If the health care unit in Toronto South Detention Centre, Ontario’s 2 year-old superjail located in the southwest corner of the city, was moved to a location outside the institution, let’s say two kilometers or so away at the corner of Islington and Evans Avenues, and was open to the public, it would be a health care clinic threatened with a criminal investigation.

Strong words, yes, and not the first time we’ve addressed the subject. Ameliorating this critique if only a little, it may be unfair to single out this one penal institution when other provincial jails are comparable. TSDC, though, is supposed to be the end-all and be-all for custodial management in Ontario, and is an easy target.

While we are unaware of how jails in other provinces and territories stack up, we can speak to health care in our federal prisons under the domain of Correctional Service of Canada. This won’t be a lengthy analysis of any shortcomings to the health care our prison populations can access, but rather challenges bureaucratic misrepresentations of the quality of care in Ontario and federal institutions.

Prison populations have higher rates of mental health issues, substance abuse and communicable diseases than the community at large. This circumstance has been a constant, and subject to numerous studies. Fiona Kouyoumdjian, a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, has recently released the first-of-its-kind comprehensive portrait of prisoner health across the country. Nothing in this paper is new to jail/prison administrators, but the ‘party line’ everywhere has always been that inmates get the same level of health care as the general population.

This just isn’t true. Not only that, but these same administrators know it.

To cite only one example in the federal penal system, we had an ongoing letter exchange over a few years with an inmate in Agassiz, British Columbia. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer at one point during his sentence, and had to retain his lawyer and take Correctional Service of Canada to court in order to get the surgery he needed and the necessary after-care.

As for Ontario, we’ll go into more detail. Mary Dwyer is the current manager of health care services at the Toronto South Detention Centre. She came to our attention when she testified in early February in an action by a TSDC inmate looking for redress from the lack of proper medical care in the institution, particularly during lockdowns which are rampant there. Lauren Callighen, a spokesperson for the ministry, when asked for a comment, said, “We work hard every day to ensure that inmates receive the same access to health care in our institutions as they would in the community.” I believe firefighters were then called to her office to extinguish the flames from the lightning strike.

The court’s decision is pending in that case, but we contacted Mary Dwyer for another inmate in a similar situation at TSDC. This particular inmate had more than one health concern but of immediate import was an infected pre-molar in his fourth quadrant. He had been able to pierce the infection with a sharpened staple and was able to drain the puss every couple of days. He made two requests to see the dentist, plus a dental referral was placed in his file by a doctor at the institution. It still took almost four weeks before he got some attention. The inmate was put on penicillin for seven days and then left for another two weeks before he saw the dentist again, and the infection returned in the meantime. This has been ongoing now since the beginning of February.

I pointed out to Ms Dwyer that, in the same situation, she would have seen her dentist the day an infection became apparent. Nonetheless, her email response to mine included this: “I can say that the Toronto South Detention Centre takes the healthcare concerns of all inmates in our care very seriously.”

Consider that the Ontario Ombudsman’s 2014-2015 Annual Report noted there were 2138 health care complaints from inmates in Ontario’s jails during that reporting period. Consider that not all healthcare complaints end up crossing the ombudsman’s desk. Consider that, unlike the federal system where there is some recourse for prisoners, Ontario’s inmates have no substantive remedy other than the courts.

We did indicate this wouldn’t be a long analysis, didn’t we. Lengthy this may be, but an analysis it is not. There’s one more thing we’ll add, just for comic relief, if that’s possible.

The TSDC inmate with the abscessed tooth? In one of his requests to see a dentist, he had described how he was able to drain the infection with a sharpened staple and thereby avoid the pain that normally accompanies this kind of condition. About two weeks after submitting that request, a Sergeant Tsonga showed up at his cell to ask for his “weapon”. The institution’s security department had sent her to retrieve the staple! No kidding!

All this is but one indicator that a person consigned to a provincial jail in Ontario is no longer in Canada!

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

Nelson Mandela

The Washington Post reported in mid-February that the U.S. National Registry of Exonerations had recorded 1733 cases since 1989 where wrongfully convicted people were cleared of the charges that put them in prison, and had been freed as a result.

