Toronto’s Star and Globe both ran front pages on August 20 covering Ontario’s Advocate for Children and Youth’s 78 page review of practices in the province’s juvenile prisons, focusing in particular on the use of solitary confinement. While this research paper is likely the first of its kind in the country, the recommendations are far from new and the government bodies involved have been presented with similar and like material in the past.

As the advocate noted, if parents treated their children in the same way the juvenile penal system often does, the province would be apprehending those kids. “On what planet who would think that that kind of treatment of anyone, let alone a young person, would help?” is how chief advocate Irwin Elman characterized the use of solitary confinement in some cases. Other issues also surfaced, none a surprise to a seasoned observer.

We’ve argued that our politicians and their principal civil service staffers can’t know what goes on in the trenches, and apparently don’t want to know. Deniability ensures tenure. Just as strongly we’ve made the point that, up and down the line, our penal systems’ primary programming appears to stress job guarantees.

August 21, 2015

The Honourable Tracy MacCharles,
Ministry of Children & Youth Services,
14th Floor,
56 Wellesley Street West,
Toronto, ON M5S 2S3

Re: Advocate of Children &Youth report

Dear Minister MacCharles:

“Go clean your room!”
How many times would you expect to say that to a child before the work actually gets done?
The children/youth advocate’s new report on the use of solitary confinement in youth detention centres makes a number of recommendations. This is far from the first time your ministry has seen the same or like proposals, and while incremental improvements are in place, there’s still a long way to go. Your response calls for a yet another “thorough review”.
My suggestion? “Go clean your room.”
You’re aware too you have some civil servants in our detention centres, living off the public purse, who are contravening ministry policy, and even violating the law. Yet, they’re still on the payroll.
Again, “Go clean your room.”

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen
cc Kathleen Wynne

A few years ago, a federal prison inmate in British Columbia asked for permission to buy a $20 thesaurus. He was taking an educational program where this would help, and although the prison library had a thesaurus, this inmate wanted to have a copy handy for work in the off hours. The institution denied him.

He spoke with a fellow inmate, a certified paralegal, they took Correctional Service of Canada to court and in August of 2010, a judge in a federal court in B.C. found in favour of the inmate. The legal costs for this inmate and his paralegal representative were less than $100. The cost to you for government lawyers to defend CSC was $9028.45.

This is one of scores of similar cases where you are spending your tax dollars to protect a system in need of a ground-up overhaul. Almost all never get media attention.

The Globe and Mail’s July 18, 2015 edition published Sean Fine’s “Thousands of inmates could join lawsuit.” Mr. Fine is one of the papers justice writers, and his story is focused on a 34 year-old federal prisoner with emotional and mental health concerns who is at the centre of a $600-million class-action lawsuit claiming “Canada’s use of solitary confinement and lack of timely access to prescription drugs violate the rights of the mentally ill.” The inmate is in Edmonton Institution but the action was filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday, July 18. It could take several months for the court to decide to certify the lawsuit, authorizing it to go forward.

This article goes on to lay out the details for the basis of the claim, citing negligence and breach of the government’s duties toward mentally ill prisoners. It’s not a pretty picture. James Sayce, a Toronto lawyer connected to the action, points out that, “The extreme injuries that these individuals have suffered should be compensated. The fact that they’ve made mistakes in their lives, committed crimes, doesn’t give the government carte blanche to treat them as it sees fit.”

Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Just as you spent $9,000 to prevent an inmate from bettering himself, and will spend a great deal more to face the challenge outlined in this potential class action, these are but two of many, many legal entanglements Correctional Service of Canada is juggling. Even turnoverarocktoday is supporting a claim……see Justice for Brennan Guigue.

Just how much do you want to spend on lawyers before we insist CSC turn a corner toward a more enlightened approach to rebuilding lives?

