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/
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.
There are many
forms and means of torturing prisoners as it occurs in the North
American and more specifically in the Canadian context. Torture is
illegal in Canada and prevented by several bodies of law including the Corrections and
Conditional Release Act (CCRA), which mandates prisoner treatment,
and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada has also ratified international agreements which prevent us from engaging in torture on any level, including turning a blind eye. [UN Basic
Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners ; Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (CAT)]. Despite this fact, we have witnessed many
examples over the years and especially since 9/11 where politicians
and others in positions of power excused or re-classified torture as
something less than torture.
The Canadian
government, mainstream media, and even much of the Canadian public
have been complicit in Canada's involvement in the torture of
prisoners abroad (Mahar Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin, Ahmad El Maati, andAfghan detainees,
all of whom were handed over to torturers by the Canadian government and our allies). And complicit in
the torture of prisoners here at home (Ashley Smith,Donald Marshall Jr., David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, Zakaria Amara)
Mahar Arar
Ashley Smith
To guard against the
practice of torturing prisoner's we have built in rights and
protections for the treatment of prisoners in western society.
Despite this, there is little oversight, access to, or supervision of
prisoners, guards, and other staff in the prison setting. What goes
on behind those walls is for the most part closed to the public view.
Even with legal protections and codes of conduct built into the
system, prisoners who protest run the risk of making things much
worse for themselves inside.
Muddying the
waters further is the fact that what constitutes torture is never
really spelled out with any adequate or effective detail in law,
rules, or conventions. Much is left open to interpretation. And
some policies and procedures for dealing with non-compliant
or mentally ill prisoners, are in fact forms of torture. However
they may not be considered so by law. And in those cases where the
courts would likely rule practices to constitute torture, the courts are never given a chance to do so because it
is too expensive and too dangerous for most prisoners to persevere and take
their cases to a judge.
A UN report
(2010), which investigated accusations that NATO countries, including
Canada, had turned over Afghan detainees to certain torture, defined
torture as occurring“when
State officials, acting in their official capacity inflict or order,
consent or acquiesce, to the infliction of severe physical or mental
pain or suffering against an individual to obtain a confession or
information, or to punish or discriminate against the individual."
We
can see from this particular definition that much is left open to
interpretation. And interpretation is known to morph, shift, and
change as societal attitudes change, new governments take power, etc.
For
instance when considering what causes metal anguish or suffering, one
must concede that it varies from person to person and from time to
time. Depending on a persons physical and mental health to begin
with, pain or suffering may begin much earlier in the process than
with healthier persons. Not only does the point at which pain and suffering
begins vary from person to person, but interpreting it or
understanding the presence of it can vary from one torturer to
another.
So how is torture
determined in Canada?
Overt forms of
cruel and unusual punishment which few would or could argue, not to
be torture, are acts of violence causing serious injury that maims,
or kills.
Less overt forms
of pain and suffering that are subject to argument and contention,
both in Canadian law and in the minds of the Canadian public are
routines like arbitrary and frequent strip searches, various degrees
of sensory deprivation, like that which occurs in solitary
confinement, long periods without adequate food and water, refusal to provide effective treatment and pain medication for
serious illnesses like cancer and HIV/AIDS, caging 2 or 3 people to a
1 person cell, the use of loopholes to extend a persons stay in
solitary (like that which was done to Ashley Smith), and the use of “dry”
cells, etc.
Even less clear
in defining what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment are
policies which deny pain relief and treatment for non-lethal but
severe and chronic medical conditions, cutting off treatment for
Trans-gendered prisoners undergoing hormonal therapy, not allowing
Trans prisoners to self identify their own gender, not providing
prisoners basic supplies to maintain hygiene, conducting late night cell
searches, denying the minimum allowable by law for yard, phone, and
shower time, etc.
I believe that
whether these repugnant prison routines constitute torture or not in
the minds of politicians and the Canadian people would become very
clear if they themselves or a loved one were subjected to such
treatment.
I have been
denied medical attention and pain relief myself in jail. I have also
witnessed many others suffering needlessly. I can assure you it is a
form of torture and that there is no good reason for it. Imagine
suffering some injury, broken bones, a severe allergic reaction, or
any kind of intolerable pain. Now
imagine that there is not one damn thing you can do about it. You
can't get up and take yourself to hospital, or call yourself an
ambulance. You can't call your family physician and have a script
sent to the pharmacy. There is no opportunity to knock on a
neighbour's door and ask for or even purchase something for pain
relief. You can't grab some ice from the freezer in hopes of just
taking the merest edge off. There is no helping yourself to some
ibuprofen or taking some of those leftover oxy's you have from an
earlier treatment. You won't be getting up to distract yourself with
TV, a book, or to pace back and forth.
I spent several months, hours
each day, and up through the long, long nights rocking myself
quietly back and forth because I could do nothing else. It was the
worst kind of painful hell imaginable. I can hardly describe the
feeling of utter hopelessness, frustration, and despair at being
denied the basic human right to look after ones own body, your own
needs. At being locked in this place with your life and well being
in the hands of ill trained, indifferent, and uncaring staff, some of
whom will be the most psychotic, masochistic people any of us have
ever had the misfortune to meet.
I was eventually
given basic medical treatment for a straight forward, easily treatable medical issue.
I was not provided a choice about which treatment I wanted and
I would have chose other options had others been open to me. For this privilege I had to
wait 3 months. Others wait much longer. And some prisoners are
never provided relief from the torture or from their torturers.
The Fifth Estate on Ashley
Smith
www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/out_of_control/9
Jan 2010
www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/behindthewall/
Cruel and Unusual:
US Film surrounding the issue of being
Transgender in prison. With interviews of US prisoners. (on Youtube)
Justice Behind the Walls. For
a story on solitary confinement from the 70's in Canada which
changed some of the law surrounding how long someone could be
continuously held in solitary. http://www.justicebehindthewalls.net/book.asp?cid=770
Canadian
Prison LawI
found the below court case on a web site called Canadian Prison Law
(http://www.canadianprisonlaw.com/ccra/inmates.htm)
which looks at among
other things prisoner treatment, solitary confinement, and strip
searches. I've included one court case where a prisoner brought a
challenge under both the Corrections and Conditional Release Act,
and the Canadian Charter. He challenged the use of restraints which
are not permitted as a form of punishment, but to be used for inmate
or staff safety only.
Issue
of Restraint in MacPherson v. Regina
CCRA
68. Instruments of restraint -
No person shall apply an instrument of restraint to an offender as
punishment.
CCRA
69. Cruel treatment, etc -
No
person shall administer, instigate, consent to or acquiesce in any
cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment of an offender.
A
prisoner in a provincial jail was granted a habeas corpus application
where a court found that he was the victim of the use of unreasonable
and excessive force and illegal actions by jail guards. Videotape
evidence revealed that while occupying a bare cell, the prisoner
repeatedly kicked his cell door in an attempt to get the attention of
the guard to allow him to call a lawyer. Several guards then strapped
the prisoner for two to three hours face down onto a stretcher and
placed a hockey helmet and wire mask over his head. The court found
that the prisoner was strapped to the stretcher as punishment for
creating a disturbance, rather than for reasons of his own protection
or protection of others. It was held that he was a victim of cruel
and unusual treatment and arbitrary detention in violation of his
rights under s12
and s9
of the Charter. The court then asserted that if M were a federal
prisoner subject to the CCRA, the way he was mistreated would also
invite consideration of s68
and s69
of that Act.