A record number of 149 people in the United States were exonerated in 2015, up from 139 the year before.  This included 58 who had been convicted of homicide, and 5 among those had been sentenced to death.  The numbers also show there was an increase year over year in the freeing of people who had pleaded guilty or falsely confessed.

These 149 innocent people had spent an average of 14.5 years in prison.

Justice may be blind, but it can also be blinded.

Two areas of recurring concern with Correctional Service of Canada’s operation of our federal prisons came up again in February.

The first is another push for prison needle programs, reported in the Toronto Star under Alex Ballingall’s byline on February 3 (“Prison needle programs touted to reduce HIV and Hap C risk”), and Kristy Kirkup’s column on February 13 (“Health study recommends prison syringe programs”).

“No drugs in prison is an aspirational goal that isn’t really achievable,” concluded Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network’s Seth Clarke (PASAN), published in a report released early in February. Toronto researchers, including Ryerson University’s Emily van der Meulen as lead author, PASAN, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network hosted a conference on the subject, and later conducted interviews with health workers, inmates, and prison workers.

There are 60 existing programs in other countries, some like Switzerland’s have been running for more than 20 years, and there have been no reports of needles used as weapons. Even a 1999 Correctional Service of Canada study found needle programs “effective and well proven”.

Why should you care? Infection rates for HIV among inmates can be 10 times higher than in the general population, and Hep C can be as much as 30 times higher. At the moment, for inmates who are able to access treatment (and that can be a challenge), HIV drugs can run up to $30,000 a year, and new Hep C drugs that will cure the infection are about $60,000. This comes from your tax dollars! To boot, most inmates will return to the community where there are transmission risks, and additional drug costs; not to mention the human rights element, where prison inmates are entitled in theory to the same level of health care available to the rest of us.

Adding his voice, Howard Sapers, Canada’s Correctional Investigator, has argued that CSC should explore all harm reduction options when confronting the reality of ballooning health care costs.

There is an ongoing legal challenge against the government on this issue, launched in 2012 by an inmate in western Canada, along with community stakeholders. Government spokespersons are unable to comment openly as a result. However, the previous federal government (you remember it?) provided CSC with $120 million to fight access to drugs in prison, and while that increased interventions, is also drove up institutional drug prices. What’s left of that money could be diverted to the more progressive recommendations.

In another development, Lisa Kerr, assistant professor, at Queen’s University Faculty of Law essayed in a mid-February Globe and Mail edition (“Fewer inmates in solitary makes for case for legal reforms”) that Correctional Service of Canada has been reducing the number of inmates in segregation.

There has been no change in the law that could explain the reduction. However, the Trudeau government made it clear that it intends to implement changes on the use of solitary confinement in the face of CSC opposition to interference with its operational policies. It could be argued that CSC management is responding to the level of scrutiny and criticism of the practice in hopes passing time will diminish government oversight, thus allowing it to continue as it always has.

In both cases, prison needle programs and the reduction/elimination of solitary confinement, leaving reforms to the prison bureaucracy will bear only sour fruit. We have a federal government that is pushing evidence based policies for the benefit of all. The time to strike for new legislation and impose best practices on CSC is while our iron is hot.

In other words, now!

On the same day that U.S. President Obama banned youth solitary confinement in federal prisons (Monday, January 25, 2016), the U.S. Supreme Court expanded its ban on mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for inmates convicted of murders committed before age 18. It argued that even those imprisoned years ago should have an opportunity to seek release.

The court’s 6-3 ruling supported Louisiana inmate Henry Montgomery, who is black and at age 17 was convicted in a 1963 shooting of a sheriff’s deputy at a time racial tensions in the area were running high. He’s spent more than half a century in prison with an automatic life sentence without parole.

An earlier Supreme Court ruling in 2012 said that mandatory life sentences without parole in homicide cases involving juveniles violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Monday decision ordered that the ban also applied retroactively to inmates convicted before that 2012 ruling was issued.