Contrasting perspectives:

“Ottawa tightens prison visit rules in drug crackdown”, appeared on the Toronto Star’s Sunday July 5 front page. The federal prison system’s new rules for preventing contraband from getting into institutions loosened the justifications that permit guards to conduct searches of anyone coming into a prison.

Taken at face value, the revised policy seems a reasonable response to relieve a perceived problem, although the degree of subjectivity presents opportunities for legal challenges. What is implied though is the enhanced procedures introduced in stages over the last many years have not had the impact Correctional Service of Canada and the government intended. In other words, tighter and tighter enforcement has failed.

What this article further suggests is the Canadian government’s ongoing focus on punitive measures rather than restorative programming is expensive, ineffective, and counter-productive.

Then, a few pages into the front section of that same Star edition was another item, “Obama will free dozens of inmates.” The president’s clemency power primarily affects non-violent drug offenders. This action strikes a blow against mandatory minimum sentencing and the so-called tough-on-crime agenda prevalent in the States for so long. Obama will likely free more before his term of office finishes next year.

The President of the United States is not a renegade. The U.S. is moving in the opposite direction to the course this country set many years ago under the current federal government. He’s doing it with the support of many in his own party, as well as a solid Republican base, and most of the Western World is in sync. Why are we so out of step?

As the title asks, how many times can you be conned?

Toronto Star reporter Amy Dempsey published “Jails flouting new rules on solitary” in the paper’s June 22 edition.

Christina Jahn spent more than 200 days in solitary during 2011 and 2012 at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, without help for cancer or mental illness. In a 2013 financial settlement with Jahn, Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services also committed to updating its prisoner handbook to include the rights of inmates in solitary, and to proactively distribute the handbook to them. Jahn had refused a cash settlement alone, and insisted that remedies had to be part of any agreement because she hoped it would improve conditions for other inmates.

The terms of the remedies are mandatory. Nevertheless, when the Toronto Star reviewed the updated 30 page document it found a glaring omission: it contained no information about the rights of prisoners in solitary which was central to the required update. As a result, the ministry agreed to a separate handout for inmates sent to segregation, and was to begin distribution in March of 2015 while the handbook was in another revision.

Despite direct orders from the ministry, some Ontario jails are failing to follow instructions.

And so, for the second time the ministry has been accused of breaching the terms of its agreement with Jahn. Her lawyers are taking legal action against the province and asking the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to declare that MCSCS has contravened the settlement by not taking the required actions, and is seeking $1,500 damages for each alleged violation.

In the meantime, Jahn’s cancer is now terminal, and she is not available for comment.
We’ve added an observation of our own:-

June 23, 2015

Steven Small, Assistant Deputy Minister,
Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services,
18th Floor,
George Drew Building, 25 Grosvenor Street,
Toronto, ON M7A 1Y6

Re: Jails flouting new rules on solitary, inmates say
Toronto Star, Amy Dempsey, June 22, 2015

Deputy Minister Small:

From your March 23 memo to Ontario jail superintendents, referring to the segregation handout:
“(It) is mandatory that all inmates being placed into segregation be provided with this handout effective immediately.”

Well, I can tell you that as of this week, inmates moved into segregation at the Toronto South Detention Centre are NOT getting this handout.

What’s more, inmates in provincial institutions are often angered by activists like me when speaking about policies that are not followed. What we don’t get, it’s been claimed, is that rules and regulations, policies and procedures….and even the law…..mean nothing to any number of MCSCS front-line staffers. They do as they please….with impunity.

They do as they please because management will not manage, and the Ministry’s priority is to keep the lid on whatever might disturb the peace.

Yours truly,

Charles Klassen

There were 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. in 2013. There were 1.6 million people incarcerated in China in 2014.

Does the United States have the safest neighbourhoods on earth? What is your nightly news telling you?

Daniel Dale is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star, and on May 23rd the paper published “U.S. criminal justice reform gains momentum” under his byline. It continues the saga of a years-long push by both Republicans and Democrats to dump the weathered, worn and discredited tough-on-crime agenda prevalent in American jurisprudence and public opinion since the 1990s for a ‘smart-on-crime’ and ‘right-on-crime’ alternative.

