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!
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.
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 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.
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.
blakout.ca: voices silenced by fear: Bullied & silenced by a public authority or government agency? Add your voice and be counted! Speak out and tell your story today.
Please check back through the week for links to analysis on issues of overcrowding and the use of hunger strikes as a means of prisoner protest.
Here's one the mainstream press is ignoring. Its important that prisoners know the public has heard their protest for help and that we show support however we can. If anyone knows anyone imprisoned here or have other suggestions about how to connect with prisoners at Prince Albert facility please share them here!
And more overcrowding issues sure to lead to increased violence and abuse of prisoners.
New women's jail already overcrowded
CBC – Tue, 14 Aug, 2012
CBC News has learned the women's prison in Headingley, which opened 7 months ago, is already over capacity.
There are 212 inmates at the Women's Correctional Centre, but capacity is 168.
Critics say the facility has been overcrowded since it opened in January and the reason is the backlog in the court system.
142 of the prisoners are on remand awaiting trial.
Tracy
Booth, who delivers anger management counselling for the Elizabeth Fry
Society to inmates at the centre, blamed the overcrowding on the number
of inmates on remand.
Booth said most of the women shouldn't be there and the space should be used for more violent criminals.
"They are in limbo," she said.
The
province said it was addressing the number of inmates on remand by
adding Saturdays to the court schedule and planned for it in the budget.
But that was over a year ago and there have been no changes.
Progressive Conservative justice critic Kelvin Goertzen said there's more to it than just the numbers.
"Why are people just going out of the prison system and causing another crime (often) within two to eight months," he said.
"There's nothing that's happening within our corrections system that corrects behaviour," he added.
The Headingley facility is supposed to offer more programs than were available in the former Portage Correctional Centre.
But
Darren Sawchuk president of Criminal Defence Lawyers Association
(Manitoba) doubts the value of more programming, given the overcrowding.
"How are they going to be able to cure the problem now with the capacity problems they are having?" he said.
Sawchuk also said security is a concern.
"When
you start to double-bunk then you have a more difficult time managing.
There's safety not only for the inmates but the staff," he added.
The province said double-bunking is not unique to Manitoba and happens across the country.
See this link for details regarding the Marlene Moore story that you may not have heard before. Marlene was the first woman in Canada given the Dangerous Offender designation. As with most women having received this label and increasingly now with men too, the designation is an over-reach of the injustice system.
How to do prisoner advocacy. Reaching inside and resisting the Prison Industrial Complex. (PIC)
Two very different forms of prisoner advocacy which I've found inspiring, both coming from the USA, but could just as easily be replicated in a Canadian context!
The first 3 links provide information on the successful closing down of one of the most brutal forms of imprisonment. That is a whole prison, for the purpose of holding people in long term solitary confinement with no phone calls in some areas and extremely limited visitation. Some prisoners went in when the place - TAMMS Correctional opened a decade ago and were not heard from again. These places are referred to as supermax prisons, and created for the purpose of controlling, torturing, and humiliating the so called worst of the worst. The problem with these horror stories (besides the obvious human rights violations already mentioned) was that there were no parametres for who could or should be sent there. Rather than imprisoning the most violent or so called dangerous prisoners, those who had beefs with guards or who pissed of the prison administration in some way, were now in for a treat. As if the state didn't have enough valves to release oceans of pain as it was....Now administrators have the supermax.
However thanks to a few concerned citizens, those administrators now have one less supermax!
"Between the Bars" is a US based prisoner advocacy
initiative. Its a blog which allows prisoners to write in to the
producer on the outside and have posts put up. I've never seen anything
quite like it and think its a terrific idea for someone to take up this
side of the border. This particular blog posts actual images of the
hand written letters, an archiac form of written communication of which
prisoners have no choice, denied computer access as they are. The posts on Between the Bars give a really detailed and at times really disturbing view of life inside. Check out the post copied below the next paragraph.
About Between the Bars "Between the Bars is a weblog platform for people in
prison, through which the 1% of America which is behind bars can tell their
stories. Since people in prison are routinely denied access to the
Internet, we enable them to blog by scanning letters. We aim to provide a
positive outlet for creativity, a tool to assist in the maintenance of
social safety nets, an opportunity to forge connections between people
inside and outside of prison, and a means to promote non-criminal
identities and personal expression. We hope to improve prisoner's lives,
and help to reduce recidivism"
http://betweenthebars.org/
The Guelph Peak has put together this collection from Prisoners across Ontario. And judging from the extensive list of submissions it has turned into a really amazing project!
http://guelphpeak.org/vol51/2012/08/dispatches-from-ontario-prisons/
August 25: Symposium on Prison Crowding and its Implications for Human Rights
Posted
July 18, 2012
Article Source
John Howard Society of Canada
Objective: To conduct an evidence-based examination of prison
crowding in Canada and measure the current conditions against
appropriate legal standards.
This will be accomplished through reviewing the evolution of
protections and international standards, examining current conditions in
Canadian correctional institutions, comparing current conditions with
existing legal standards and exploring remedies for violations of these
standards. The final panel of the day will highlight and discuss some of
the special challenges involved in representing prisoners.
The Symposium has received continuing professional development (CPD)
accreditation from the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), The Law
Society of British Columbia, The Law Society of Saskatchewan, and
Barreau du Québec.
Event Information:
Date Saturday, August 25, 2012 Time 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Place University of Ottawa Campus Contact Catherine Latimer Phone (613) 384-6272 Email clatimer@johnhoward.ca Contact Graham Stewart Phone (613) 389-1737 Email gstewart8@cogeco.ca
Finally, after a double decade of drag-racing dust mites on the
window sill, I’m feeling a bit of breeze blow through the Big House.
Like most breezes, this one has as much to do with hot air as cold. Nary
has a week passed in the last 20 where some government minion hasn’t
graced the audience with a blustering assurance of “inmate
accountability.” And while it’s true that most of us in the clink don’t
do so well with the six-syllable nouns, general consensus is that this
new buzzword has something to do with a change in prison management.
Bye-bye, Dr. Phil — hello, Dr. Mengele. When the Canadian
government recently sank spades on the biggest prison-building campaign
since the days of Diefenbaker, the press carped loudly. Crime is lower
than it’s been in 30 years, they howled. What no one took note of,
though, was the role that Canadian correctional policies played in that.
Especially since 1992, Canada has been a world leader in results-driven
correctional programs, parole practices that reduce incidents of
criminal re-offending, and lower rates of prison violence than any of
its G8 partners. Whenever a developing nation needed help implementing a
prison system focused on public safety, Canada was the first name in
the Rolodex. How the correctional service realized this was by adopting
one simple principle: Look south. Whatever the U.S. is doing, do the
opposite. While Americans were embracing “three strikes”
legislation and mandatory minimum prison sentences, Canada was curbing
its bad puppies with conditional sentencing, specialized aboriginal
courts and electronic monitoring bracelets. When American jails were
bursting at the seams with overcrowding, drugs and gang-related
violence, Corrections Canada eliminated double-bunking, implemented
successful methadone treatment and urinalysis programs, and redirected
the energies of First Nations gang members (the largest piece of the
prison-gang pie in Canada) into specialized programs that addressed
aboriginal realities. While American prisons teemed with HIV and
hepatitis C, Canadian prisons brought in condoms, syringe-bleaching
stations and a prison tattoo program regulated by community health
professionals. The result? Tens of thousand of ex-cons (the largest
demographic of violent criminal offenders in any western society) coming
out of prison healthy, drug-free, educated, supported, monitored and
enlightened by correctional programs. Ninety per cent of those did not
return to criminal activity — or at least not within five years. If all
that seems good, then you’ve probably spotted the problem. It was too
good. Compared with some of Canada’s other human rights partners —
like Brazil, Russia, India or China — our prisons are pretty plush.
Cable TV, basketball courts and an inmate canteen are just the high
notes. We also get fed three times a day. There are hot showers, mail
and the ever-contentious practice of inmate pay; until recently, we even
had library services and access to a daily newspaper. No armed
insurrection. No mass prison rapes. If you’ve never slept a night in the
crowbar hotel, it might sound like too much hotel and not enough
crowbar. Until you sleep here. A few years back, a con I knew
named Mike was struggling with heroin addiction. He would do OK for a
few weeks, and then fall. One time, after he’d been on a two-day bender,
I went looking for him — just in case. With addiction, you just never
know when a guy is ready to say “uncle.” I found Mike barricaded
in his cage — his 18-inch-wide cell window covered with cardboard. His
stereo screeched out something called Cannibal Corpse while, like a
hunting hyena, his eyes burned at me from the depths of hell. The only
thing missing was the smell of rotting meat. I laughed. “Are you happy, Mikey?” The answer, while slow in coming, was sure and deliberate. “Nope,” my dope-sick friend said. “But I am f---in’ comfortable.” For
the first 100 years, Canadian prison was just like every other dungeon
in the world. Convicts were whipped, worked to death, hung, starved as
punishment, segregated in solitary confinement for years on end, and
generally treated worse than animals. And why not? Acting like animals
is what brought them here. Did they deserve any better? But in the
1970s, after an unprecedented decade of prison violence, Canadians began
asking questions. Why so many murdered prison staff, hostage takings,
multimillion-dollar riots? What seems to be the problem? “There is
a great deal of irony in the fact that imprisonment — the ultimate
product of our system of justice — itself epitomizes injustice.” This
was the salient finding of the 1977 Parliamentary Sub-Committee on the
Penitentiary System in Canada. It was that committee’s call for reform —
a call supported by all political parties — that changed the Canadian
penitentiary from a torture chamber into a place where you just might
get your act together; a place where you could start to think about how
to live life with accountability. It’s a truth that, in their
quasi-religious zeal to reintroduce suffering to the house of detention,
Canadians have all but forgotten. So I guess it’s time to get
comfortable. - - - - - - - I.M GreNada is the pen name of
a Canadian prisoner who has been serving life for murder since 1994.
The people he writes about are real, but their names have been changed.
You can read more about him at theincarceratedinkwell.org.
I found Kelly's memoir below really impactful. She managed to remind me of some of the details around doing time that I'm sure most of us prefer to forget. What I really appreciated was Kelly's reflections and analysis about the oppression which the women with whom she is forcibly confined must live through and survive every single day. Oppressions which many of us are working hard to resist and indeed to eliminate, but which few of us actually have to resist daily from the inside.
- On July 19, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back was sentenced to eleven more months in prison for her participation in the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto. She remains unapologetic about
her role in the black bloc that caused so much disruption during the
summit, demonstrating that the forces that impose capitalism and
patriarchy are not invulnerable. To support Kelly and
the millions like her who are imprisoned for the inconveniences they
pose to the powerful, we are proud to present her eloquent and
thought-provoking memoir of the time she spent incarcerated after her
original arrest: “Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner.” In this
account, Kelly powerfully evokes the experience of captivity and the
importance of understanding all captives of the state as political prisoners. Our friends Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness are publishing a book of Kelly’s poetry as
a fundraiser to benefit her during her incarceration. Walt Whitman
argued that “to have great poets there must be great audiences,” but audiences is
precisely the opposite of what there must be. To have great poetry,
there must be people who are willing to act on their ideals rather than
just watch from the sidelines. We are deeply grateful to Kelly for
finding the courage to live her poetry as well as writing it. - Interview with Kelly Rose Pflug-Back
Write to Kelly:
Kelly Pflug-Back
Vanier Centre for Women
P.O. Box 1040
655 Martin Street
Milton, Ontario
L9T 5E6 Canada
Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner: A Memoir
June 27, 2010, was uncharacteristically overcast for mid-summer
Toronto. My head pounded from the humidity as I walked alone down Queen
Street, through a cityscape teeming with riot police, and still dusted
with shards of broken glass from the day before. Construction
crews had already set to work repairing the trail of wreckage,
attempting to get everything back to normal before anyone noticed. When I reached Jimmie Simpson Park, where people were meeting for the
day’s scheduled prison solidarity rally, I saw only a small crowd of
friends standing under the drooping honey locust trees: some debriefing
or consoling one another, others speaking with the reporters who swarmed
like gnats around the gathering. This sparse group of about thirty was
all that remained after the preemptive kidnappings and mass arrests. I
can’t remember if I felt any particular sense of foreboding—any eerie
apprehension of why I too hadn’t been taken away. As our diminished group walked from the park to the detention center
where our friends were being held, I hoped to be able to find some news
of what had happened to my partner, or to anyone for that matter. The gray sky sprinkled rain upon us, but we were happy and smiling.
We chanted, sang, played instruments and shared whatever food we’d
brought. Cops surrounded us, jostling the crowd to step farther away
from the chain link fence surrounding the prison. I’d been there about
half an hour when the unmarked van drove into the crowd. A group of men
jumped out and forced their way toward me, yelling for people to move
out of the way. One of them said my name, and within seconds they had
dragged me into the van. I can’t say I felt anything when my face hit the floor, but later in
my cell I noticed a deep throbbing in my teeth and gums. The front ones
were loose. My mouth tasted like blood. One of the cops who’d pulled me into the van asked me if I was on
welfare. He leered at my bare legs and told me I needed a razor. Another
tied my wrists with zip ties and proceeded to rifle through my purse. Inside, the building was a massive warehouse filled with wire cages,
like some industrial chicken farm. The noise of other prisoners
screaming protest songs and rattling the doors of their cages echoed off
the concrete walls, making our numbers seem greater even than the 992
people occupying cells. They put me in a cage and locked the door. On
the wall to my left I saw a guard scribble my name on a white board
alongside the words “do not release.” I sat down on the concrete and
anticipated the worst. The following day I was hospitalized after losing consciousness from
low blood sugar. All we were given to eat was a cheese sandwich every 12
to 24 hours with no alternatives for those who were vegan or had an
allergy. I was unable to walk to the medical trailer; the guards
informed me that this constituted refusing medical attention. Another
prisoner who overheard this screamed at a guard who was busy amusing
himself doing tricks in an unused wheelchair, and they brought it to my
cell shortly after. A female guard snarled at me to “close my fucking legs” while I sat
sprawled inside the medical trailer with an intravenous glucose drip in
my arm. I’d been arrested in a short skirt and tank top, and they had
refused me, numerous times, pants or a blanket. It was freezing inside
the detention center. There was no way to get off the bare concrete. My
teeth chattered constantly, and I never stopped shaking. It was too cold
to sleep. After they took me back to my cell, I could hear a man nearby
screaming that he needed his medication. He screamed for hours before
stopping abruptly; I pressed my face to the cage door and I could see
him convulsing on the floor of his cell with his tongue hanging out of
his mouth. “Get up,” the guards told him, repeatedly, before finally
acknowledging his unconsciousness. Then they dragged him away. Countless people were processed and released, many of them with
bruises, cuts and abrasions on their arms and faces from being slammed
into the concrete. A number of the guards passed the time by spewing
racist, homophobic, classist, and sexist harassment at prisoners, or
threatening them with further brutalization. A number of women were
threatened with rape. Hours and hours passed, and it became increasingly clear that I would
not be allowed to call my lawyer or let my family know where I was. As a
matter of fact, I hadn’t yet been informed of my charges. I spent over
two days in my cell, curled in a ball on the concrete or pacing the
small vicinity of my cage, sometimes yelling to other prisoners or
joining them in hysterical, sleep-deprived bouts of laughter. I was unsurprised to see a few old friends from Toronto’s street
community pass through the detention center. Were it not for the
unfortunate situation, it would have been a welcome reunion. When an
acquaintance of mine ended up in the cell beside me, we started talking
about the circumstances that had brought us there. Only seventeen, he
had spent the majority of his life being transferred from group home to
group home. Since he had finally been appointed as his own legal
guardian, his life had been plagued by poverty, class profiling, and
prejudice in the court system. Although he didn’t consider himself an
“activist,” he was obviously more steeped in the realities of social
struggle than a large portion of the other detainees. We talked about
our mutual experiences with police, shelters, group homes, and
homelessness. We talked about how these experiences had politicized us,
and how a person doesn’t need to understand party politics to be
political. Every poor person is political, we agreed, just by nature of
their experiences. I realized at that point that I probably had more in common with him
than I did with most of the other protesters. Unfortunate as it was,
life had already acclimatized us to be treated like shit by the
authorities. None of this surprised us. We were used to being beaten,
having our rights stripped away. After most of the detention center had been emptied, I was
transferred to the general population at the women’s prison in Milton.