That means more than 1,000 people serving similar sentences in the United States could be resentenced or have an opportunity to apply for parole. This doesn’t guarantee their release. It will, however be the first time a judge will be able to take into account the qualities that may have made these under 18s less culpable than adults who committed the same crimes.

None of this is revolutionary. It’s progressive.

The Washington Post published a Barack Obama opinion piece on Monday, January 25, in which the president announced he is banning solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, noting concerns about its harmful psychological effects.

Last summer, Obama directed the U.S. Justice Department to conduct a review of the practice, and this new package of changes includes an expansion of treatment for mentally ill prisoners, and an increase in the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells. Some 10,000 federal prisoners are affected by the new procedures that also mandate solitary confinement could no longer be used as a punishment for low-level infractions.

The move echoes a U.S. national movement demanding criminal justice reform, arising in part from numerous high-profile police killings in the last few years. Mr. Obama in particular cited the story of Kalief Browder, a black 16-year-old who was arrested in 2010 and spent almost two years in solitary in New York’s Rikers Island jail before his release in 2013 and eventual suicide two years later. The president said research suggests solitary confinement is linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others, and the potential for violent behaviour.

He noted that U.S. states have worked to cut back the use of segregation in their penal institutions and have seen drops in assaults on staff, and more prisoners engage in rehabilitation programs as a result. The president hopes the changes he’s ordered will encourage reforms in all state and local prisons. “There are as many as 100,000 people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons – including juveniles and people with mental illnesses,” he said. “As many as 25,000 inmates are serving months, even years of their sentences alone in a tiny cell.”

President Obama wrote that solitary confinement is “increasingly overused on people…..with heartbreaking results – which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem.”

Take that, Stephen Harper!     Justin Trudeau, pay attention!

On October 13 of last year, a week before the federal election, Correctional Service of Canada introduced its  staff to 12 solitary confinement reforms, part of a response to the Ashley Smith coroner’s inquest two years ago.  But, prison reform advocates say the changes do little to address numerous systemic flaws, and claim CSC has sidestepped the 104 recommendations made by the coroner’s jury.

Justin Trudeau issued a ministerial mandate letter a few weeks after becoming prime minister, calling for the implementation of all jury recommendations, specifically those concerning “solitary confinement and the treatment of inmates with mental illness.”  In late December, public safety minister Ralph Goodale reiterated the government’s intention to go beyond CSC’s current reform policies.

There is a snag, however.  Julian Falconer has said the current CSC leadership will stonewall any attempt to make substantive changes.  A Google search justifies a description of Mr. Falconer as one of Canada’s top human rights lawyers.  Jennifer Oates, former CSC Deputy Commissioner for Women, accuses CSC of having an inflexible attitude.  Lisa Kerr, assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, who specializes in prison law and sentencing, adds her voice to the criticism of the prison agency.  These three are only part of a chorus of calls for major shifts in Canada’s federal penal system.

In spite of the CSC claim that the use of segregation/solitary confinement is in decline, Julian Falconer insists “they have an inbred cultural resistance to change”, and focuses his attention on current Commissioner Don Head.  Long ago, we concluded Correctional Service of Canada is abusive, dishonest, morally and ethically corrupt, and a blot on the landscape of this country.  A letter to Ralph Goodale puts in our two cents:

January 29, 2016

The Honourable Ralph Goodale,
Minister of Public Safety,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A6

Re;      “Federal prison agency makes changes to segregation policy”
Globe and Mail, Tuesday, December 22, 2015
“Inmate segregation in decline, CSC says”
Globe and Mail, Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Dear Minister Goodale:

“…..any political leadership that is looking to actually implement serious change would be wasting tax dollars if they put Mr. Head in charge of that change,” so said Julian Falconer in response to the present government’s intention to act on the Smith inquest recommendations.

CSC did not need Ashley Smith or Edward Snowshoe’s experience in segregation to tell it things were seriously amiss in our federal prison system.

CSC did not need Ashley Smith and Edward Snowshoe’s death to show it drastic changes were overdue.

CSC did not need an inquest’s recommendations to point it in the direction it was to take.

CSC has never needed any more than the will to act.  This it does not have.  This it will not have…….until the management team at 340 Laurier Avenue West is swept away in favour of enlightened, progressive revisionists.

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen

cc         Jody Wilson-Raybould,
Howard Sapers
Don Head
Chris Hill

We should all spend a few hours once each year watching the proceedings in our municipal council chambers, or sitting in the gallery of our provincial and federal legislative assemblies. It would be just as important to spend a half day in a courtroom….any courtroom. Noble intentions like these are pipe-dreams for the most part, but we need be encouraged nonetheless to monitor the people we place in positions of trust and authority.

We spent most of a day in mid-January in Toronto’s College Park 501 Court which is reserved for bail applications. We watched man after man from the Toronto South Detention Centre, Ontario’s notoriously ineptly run super-jail, comment (note we did not say ‘complain’) about lockdowns, no showers for days, no lawyers, no visitors, and no meds. One lawyer had his client brought up in person, not only to hold over the process to another date, but to have the Court intervene with the jail to have the man’s heart medications available.

Jail workers claim these lockdowns are primarily caused by staff shortages, and this is one of the concerns borne out in Patrick White’s Globe and Mail “Ontario indicates that major prison-system changes are in the works”, published on Saturday, January 16th of this year. According to available figures, the union representing staff say there were more than 900 lockdowns in Ontario’s provincial jails in 2014 because of staff shortages. At the same time, that figure is zero in some other provinces.

The Toronto South experience during 2015 suggests that staff shortages in the summer occurred mostly on the weekends, when too many guards called in sick and left the institution short-handed. To some, this was a union-mandated ploy to draw attention to its cause; to others, it was “barbecue-itis”, an inmate designation.

Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister responsible for jails, is calling for some welcome reforms to address the issues which have brought the system to a low regard. Perhaps the most intriguing to us are statistics that show the number of pre-trial inmates in the system currently make up 60% of the jail population, compared to 30% a decade ago. “We don’t deal with capacity issues by building more jails, but by reducing the demand for jails,” according to Minister Naqvi. Mental-health care, and health care in general, are on his list for attention too, after the staffing shortage is addressed.

We can hope the minister’s resolve to push forward his reforms in the prison file are more substantive than his efforts to eliminate police ‘carding’. We’ve written Yasir Naqvi to offer our encouragement……….

January 23, 2016

The Honourable Yasir Naqvi,
Minister of Community Services & Correctional Services,
18th Floor, George Drew Building,
25 Grosvenor Street,
Toronto, ON M7A 1Y6

Re: “Ontario indicates that major prison-system changes are in the works”
Globe and Mail, Saturday, January 16, 2016

Dear Minister Naqvi:

I spent most of a day last week in College Park 501 Court (bail applications) to update my observations on the state of the process in Ontario.

Man after man was called up from Toronto South Detention Centre, commenting about lockdowns, no showers, no lawyers, no visits, no meds. Access to lawyers and medications in particular should raise red flags in your Ministry, given the potential liability the provinces faces for damages.

Ontario has a way to go to match operational standards in some other provinces. Too, your intention to reduce the need for jails is both ambitious and warranted.

Be bold!

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen

Back in July of 2014, the Globe and Mail reported that our federal prison system was using solitary confinement beyond UN recommendations, at the same time other jurisdictions understood the negative impact of isolating prisoners and were moving away from it. Correctional Service of Canada, under Commissioner Don Head, paid lip service to prohibiting the practice “in principle”, but were making no move to change.

Our July 14 letter to Mr. Head criticized the lack of action and suggested new policies could be in place within 72 hours under his direction. In response, a two-page letter from Assistant Commissioner Scott Harris attempted to sidestep the matter by defining solitary confinement as something different from CSC segregation policies. This is one of those examples we often hear of CSC employees looking one straight in the eye and lying without batting a lash. We more or less told Mr. Harris that when his letter was answered on August 23.

Forward to “Great! But, will they comply?”, published on November 18 of this year.

Assistant Commissioner Harris again wrote us:

December 1, 2015

Dear Mr. Klassen:

Thank you for your correspondence of November 18, 2015, addressed to the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), Mr. Don Head, in which you express concerns regarding his testimony at a Senate Committee hearing in March 2015.