Some argue that for Republicans in particular, money is the motivation. It costs more for the State to kill a person than it does to keep them in prison for life. State spending on corrections in 1990 was 16.9 billions of dollars; by 2013 the figure was 51.9 billion. Regardless, change is coming, and while Washington may not lead the way in spite of the consensus among federal lawmakers, change is coming notably fast at the state level, especially in conservative-led states.

The movement is making for odd bedfellows. The conservative billionaire Koch brothers, liberal billionaire George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton are all standing for justice and prison reforms. Even Ted Cruz believes mandatory minimums should be slashed and judges granted more flexibility. He wants government to stop creating new crimes, and it should make the plea bargain fairer by forcing prosecutors to disclose evidence helpful to the accused.

Is it any wonder countries like New Zealand, Australia, the U.S.A., and the United Kingdom have been looking askance at Canada over the last few years? When you point a gun at your foot and pull the trigger, you will shoot yourself in the foot. It seems a lot of Canadians don’t know that, and our current federal government sees ignorance as fertile ground for votes.

So, why is Canada in the Dark Ages? You’re not paying attention, that’s why.

If you open a window so that the people in a prison can breathe and see the sun, it is good….but it’s still a prison and still just a window.
Mahdi Abdul-Hadi

The day after Patrick White’s April 29 Globe and Mail “Ferguson outlines parole shortcomings” story appeared, another Globe article was published under his byline. “New inmates often denied essential medications for weeks”, from the paper’s April 30 edition revealed that the delay in medical assessments for incoming inmates in the federal system was a dangerous practice with potentially serious consequences, particularly for prisoners with mental health issues.

This time, the source was an unreleased prison ombudsman investigation into the flaws with Correctional Service of Canada’s drug plan. According to Howard Sapers, Canada’s Correctional Investigator, his latest Annual Report notes that CSC is conducting a prevalence study of chronic health care conditions within the system, and he applauds what is a challenging initiative for an increasingly complex population’s health care needs.

Nonetheless, health care in the federal prison system has been an ongoing source of friction for decades as institutions struggle to stay within their budgets while inmates clamour for the attention to which the law says they are entitled. Lately, CSC is facing further budget constraints imposed by a federal government that makes no excuses for cutting funds at a time when new and expensive therapies for conditions such as Hep C offer benefits that will eventually make for healthier and safer communities.

Through all these years, and even now when faced with dire conditions threatening the health of thousands of men and women who will eventually come back into our neighbourhoods and become a burden to already overstretched health care resources, CSC has consistently tried to paint a very different image. In response to the April 30 Globe article and Patrick White’s request for a comment from Ottawa, Esther Mailhot acted as CSC’s spokesperson. She not only argued the situation was not as CSC’s own prison doctors claimed, but defended the practice of withholding some medications for the sake of offender and staff safety. This position contradicts both the evidence that these policies have negative impacts on the security of everyone in the system, but also the opinions of their own health care professionals.

Nothing seems to change. We couldn’t resist sending off a note to Ms. Mailhot:-

May 4, 2015

Ms Esther Mailhot,
Correctional Service of Canada,
340 Laurier Avenue West,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0P9

Re: New inmates often denied essential medications for weeks
Globe and Mail, Thursday, April 30, 2015

Ms Mailhot:

It’s become a striking hallmark of CSC over the twenty plus years I’ve observed the Service for management to deny, deflect and distract critics and criticisms, even when evidence is as close to irrefutable as is possible.

The sources the Globe and Mail cite warrant attention, and one would expect you to at least review the material, and go further still by dispatching a head office agent to determine the degree to which CSC policies are followed.