While we waited to be processed in the holding cells, the other women
and I laughed and joked, trading stories about how we’d ended up where
we were. A lot of them were arrested and presumed guilty for unequivocal
bullshit; for being homeless, poor, non-white, using drugs, working in
the sex trade, or any combination of these factors. Others were arrested
for crimes of necessity: for stealing food because they were hungry, or
robbing a store to feed their young kids, for needing a way to pay
rent. A few had been charged with assault after having fought back
against abusive spouses. I told them my charges, and got a lot of hugs,
high-fives, and congratulations. “Fucking right,” people said, slapping
me on the back. “Fuck the rich bastards! Fuck the G20!” Some people had been unclear as to what the summit had been all
about, and we got into a long conversation about it. We all laughed,
ranted, waited, and laughed some more. If these were the women with whom
I’d be surrounded, I thought to myself, maybe prison won’t be all that
bad. My first days inside were largely spent adjusting to the prison
environment, and as time went on, my new setting reminded me
increasingly of the years I spent living on the street when I was a
teenager. On the streets, as in prison, you never get a decent night’s sleep or
a meal that resembles real food. There are always a few arrogant people
who think they run everything because they’ve been there the longest,
and people in uniforms can do whatever they want to you and get away
with it. In both situations, your status as a human being is revoked.
Humanity is a privilege awarded to those who help perpetuate capitalism,
and once you cease to do that, you’re a burden. You’re expected to
express gratitude to the system that ghettoizes you, doling out a few
table scraps and a thin blanket. The first range I was sent to was renowned for being the least
hospitable. We were locked in our cells for most of the day. Each had
one bed, though the high volume of prisoners meant that two people
usually shared a cell. The only windows were thin slats of frosted glass
too opaque to see through, and we were allowed outside only once a
week. “Outside” was a small walled concrete enclosure with metal grating
for a ceiling. Through a small crack underneath the heavy steel door, I
could see grass. It depressed me to look at it. I tried not to. This was the range to which people were sent as punishment, for
getting into fights, mouthing off to guards, being caught with
contraband or generally failing to comply with prison regulations. If
you were “good” you qualified for transfer to a medium-security unit,
where you could go to a real outdoor exercise yard, have your own cell,
and see visitors without a thick pane of Plexiglas separating you. A lot of the women on maximum security had been on the same range for
over a year. I met one woman who had been there for almost two; she’d
never had a misconduct, but there was a note in her file stating that
she would have to serve her entire sentence on maximum security. She
came from a mafia family, she explained. Putting her on a medium
security unit would have been an open invitation for any of her high-up
friends to come break her out. After visiting the classification office, I learned of a similar note
in my file. “Apparently I’m a terrorist,” I shrugged, when people asked
why I hadn’t been transferred yet. I won’t say that I instantly got along with everyone on my range, or
that I was the most popular prisoner. I didn’t pay attention to the
hierarchies that existed between other prisoners, and some people had a
problem with that. I wouldn’t join in when others ridiculed or ganged up
on the less popular women. It was a total pecking order, and it
reminded me too much of a schoolyard. I became close friends with a woman named Rachel* whom I met in the
common area during breakfast on a rare day when we weren’t on 24-hour
lock down. She was violently ill from drug withdrawal, and the nurse
hadn’t filled her methadone prescription. Apparently, her cellmate was a
complete asshole, so we snuck her into my cell after the doors were
buzzed open. The next guard that came by on her rounds started yelling
at us, but we assured her that the other staff had transferred Rachel
and forgotten to do the paperwork. I don’t think the guard believed us,
but she didn’t seem to care enough to do anything about it. When Rachel wasn’t too sick to make conversation, we passed the long
hours of our confinement playing cards, singing tuneless renditions of
R&B hits, washing our dirty uniforms in the sink and talking about
life in general. She lived near Niagara with her partner, their
four-year-old son, and their newborn daughter. She struggled with
addiction, but still managed to keep her life together and be there for
her kids. Her dad had been in and out of prison most of her life, and
her mom had been drunk all the time. She’d spent her early teenage years
working as a prostitute, and the crown attorney at her bail hearing had
used this to argue that she was unfit to reenter society. It seems that
when 13-year-old girls end up hooking on the streets it’s because they
possess some moral defect, and not because life has given them no other
choices. Our cells looked out onto the common area, an oval-shaped concrete
room. It contained five bolted-down tables, four showers at one end, a
shelf with a few bad paperback romance novels, and three phones, only
two of which functioned. When allowed into the common area, I went
straight to waiting in line for the phones. Some women didn’t have
anybody to call or only had relatives outside of the country; the phones
only transmitted collect calls within North America. Other women
gripped the phone receivers with white knuckles, trying to explain to
their young children why mommy wasn’t coming home. Rachel said she had
told her partner not to bring the kids when coming to visit her.
“They’re just too young. They would only be confused by the Plexiglas in
the visitor’s cubicle. Being able to see their mother, but not reach
out and touch her.” I thought of an article I’d read once about animal testing
laboratories. One method the lab technicians used to create symptoms of
stress and depression in mammals involved removing newborn babies from
their mother, then placing the mother in isolation. I looked up at the
florescent ceiling lights within their shatterproof wire cages. Soon,
the nurse came and people lined up to receive their daily doses of
sedatives and anti-psychotics—a precautionary measure, prescribed to
virtually everyone, like cutting off the beaks of factory-farmed
chickens to prevent them from pecking themselves, or each other, to
death from the stress of confinement and isolation. My views of the prison system solidified: prisons are little more
than warehouses for concentrating the poor. Rather than being populated
by the people most harmful to society, they are crowded with those who
have been the most harmedby society. Rather than being
“correctional” facilities, they are a method of ridding the streets of
those who act as living reminders of the crisis of poverty, the widening
income gap, the future of hardship which may very well await many more
in the coming years if something does not change. Prisons are a way of
sweeping people under the rug. They are a way of pretending that nothing
is wrong. Very few of the women on my range had been imprisoned for any kind of
violent crime, and most of those who did have violent charges had been
defending themselves against abusive partners or assailants. Most of
these women’s attackers had walked away without charges, free to roam
the streets at their leisure. The small portion of women facing violent charges not involving
self-defense were often the survivors of past traumas; a history rarely
taken into consideration by the courts that sentenced them. Much like
the homeless community, a large portion of the women with whom I spoke
were survivors of the lifelong onslaught of abuse perpetrated against
poor and disenfranchised women by our society, particularly women of
color. Many had been arrested for not having full citizenship, while
others had been in the process of applying for refugee status. A
disturbingly high number also lived with (dis)abilities like Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome, Fetal Narcotic Syndrome, Schizophrenia, and ADD/ADHD. These are women who have been bounced between abusive foster homes
and youth detention facilities, graduating at 16 as wards of the
Children’s Aid Society only to become wards of the State, criminalized
for doing what it takes to survive the minefield of poverty. As the days turned into weeks, I began to erase from my mind the hope
of being released. The health problems with which I’ve been living the
last few years became increasingly severe, and I often found it
difficult to stand up or walk around without fainting. My ribs stuck
out. My stomach became concave. I became depressed. Was it stress, overly-processed food, or a general lack of fresh air
and exercise that made me unhealthy? Probably some combination of all
these things. Without even examining me, the doctor put me on a liquid
diet, which in jail consists largely of juice crystals, water, and
MSG-filled soup powder. When I was finally sent to the examination room I
was told that nothing seemed to be wrong with me, regardless of the
fact that I’d lost close to 20 pounds, felt tired constantly, and was in
serious pain and discomfort. I talked to my partner on the phone, but his voice sounded distant
and crackly through the receiver. He came to visit me, and we pressed
our hands to the inch-thick Plexiglas between us. It was almost harder
than not seeing him. My mom sounded stressed whenever I called her, and I
could hear my dog howling in the background at the sound of my voice
through the receiver. I needed to talk to somebody, but the prospect of being force-fed
Thorazine dissuaded me from applying to see the psychiatrist. So I went
to the prison Chaplain, for the sheer novelty. He was a square-jawed man
in a gray suit, with the bearing of a Televangelist. He told me I was
in prison because I had sinned, and that I had to repent for these sins.
I was in my current situation because the Devil had led me astray. “But Jesus was a political prisoner!” I said. “The Devil didn’t tell
me to do anything; I’m a political prisoner like Jesus!” He thought I
was crazy. I was released after about a month on conditions of strict house
arrest and non-association with some of my closest friends. All I felt
was numb. I walked into the parking lot with my family and my partner,
squinting under the bright sunlight. We drove back to the house where I
lived as a kid and I slept for days. At first I felt fine. I could leave
the house, if I was with my parents, to take the dogs for walks in the
last of summer’s warm weather. I drank coffee, read a lot. People I’d
never met sent me stickers and zines and nice letters in the mail. Two months later I started having panic attacks, insomnia, and
nervous breakdowns on an almost daily basis. When I did sleep, I had
awful nightmares. It seemed as though every past instance of trauma and
violence I’d seen or experienced had been consolidated into a heavy,
poisonous lump, slowly turning my insides black and rotten. I felt like
the world was just too ugly to live in. I was suffocating under the
weight of clear-cut forests and floundering, tar-drowned shore birds.
When I closed my eyes all I could see was torture and war, droughts and
chemical spills, napalm. All I wanted was to move past the negative experiences I’d had and
work towards piecing my life back together. But I realized that the pain
I felt was trying to tell me something: I would not be able to forget
and move on as though none of this had happened. In a way, I think the
disgust and pain we feel when we see or experience something horrific
can be the greatest catalyst for creating positive change. When we
experience something firsthand we are better equipped to understand
it—and with that understanding we can educate others and give real
support to those who are also experiencing it. We can see its flaws and
weak points, and we can use this knowledge to criticize, discredit, and
eventually destroy it. Although I never heard this said firsthand, others told me they
overheard quite a few young people say they’d never go to another
protest again after their experiences at the detention center. I felt
not only disappointed that everyone hadn’t been able to see the ways to
reclaim these experiences and use them as further motivation, but
profoundly confused by this perspective. What we went through during the
mass arrests at the G20 was only a small window into the everyday
experiences of countless minorities in this country who suffer police
profiling, brutality, and prejudice within the legal system on a
horrifyingly regular basis. As hard as I try, I simply can’t understand
the notion that anyone could propose to be an ally of any marginalized
group, then give up and turn away when faced with a tiny microcosm of
what that group puts up with everyday. My experience in prison and the women with whom I shared it have
reminded me of the reasons I became politically active in the first
place. They’ve reminded me of the sorrow, the desperation, the
heartbreak, the trauma, the unlivable realities of poverty that first
spurred me to get my life together and dedicate myself to helping others
rather than accepting the conditions in which I lived. Being in prison
reminded me of the core of my politics. At the bottom of it, we were all
inside that prison for the exact same reason. We were dangerous only in
the sense that our existence discredited Canada’s status as a place of
liberty and equality. We were a glaring reminder that this country
doesn’t offer equal status and opportunity to everyone. Some political prisoners are arrested for staging public
demonstrations that address poverty, and some are arrested for living in
poverty. Some actively protest social inequality, while others turn to
drugs or alcohol because they can no longer bear the brunt of this
inequality. Some choose to publicly draw attention to injustice by their
words and actions, while others are swept off the streets because their
very presence is a public exposure of this injustice. Now is the time
for everyone in our community to think about what it really means to say
that every prisoner is a political prisoner. The next time we’re
shocked and outraged by an experience of being targeted, harassed, or
otherwise mistreated by law enforcement or society in general, we should
stop to recognize how much respect we owe to the people all around us
who face much more than that every day of their lives. Every prisoner is a political prisoner. *All names have been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned.
I've been thinking about doing a regular post on current news in our prison system for awhile. But havn't done so because I figured much of it would be coming from the mainstream media and I didn't want to take part in spreading the neo-liberal judgment based, hate mongering, propaganda machine any further than it sadly already gets spread! Because I don't have time to give each of these issues the full analysis they deserve in order to counter the mainstream's take on them, I have decided to use the following strategy. I will go ahead and include links to some mainstream news sources, but will balance those with progressive links to organisations providing a human rights based analysis of the issues.
Issues such as the increasing calamity of prison overcrowding. This has always been a problem in Canada, but of late with the elimination in 2010 of 2 for 1 credit for time served in pre-trial prison, we have seen an explosion in the numbers of people held in prison for longer periods, resulting in severe overcrowding, and directly related to overcrowding, has been an increase in staff and prisoner violence.
Treatment of Prisoners in Crowded Facilities
Barton Street jail still in lockdown
By cbc.ca
Published: 08/16/2012
Toronto, ON, Canada -- The Barton Street jail is still in lockdown
and corrections officer are off the job Thursday morning. The officers
are not working while they negotiate a health and safety concern.
The lockdown began Monday after it was discovered a piece of metal was
missing from a light fixture. Management and officers were concerned it
could be used as a weapon.
Dan Sidsworth, Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU) corrections
division chair, said jail guards wanted to search the entire prison and
wear protective vests but management wanted a smaller section of the
prison searched without the vests.
"Our concern," Sidsworth said, "is that the weapon has migrated to
another part of the institution." He added, officers "searched the
immediate area and came up empty."
The Minstry of Labour was called to investigate the work stoppage Wednesday.
Matt Blajer, a spokesman for the ministry, told CBC Hamilton that the
jail guards do not have the right to refuse work in this situation.
The corrections officers have since been ordered by the employer to
return to work. The officers are members of the Ontario Public Service
Employee Union (OPSEU). Sidsworth said the union is still in contact
with the ministry and made a proposal Tuesday that could lead to an end
of the lockdown. As a result of the lockdown, inmates have reported they haven't had
clean clothes or clean sheets for a week. OPSEU said its members will
only return to work if allowed to complete a jail search wearing a
protective safety vests. "Our concerns," Sidsworth said, "are the same as those of the
inmates. We want a safe working environment for the officers. And our
working conditions are their living conditions. We don't want to see
anyone get hurt."
Union boss says overcrowding at London, Ont., jail could lead to more unrest
A photograph obtained by the London Free Press shows
the aftermath of a recent melee at the Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre
on Exeter Road in London. July 20, 2012
LONDON, ONT. — The head of the union
representing guards at a southwestern Ontario jail says he’s concerned a
near-riot could occur there again, and pressure is mounting on the
province to make the facility safer for staff and inmates.
Ontario Public Service Employees
Union president Warren Thomas toured the Elgin-Middlesex Detention
Centre in London, Ont., on Tuesday morning. Violence flared there last month,
just before the start of the July 28 weekend, when inmates began to
flood toilets, light fires and run amok. Tactical squads quelled the unrest and a five-day lockdown was imposed. “Five-hundred pound iron doors were
bent ... It was a very, very dangerous situation,” said Thomas, whose
union represents more than 260 correctional officers and staff at the
provincial jail. Complaints and lawsuits over
treatment of inmates at the facility stretch back years, but are getting
increased attention after numerous security incidents over the past
several months. Overcrowding at the jail needs to be
addressed or there may be more violence, Thomas said, alleging jail
cells meant for two people are holding three to five inmates in some
cases. The cheek-by-jowl living conditions
were a catalyst in last month’s skirmish and increase the chances of
inmate-on-inmate attacks, he said. “If you’re an inmate in there and
you’re in a cell of five people then you can get hurt quite badly” by
violent cellmates, Thomas said. Things are calm now, but that could
change unless more inmates are transferred elsewhere and staffing
numbers increased, he said. “It’s like the eye of the hurricane.
It’s not over. It could spark and blow,” he said, adding the facility is
short 15 full-time employees. The jail was initially designed for
200 beds but was retrofitted to hold its current load of more than 400
inmates, Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services
spokesperson Brent Ross said. Ross denied claims there are up to
five inmates in a cell, saying the ministry does not house more than
three people in a single cell. Corrections Minister Madeleine
Meilleur was set to discuss conditions at the jail on Tuesday night with
local Progressive Conservative member Jeff Yurek and Bob Bailey, the
party’s corrections critic. Lawyer Kevin Egan says he has about
50 lawsuits in various stages from inmates who allege understaffing and
safety gaps, such as a lack of security cameras that would let guards
easily monitor inmates, have led to attacks. Egan said he’s so busy he’s had to hire a new clerk to help handle new cases. Egan alleges staffing shortages mean
some prisoners are exercising control over their fellow inmates, such as
demanding they hand over medications before receiving food from the
delivery cart. “There’s a culture where ... they allow the toughest, meanest inmates to set conditions inside the cellblock,” he alleged. Egan said he is “very hopeful” the
ministry will take steps such as hiring more staff and installing
security cameras as called for last year by a pair of inquests, one of
which found the April 2009 death of Kenneth Drysdale was a homicide. “If they don’t, somebody else is
going to die,” said Egan, who is representing Drysdale’s family in a
suit against the province over his death. Egan is also representing former
inmate Robert Broley in a $1.25-million lawsuit stemming from an attack
on Broley at the jail in 2004. Broley says he received a 30-day sentence for fraudulently depositing a blank cheque envelope at an ATM. He says that once inside the jail he
was assaulted by five other inmates for refusing to give them the home
address of a jail guard he knew through his home maintenance business,
and suffered three cranial fractures when hit on the head with a plastic
mug. He claims the attack occurred in a
section of the facility guards could not see directly or monitor, since
there were no security cameras. Now disabled for life and receiving
disability payments, he hopes the mounting number of inmate lawsuits
will force change at the facility. “This is not a Third World country.
This is Canada. When people break the law, yes they should pay, but they
should not be shoved into cruel and unusual punishment,” Broley said.
Prisoners Push Back
Prison hunger strike: inmates say they’re mistreated, locked up all day
By Staff The Canadian Press
PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. – Inmates on a hunger strike at a northern
Saskatchewan prison say they’re being mistreated and locked up all day. The hunger strikers, believed to be as many as 16, say they won’t eat
until things change at the medium-security Prince Albert correctional
facility. They say they’re supposed to be out six hours a day and they’re not allowed to go outside at all. A spokeswoman for Corrections, Public Safety and Policing says the
inmates are unhappy with a lockdown after a serious incident last
Friday. Judy Orthner says prisoners on the unit are being confined during the
investigation into what happened, but it is not considered a lockdown. She says the current situation should end Thursday. Corrections will look at the concerns and decide what steps might be appropriate in the future, Orthner says. “These inmates who are on a hunger strike are saying, ‘It’s not fair
that we should be kept in our cells with no routine and no programming
going on while this investigation is going on.”’ Left of Road (Politically); Response to Tough on Crime Agenda
Interviews with prisoner advocates in Canada to talk about the history of the prisoner human rights movement in the context of the current conservative "crime" agenda.
Supporters
of the now defunct federal prison farms held a special vigil at the
entrance of Frontenac Institution on Bath Road last week to mark the
second anniversary of their closure.
EMC News - It's been just over two years since the federal government shut down the prison farm at Frontenac Institution.
Those who tried, in vain, to save the farm returned to the entrance of the prison to hold an evening vigil last Thursday.
"We
just want to remind the federal government...we think it was a mistake
to close the prison farms. It provided rehabilitation. It provided job
training and provided food for the system," said Dianne Dowling, a
member of the Save Our Prison Farms (SOPF) committee.
Even as Dowling was speaking, honks from cars going by nearly drowned her out.
Dowling
said members of SOPF, along with hundreds of people, campaigned for 18
months asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reconsider the decision
to close the farms.
She said people came to rallies, meetings and signed petitions. They also wrote letters to the government.
This
all lead to a quasi-blockade at the entrance of the prison by some of
the most adamant supporters. It also led to some of their eventual
arrests. A few were convicted earlier this year of mischief.
"We
believed we were right. We still believe we are right. The program
should have been saved and the decision was wrong," said Dowling. "We
feel we need to keep repeating that comment. It was very frustrating to
the people in the campaign. It made no sense to close the prison farms."
Canada had six prison farms before their closure.
About 250 cattle at Frontenac were sold by auction in Waterloo.
Dowling said removing the cattle was the death of the farm.
Twenty-four
people, aged 14 to 87, in total were arrested and charged with mischief
two years ago in hopes of stopping cattle trucks.
Supporter Daniel Beals was at the vigil.
"I
am here to mourn and pay tribute to what we went through a couple years
ago. I have a lot of good friends here that I made specifically through
the Save Our Prison Farms campaign," said Beals.
He feels the prison farms could return one day.
"I
believe if we had a different government there's a possibly it could
come back. I wouldn't go out making promises but I think that certainly
if there is an NDP government we would look at something like that
again," said Beals, who has been a federal NDP candidate in the area
since 2009.
He claimed rehabilitation is not the No. 1 concern for the Conservative government.
Supporters
will continue to fight for prison farms. In fact, every Monday night
since Aug. 9, 2010, SOPF supporters have been holding a vigil at the
entrance to Frontenac.
Corrections Canada to push ahead with electronic anklets for parolees
The below article by Anna Mehler Paperny at the Globe talks about ankle bracelet monitoring for people out of prison on passes or parole. It also mentions that the government's own pilot study of ankle monitoring effectiveness showed the devices to be unreliable, and more expensive than traditional monitoring. So if the devices are such crap what other reason could the CSC have for "pushing ahead" with use of them? See this post from 2011:
Correctional Service Canada plans to roll out electronic anklets to
monitor parolees – even though its own pilot project found the devices
did not work as hoped. The idea is to ensure that offenders follow
the conditions of their release. A tiny proportion of parolees breach
those conditions or reoffend, although the number has been getting
smaller for four years. A Correctional Service Canada study found the GPS anklets do not
change offenders’ behaviour, create more work for parole officers and
have numerous technical problems – including false alarms and a tendency
to show people to be somewhere they are not. “You’re doing more
intervention unnecessarily, catching people in the corrections net who
perhaps don’t require it,” James Bonta, director of Public Safety’s
research unit, told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Safety and
National Security earlier this year. Proponents say monitoring
keeps the public safe by ensuring convicts toe the line. Others say that
while the anklets are effective in some circumstances for high-risk
offenders, they don’t alter a parolee’s behaviour; also, by the time
officers are notified of a violation, it may be too late to apprehend
the person in the act. “We sometimes think of technology as being
perfect. It is not perfect,” Mr. Bonta said. “Overall, if I look at the
whole body of evidence, I don’t think” the anklets make communities
safer. The federal Conservatives’ Safe Streets and Communities
Act, Bill C-10, allows Correctional Service Canada to impose electronic
monitoring on an offender with geographic restrictions on temporary
absence, work release, parole, statutory release or long-term
supervision. Correctional Service Canada intends to begin the program in
the fall of 2013. Electronic monitoring for offenders has been
around since the mid-1960s. Seven provinces use anklets for offenders on
probation. Studies so far are inconclusive on whether and when they’re
worth it. Monitoring methods vary. Some programs are actively
watched from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with activity logged overnight. In
Saskatchewan, radio frequencies are sent to a server, and notices of
violations or alerts go to officers’ cellphones or a community
correctional centre. In a choice between electronic monitoring or a
stint behind bars, studies suggest the former saves money and keeps the
offender out of an environment that often contributes to recidivism.
The benefits of putting a parolee on a monitoring device during a
conditional release are murkier: There’s no demonstrated effect on
recidivism and, especially in the case of low-risk offenders, a GPS
anklet can actually make reintegration harder. Between 2008 and
2009, Correctional Service Canada conducted an $856,096 pilot project of
anklets for parolees. An evaluation found basic technological
challenges: Batteries drained quickly; false tamper alerts were
frequent; the GPS system had a tendency to “drift” – to show a person in
the wrong location. While the system “may benefit some
offenders,” the report states, “the benefits could not be demonstrated
in the current evaluation.” In 2010-11, 88 per cent of those on
day parole and 76.5 per cent of those on full parole completed the
program with no problems. Only 2.4 per cent of day parolees and 6.7 per
cent of full parolees reoffended. Both breaches and reoffences have
dropped steadily since 2007. The anklets provide “an opportunity
to verify compliance with release conditions and provide additional
information for the ongoing assessment of risk to enhance public
safety,” Correctional Service Canada said in an e-mailed statement this
week. “CSC’s procurement of new technology will address some of the
limitations noted in the first pilot (for example battery life).” The
cost of the anklets and software is $15 per offender per day, although
they can be cheaper. Training and staffing can get pricey. Almost all
U.S. agencies that use electronic monitoring increased staff faster than
those that did not, said Marc Renzema, a criminal justice professor at
Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. Correctional Service Canada
Commissioner Don Head and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews declined to
be interviewed. Addressing the Standing Committee on Public Safety and
National Security in February, Mr. Head argued the anklets’ benefits
outweighed their drawbacks. “This will ultimately contribute to
strengthening public safety,” he said. “The report indicated that there
were some deficiencies, but that through amendments to practices and
procedures we could address these deficiencies.”