At the onset, I would like to clarify that the Commissioner/s testimony before the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology on March 12, 2015, related to Bill S-208, An Act to Establish the Canadian Commission on Mental Health and Justice and not specific to the case of federal inmate Edward Snowshoe.

As I previously explained in my letter dated July 30, 2014, administrative segregation is often compare to solitary confinement and segregation as recognized in Canada.

For more information on federal corrections, including administrative segregation, please consult the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), the Corrections and Conditional Release Regulations (CCRR), and Commissioner’s Directive 709: Administrative Segregation, all of which can be found on CSC’s website at the following link: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/acts-and-regulations/index-eng.shtml.

Thank you for taking the time to write

Sincerely,

Scott Harris
Assistant Commissioner
Communications and Engagement Sector

And again, we responded:

December 16, 2015

Scott Harris, Assistant Commissioner,
Communications and Engagement Sector,
Correctional Service of Canada,
340 Laurier Avenue West,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0P9

Assistant Commissioner Harris:

I’m as baffled today by your December 1st letter as I was when writing on August 23 last year in answer to the July 30th letter you referenced.

When any person or persons employed by Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) removes an inmate to isolation in an institution, confines that inmate to a cell for 23 hours per day or more, and where that inmate is without property previously in their possession, access to programs and/or jobs, and the contacts with population and staff they had prior to the move, that is solitary confinement. You may call it by whatever name you wish, and categorize and sub-categorize it ‘til the cows come home, but it is and always will be solitary confinement.

The government’s intent is to restrict this practice of isolating prisoners, and so it should, in spite of what will no doubt be the protests of CSC’s NHQ. The prime minister and his justice minister may in the end need to appoint at-arms-length compliance officers deputized to enforce PMO instructions without recourse to appeal or delay, as counterpoint to a recalcitrant bureaucracy.

However this will unfold, there are many of us in the community who will be watching.

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen
cc Justin Trudeau
Jody Wilson-Raybould
turnoverarocktoday.com

Sadly, controlling the civil service is like herding cats. It can take more resources than most people are willing to give, and some circumstances leave us suffering unnecessarily.

“Liberals to curtail solitary confinement” ran over Patrick White’s byline in the Globe and Mail’s Saturday, November 14 edition. The story was subtitled, “Trudeau directs Justice Minister ban long-term isolation and implement recommendations from inquest into Ashley Smith’s death.”

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society filed a January suit claiming solitary confinement contributes to prisoners’ deaths, indiscriminately targets mentally ill and aboriginal inmates, and is unconstitutional. Separately, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies also filed a lawsuit asserting the federal practice is unconstitutional.

Don Head, Correctional Service Canada Commissioner, denied federal prisons use ‘solitary confinement’ when he testified last March at a Senate Committee hearing into the death of Edward Snowshoe. Mr. Head is full of bovine excrement! A short letter copied below tells him so.

The move would bring Canada into line with guidelines set down by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the direction both the United Kingdom and the United States are taking. Needless to say, it also reverses the so-called ‘tough on crime’ agenda of the previous government.

“This is a good start,” according to Howard Sapers, our federal inmate ombudsman. But, like him, before we celebrate an end to our medieval penal practices under a new and enlightened Liberal government, let’s remember that while it is one thing to order change, it may be quite another for a sometimes obstreperous civil service to enthusiastically carry out those orders.

November 18, 2015

Don Head, Commissioner,
Correctional Service Canada,
340 Laurier Avenue West,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0P9

Re: Liberals to curtail solitary confinement
Globe and Mail, Saturday, November 18, 2015

Commissioner Head:

You testified at a Senate Committee hearing last March into the death of federal inmate Edward Snowshoe.

“The term ‘solitary confinement’, which has been used in the medial quite a bit, actually refers to something different than what we do in Canada,” you were quoted by the Globe as saying at this hearing.

Mr. Head, you are full of bovine excrement!

Very truly,

Charles H. Klassen

cc turnoverarocktoday.com