spend so much time pacing your cell that you being to feel a tingling sensation that could signal restless leg syndrome or perhaps it are simply psychosomatic. Even though you know you’re too slender to take on a fast, you do it anyway///why??? Because you can.
Spirituality is a swinging pendulum in solitary, especially when you’re on the red road. Medicines, drums and other cultural entitlements become privileges or behavior modification instruments. At times, you question the existence of God simply because you’re still breathing. You wonder if redemption will come in the form of some Dante’s Inferno inspired hell. And even if you did gain access to Heaven, what if I got so angry about my mistreatment in Hell that I fuck up and get tossed back for another round of fire and brimstone? Your find yourself agreeing to see the chaplain, simply to toss out these questions and gauge their level of confusion and faith.
You mind feels like a Molotov cocktail was thrown into it. Sometimes it could be the scent of a shampoo that triggers an old memory, good or bad and sometimes both. You have tunnel vision some days, with every smile you see hiding an agenda and every tear lurks a crocodile. Anger and unbridled hostility permeate ever fiber of your being like a virus…
It stays in your system longer than clarity. The proverbial goblin on one shoulder and the voice of reason on the other is a constant battlefield; traversing the minefield between “why” and “why not” becomes almost analogous to defective neurons that can’t seem to fire. You joke about the smoke detector concealing a pinhead camera in your cell and tend to get overly-sensitive when the screws remove the toilet paper from the smoke detector during cell search. Everything is magnified, yet all of the solutions are so simplistic. Classic Zimbardo-ism.
You reflect on the validity of being compartmentalized as manipulative, violent, and threatening and generally as a bad seed by CSC, yet the System that claims to have zero tolerance for such unsavory traits is the first to adopt them when it suits their purpose. When you witness them use OC spray on women with ligatures around their neck over and over, your mind begins to question your logic and values. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you remember a poignant phrase you read in a Holocaust Survivor memoir: “we speak out against torture not to complain, rather to make sure the people never forget what happened.” You know you’ll continue to speak out, no matter what the cost, because every inch of you believes that someone would do the same for you.
You tend to over-analyze your conversations with people and become slightly annoyed when some people pontificate how similar they were to you, but have since changed. Unsolicited advice pertaining to the battle against an “entity” like CSC is like molten lava being injected into your marrow. You feel no affinity with such despondent individuals because you and at least a million other people don’t believe corrupt systems ever win. When your exterior radiates how adversity is overcome, you are met with resistance. It’s almost as if by refusing to be a victim, you are rendered incorrigible. It is not related to rationalization, minimizing or reaction-formation. And while you don’t feel any compelling need to reiterate this to the System, you do point out that Canada is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely: “WHERAS IT IS ESSENTIAL, IF MAN IS NOT TO BE COMPELLED TO HAVE RECOURSE, AS A LAST RESORT TO REBELLION AGAINST TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION, THAT HUMAN RIGHTS SHOULD BE PROTECTED BY THE RULE OF LAW.”
When you are not intellectualizing your conditions of confinement, you rely on your television for socialization. Mind-numbing, scripted reality shows is far more appealing than the mundane queries you encounter from the undesirables that can’t function in solitary without constant attention. Yeah, all you cons know who I’m talking about…you’ve all had your fair share of vent-whores on the range.
You become very OCD about your surroundings, noticing when (not if) your books are askew and not color-coded from the daily cell search. It becomes a perverse game between you and the guards (TO SEIZE, OR NOT TO SEIZE), and you cut your losses with a grievance or two. You are one of the lucky ones that are denied access to appliances of any kind, so in a way you are relieved of the burden of trying to iron your socks and floss-thin undergarments. Yes, the OCD can get that bad when you have little to no control over the minuscule details of life in solitary.
Since there have been no longitudinal studies conducted on the long-term effects of being in solitary for years on end (none that I’m aware of, but if so, holler at me), I can only describe what it feels like. When I was told in May 2011 that the Management Protocol was no longer an option, my first inclinations was to hide my reaction from Management. This was a way of survival for me while I was in segregation, and I found it very hard to shake.
But when I got back to my cell, I broke down in tears. I couldn’t believe that after close to seven years of being held on the Protocol, the end was in sight. But that’s another story for another time. I’m still alive, and that’s all that matters.

CRITCAL IMPORTANCE OF PRISONER SUPPORT

Some of you may be aware that I have myself had very recent run-ins with police, courts and jail.  Run-ins which are to be ongoing possibly over Christmas as I wait to find out my fate.  I I have a lot to say about these experiences and the processes of criminalisation, about the political connections around who is targeted, what brings someone to "crack" under pressures of poverty, joblessness, sexism, and classism.  In fact I did some writing while waiting 25 days for bail to be worked out.  And I plan to do more which I will share with readers here once I feel more ready.
In the mean time I want to share a post with you from  a woman (Ann Hansen), who has been directly targeted by the state for her political beliefs and community organising associated with those beliefs.  To my knowledge and understanding it appears that nothing Ann did was actually deemed illegal by the state, rather her actions were made to fit an administrative breach of parole.   Ann has shared some important pieces with us about the very real, practical, and emotional differences made for her through support of friends and professionals.

 Ann Hansen - Account of Political Ogansing and Subsequent Arrest