Fighting crime by building more jails is like fighting cancer by building more cemeteries.
Paul Kelly
When will we ever learn?
Not only is solitary confinement in our federal prisons and provincial jails “a broken and dangerous system”, no matter how the practice is labeled, the policies, safeguards, and restrictions put in place are neither followed nor enforced with any consistency. Management has no option but to deny irregularities are common, and no authoritative body exists to which recourse is available.
The letter to Julia Payson of B.C.’s John Howard Society was also sent to Carmen Cheung, Senior Counsel, at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association which is the other party to this lawsuit.
The British Columbia action has been filed with the B.C. Supreme Court. A few days later, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in partnership with the Elizabeth Fry Societies petitioned the Ontario Superior Court, challenging the constitutionality of isolation.
The letter to Jason Tamming is one of those delightful tasks that make life worthwhile
January 27, 2015
Julia Payson, Executive Director B. C.,
John Howard Society of B. C.,
763 Kingsway,
Vancouver, BC V5V 3C2
Re: Rights groups sue Ottawa over solitary confinement
Globe and Mail, Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Dear Ms. Payson:
Sunny Dhillon and Patrick White’s Globe article begins with, “two rights groups have sued the federal government over the use of solitary confinement in prisons, arguing Canada remains committed to a broken and dangerous system that increases inmates’ suffering even as jurisdictions around the world scale back its use.”
The Toronto Star editorial on Monday, January 26 calls your lawsuit “welcome news”, and opines that, “it’s not as if Canada doesn’t know better.”
Thank you, and the B. C. Civil Liberties Association, for taking an action you wouldn’t have to if our public servants weren’t so hell bent on being on the wrong side of right.
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc turnoverarocktoday.com
January 27, 2015
Jason Tamming, Press Secretary to Steven Blaney,
Ministry of Public Safety,
Ste. 306, Justice Building,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Re: Rights groups sue Ottawa over solitary confinement.
Globe and Mail, Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Mr. Tamming:
You’ve got to be kidding! The Canadian government is “taking action to keep our streets and communities safe.” “[Correctional Service Canada] uses all of its tools to make sure the corrections system actually corrects criminal behaviour, including the use of segregation.” Now really, only the uninformed would believe you, and only the mean-spirited would want to believe you.
As the Toronto Star’s editorial on Monday, January 26, pointed out when it called this lawsuit “welcome news”, “it’s not as if Canada doesn’t know better.”
The minister for whom you work and the government he represents are so hell bent on being on the wrong side of right, they make no effort to hide their position as anything more than pandering to a particular voter base.
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc turnoverarocktoday.com
Ontario’s Provincial Jails – A Comment
January 26, 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:
I’ve been following the Toronto Star’s Amy Dempsey’s work over the last number of weeks on the use of segregation in Ontario’s jails, and in particular at the new Toronto South Detention Centre. The one persistent question I would have in your position as this sorry tale unfolds is, how is it possible that this could be allowed to happen? But then, I’m able to see from your ministry’s response to the media that comments such as the health of inmates and staff is a “top priority”, or that inmates continue to receive the medical care they require in population or in segregation, is only fodder for public consumption.
If you were genuinely concerned about jail operations, you might imitate television’s “Undercover Boss”. I doubt though you’d find one person in your professional circle who would recommend this course. You’d have to be a very courageous politician to take that step.
The federal prison system is one of my specialty areas of activism and advocacy, but I was persuaded to look at Ontario’s provincial jails over a number of months in 2008 and 2009. What I found led me to write a series of questions “To Ontario’s Provincial Jail Superintendents”, a copy of which I’ve attached.
I suspect not a whole lot has changed over the years.
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc turnoverarocktoday.com
The Attachment
July, 2009
TO ONTARIO’S PROVINCIAL JAIL SUPERINTENDENTS
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN BEATEN BY GUARDS IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN INTENTIONALLY PUT IN SITUATIONS WHERE THEY WILL BE BEATEN BY OTHER INMATES IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN VERBALLY OR PHYSICALLY HARASSED WITH REMARKS BY STAFF, SUCH AS, “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING INMATES”, “I HATE INMATES”, “WHO DO I OWE A BEATING TO TODAY”, OR BACKHANDED/SLAPPED BY STAFF, IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO IMPLIED OR OVERT RACIAL SLURS, OR SINGLED OUT FOR HARSH TREATMENT BECAUSE OF RACE, IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN DENIED A SHOWER AND A HOT MEAL ON COURT DAYS IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN DEPRIVED OF CLOTHING AND/OR FOOD AND/OR BEDDING AND/OR HYGIENE PRODUCTS, OR PLACED IN SEGREGATION FOR NO SPECIFIED OR VERIFIABLE REASON, IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN THE THIRD OR FOURTH OCCUPANT IN A CELL IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE HAD THEIR CANTEEN ORDERS DESTROYED BY STAFF IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN DENIED THE USE OF A TELEPHONE, PREVENTED FROM CONTACTING THEIR LAWYERS, OR THE ONTARIO OMBUDSMAN, IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN DEPRIVED OF PAPER AND/OR PENCILS TO PREVENT THE FILING OF INSTITUTIONAL FORMS SUCH AS AN “INMATE STATEMENT FORM” IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE BEEN DENIED PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS OR MEDICAL ATTENTION OR TOLD THAT MEDICATION IS A PRIVILEGE AND NOT A RIGHT IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INFRACTIONS OF POLICY, PROCEDURE AND THE LAW HAVE JAIL CHAPLAINS WITNESSED IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK, BUT CAN’T DO THEIR WORK UNLESS THEY KEEP THEIR EYES, THEIR EARS, AND THEIR MOUTHS SHUT?
HAVE JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS EACH HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO WORSHIP IN COMMUNITY IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY INMATES HAVE RECEIVED “PACKAGES” THROUGH THE COLLABORATION OF JAIL STAFF IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MANY STAFF MEMBERS ARE NOT WEARING A CORRECTIONAL SERVICE ISSUED IDENTIFICATION TAG WHILE ON DUTY, OR WEARING A CORRECTIONAL SERVICE ISSUED IDENTIFICATION TAG IMPROPERLY, IN YOUR INSTITUTION THIS WEEK?
HOW MAY LOCKDOWNS HAVE OCCURRED IN YOUR INSTITUTION IN THE LAST MONTH BECAUSE OF STAFF SHORTAGES OR EXTENDED STAFF BREAKS, AND HOW MANY VISIT DAYS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED BECAUSE OF STAFF SHORTAGES, PARTICULARLY ON WEEKENDS?
WHY AREN’T RECORDS KEPT OF LOCKDOWNS AND CANCELLED VISITS IN YOUR INSTITUTIONS?
Gotta minute? (2)
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein
Gotta minute?
Of about 24 million registered electors in the country for the last federal election on May 2 in 2011, just under 15 million turned out to vote (61.4%), and slightly less than 40% of those, or about 5.9 million persons, voted for the present government in Ottawa. That equates to about 25% of registered electors! In other words, our government was elected with the votes of one in four….the other three either didn’t vote or cast a ballot against the government.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill from his speech to the Canadian Parliament on December 30 in 1941, that’s some majority! Some mandate!
Update – The First
Brennan Guigue was given a status report in a January 6th teleconference with his Montreal lawyer with respect to requests made of Correctional Service Canada’s Access to Information and Privacy Division, as specified in the November 2, 2014 posting in this file.
A November 28 letter from CSC’s Access Division to the lawyer indicated the approximate time to research the materials requested would be five hours, and an estimated cost for the service was quoted. A 50% minimum payment was due in advance. That has been made and a confirmation has been received by the lawyer.
Once the research is initiated, the lawyer’s experience with the process tells him several people will be assigned to look at one file at a time, moving on until the work is completed. There are additional costs per page for photocopies over a specified number, although it seems there is no charge for copies of video information.
The lawyer believes this could take as little as one month which complies with provisions of the Act, although delays should be expected.
This exchange between the lawyer and CSC’s Access Division should in no way suggest that Correctional Service Canada is cooperating fully and openly to provide what details are necessary to prove the case against them. Let’s just say this is the top of the first inning, and CSC now knows Brennan Guigue is serious in his intention to pursue this action.
The balance of the conversation between Brennan and his lawyer dealt with accumulating costs and a summary of expenses to date.
When Reason Fails – An Example
This December 16 letter to the Minister of Public Safety belongs in the two assigned categories. When our government panders to its voter base in the face of common sense, it deserves to be throttled as much for its stupidity as it does for the corruption it creates in the administration of justice.
December 16, 2014
The Honourable Steven Blaney,
Minister of Public Safety,
Ste. 306, Justice Building,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Re: Solitary confinement/segregation in our federal prisons
Minister Blaney:
House of Commons, Monday, December 8 (reported in the Globe and Mail, Tuesday, December 9)……Canada’s prison practices are “fully aligned with Western countries’ modern practices and we fully trust our correctional services to do the appropriate thing.”
House of Commons, Wednesday, December 10 (reported in the Toronto Star, Friday, December 12)….regarding segregation, “This is a procedure that is applied with a lot of common sense by our correctional officers.”
Really? Assuming the newspapers quoted you accurately, the fingers of both hands must have been crossed behind your back.
Only the uninformed or anyone with an agenda that skirts the truth would believe this, and there are tens of thousands of us in the community who are embarrassed on your behalf. Imagine. A Minister of the Crown giving voice to such nonsense! One wonders what causes an intelligent person to support such counterproductive measures. Thankfully for you, this is a country where armchair activism wins over street protests.
There will come a time when you are no longer in public life, and an opportunity to have you reflect upon your present positions from that perspective would be welcomed by many.
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc turnoverarocktoday.com
system.
Supreme Court of Canada – Police rights to Search Cellphones
On December 11, 2014, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that police can conduct limited searches of suspects’ cellphones without a search warrant….but, they must follow strict rules. The search must be directly related to the circumstances of an arrest, and detailed records of the search must be kept.
The Court’s 4 to 3 ruling is a margin so narrow one wonders how much sway tipped the decision one way or the other.
This writer is ambivalent on the subject, but there’s a tendency to agree with the Court. The problem though, and the issue I have with the SCC’s ruling, is best articulated in Heather Mallick’s December 15 Toronto Star column, “Court ruling on cellphones ravages people’s privacy.” It questions the Court’s belief that the police can regulate themselves, and will follow the rules. There can be information on a cellphone subject to broad interpretation, stored for personal but non-relevant purposes, and in some cases outdated and awaiting deletion. Check out this column on the Star’s web site. In any case, we can foretell legal challenges are to come.
One important question Ms. Mallick asks in her column is, can a suspect refuse to provide a phone’s password to the police. I was able to email her the answer. No, suspects are not required to provide passwords, BUT the police know that most people don’t know that and they will press for the information. The message……be informed….and inform. And, choose passwords wisely.
Were we really expecting something different?
For the week ahead of Correctional Service of Canada’s scheduled December 11 response to the 104 recommendations that came out of the 2013 inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the Globe and Mail ran daily articles on the subject of solitary confinement in our federal prisons. In its 28 page response to the inquiry’s findings, CSC hardly did better than to acknowledge that there had been an inquiry and it was expected to say something……anything….but it wasn’t about to make any substantive changes.
December 15, 2014
David Walmsley, Editor-In-Chief,
The Globe and Mail,
444 Front Street West,
Toronto, ON M5V 2S9
Re: Solitary confinement in Canada’s federal prisons
Dear Mr. Walmsley:
I’m a Correctional Service of Canada “specialist”. I’ve spent more than twenty years in research and observation of this institution.
If I give ground to Steven Blaney and his staffers at Public Safety, or Don Head and others at CSC’s National Headquarters, it’s for their lack of accurate information of how federal prisons operate in the trenches where thousands of inmates and CSC employees live and work. But I surrender only a few millimetres because I’m convinced Mr. Blaney and Mr. Head, et al, would prefer not to know. It’s like the old Victorian adage, “I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”
It doesn’t take much research/observation, or the expertise of the proverbial rocket scientist, to support my long-held view that Correctional Service of Canada is dishonest, abusive, morally and ethically corrupt, and a blot on the landscape of this country. So many have become frustrated with the organization’s absence of accountability and transparency, and its refusal to comply with the law, international treaties, best practices, and a plethora of calls for change. When I was recently given an opportunity to help underwrite a legal action against CSC on behalf of an inmate, I ran headlong to get involved.
Your recent series on the use of solitary confinement/administrative segregation in the federal prison system is a welcome insight into practices which are entirely unacceptable. You and all the contributors to this project are to be commended for making this effort to bring about change. Sadly, we see how intransigent some of our public servants can be. Strange, given the meaning of “servant” is not abstruse.
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc Steven Blaney/Don Head/turnoverarocktoday.com
Lawsuits against the Toronto Police Services
There are hundreds of complaints filed against the Toronto Police Services every year, plus many more incidents where citizens believe a complaint is warranted but not worth the effort. Many are dismissed summarily, whether or not they have merit. And, we don’t have any figures because no government body is required to oversee and issue the statistics. It’s up us to research the material.
In additional, where there is a financial resolution to a dispute, we are not entitled to know the details, even though tax dollars are involved, either directly or indirectly as liability insurance premiums.
TPS is quick to deflect criticism, and Mark Pugash is adept at the work he does. That’s why it’s important to take him to task when the opportunities arise, even if there’s a delay is getting to it.
December 9, 2014
Mark Pugash, Director,
Unit Commander, Corporate Communications,
Toronto Police Services,
40 College Street,
Toronto, ON M5G 2J3
Re: Man reeling from arrest seeks closure in court
Toronto Star, September 24, 2014
Dear Director Pugash:
“It’s important to note that it is not at all unusual for lawsuit claims to fail in court. Unfortunately, the Toronto Star provides a platform for unproved claims but rarely, if ever, lets its readers know when the claims it prints are judged to be baseless.” This is part of your response when Wendy Gillis asked about Tyrone Sparks’ multi-claim suit against the Toronto Police Services as printed in the above article.
You’re right. Outcomes rarely appear in print. In an email exchange I had with the Star’s Jim Rankin in June of 2013 on just this subject, he admitted they could do a better follow-up job but noted that neither party to an action is prone to report any outcome. As well, he agreed with my assessment that a resolution, particularly where gag orders prevent the disclosure of details, is generally not newsworthy.
I have a lengthy list of newspaper items of legal actions launched against the police where nothing further appears. More pertinent though is “Mayor calls for review of police litigation” from the Globe and Mail’s Tuesday March 15, 2005 edition, where David Miller “was responding to a CBC Radio report that the city spent more than $30-million on more than 8,000 lawsuits against the police since 1998.” The figures stagger! Consider also the additional number of people who may believe they had grounds for a complaint but just didn’t bother filing. Then too, how do the last ten years stack up?
Here’s a suggestion. Given your position with the Toronto Police Services, the resources you have and your access to the media, plus the sense that you feel the TPS is ill-served by the press, why don’t you publish the outcomes of these varied and many actions?
Yours truly,
Charles H. Klassen
cc Wendy Gillis, Toronto Star
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