My own research over the years has found that health-care within the federal prison system is problematic, to be as kind as possible on the subject. I’m willing to allow that CSC looks to reexamine policy, but changes are slow in coming, and there remains a difference between what comes out of CSC Ottawa and how health-care is delivered in the trenches.

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen

In a report tabled on Tuesday, April 28, by federal Auditor-General Michael Ferguson, since Correctional Service of Canada is making it harder for inmates to get parole, it’s causing a spike in prison populations, an increase in the number of maximum-security ex-offenders released directly into the community, and a jump of $91 million in costs.

Patrick White’s Globe and Mail April 29 column, “Ferguson outlines parole shortcomings”, quotes Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society, saying, ”Not only are you imperilling the community, but there is a greater cost as well. People are coming out in greater numbers at statutory release when they have not taken the programming that would make them more likely to succeed at being law-abiding citizens.”

The Auditor-General concluded that this environment creates a potentially turbulent transition for many inmates with grave public safety risks.

But, true to form, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney saw all this in a positive light. We couldn’t help but let him know he’s not firing on all cylinders:-

May 4, 2015

The Honourable Steven Blaney,
Minister of Public Safety,
Ste. 306, Justice Building,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Re: Ferguson outlines parole shortcomings
Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 29

Minister Blaney:

“I am pleased that the Auditor-General found that our ‘truth in sentencing’ measures have worked because more prisoners are staying behind bars for a greater portion of their sentence.”

Good gracious, give you a change to shoot yourself in the foot, and you respond on cue.

I am pleased to add this to my file of verbal ammunition reserved for candidates for your party in the upcoming election. By this fall, I should have enough material to put some off canvassing for a week.

I’m grateful.

Charles H. Klassen

Edward Snowshoe, a 24 year-old aboriginal man from Fort McPherson in the NWT, hanged himself with a bedsheet on August 13, 2010 in Edmonton Institution. He’d spent 162 days in segregation, after having his security classification bumped up from medium to maximum for fashioning a makeshift weapon from a cardboard juice carton and holding it menacingly toward prison staff.
An Alberta judge issued what the Globe and Mail described as a scathing five-page report on this death last year. It took Mr. Head ten months to write a dismissive response. Refer to the Globe and Mail web site for more details on Edward Snowshoe.

April 6, 2015

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

Re: Prison head concedes few mistakes on treatment of Snowshoe
Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Commissioner Head:

The primary job of every person employed by Correctional Service of Canada is to put themselves out of work.

I think you’re more concerned about your next public service assignment than you are with the direction CSC takes in doing the right thing.

You might be interested in http://www.theflatearthsociety.org. It could fit into your mindset.
Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen

Back in 2008/2009, we spent some time looking at CSCS, the Ontario provincial jail system. Good grief, if taxpayers would only pay attention. You can look at the January 24th posting, “Ontario’s Provincial Jails – a Comment”, for an update. What follows is another letter to Yasir Naqvi around health care in particular.

March 10, 2015

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

Minister Naqvi:

Over many years, health care in our provincial jails has come to my attention as leaving much to be desired. This may be a generalization, and while I have numerous examples of professionals in the system working as we would expect, there are just too many instances of callous, negligent, and even dangerous responses to the medical needs of inmates.

Why would certified health-care workers not exercise best practices? In one case on file, a nurse in a Toronto facility told an inmate that, “health care is a privilege, not a right.” Frankly, minister, this makes no sense. That is, until a casual conversation on the subject with someone inside your ministry provided a likely explanation.

Whether remuneration and benefits in jail health-care units are competitive with the private sector is debatable, but in any case, money is not necessarily central to the situation as it exists. What is more to the point are the CSCS hiring practices for positions such as registered nurses. I’ve been told that persons holding valid certifications as RNs are considered eligible for available openings, without additional vetting. This has led to some questionable hires.

Minister Naqvi, I don’t expect to hear from you on the subject, but too many people in the community know a problem persists. If nothing else, your conscience demands that the rhetoric on health-care in our jails matches the reality.

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen