On the Road Again (Really Long)
Today was another adventure in my life. Today I visited Saskatchewan Penitentiary, River Bend Institution and Willow Cree Healing Lodge to recruit new residents for the half-way house. The Pen wasn’t as intimidating as I’d anticipated. Maybe it was because I wasn’t there to be incarcerated or as a family member to visit an inmate. Let’s see…I’ll start at the beginning of the day and go from there.
First, I was awake at 6 am and was ready by 6:30. My ride arrived about 6:45. We drover her sister to a friend’s place and then we headed out of town. After a 2 hour drive we got to Prince Albert where the prison is, just on the edge of town. Prince Albert is a prison based town. Not only do they have the Pen, they have Willow Grove, the provincial jail for women and a men’s provincial jail.
Oh, I should do a little review about Canada the Criminal Code of Canada and prisons since many of my readers are not in Canada (and even Canadians don’t know their own legal system).
Canada doesn’t have the same kind of division of criminal laws that the United States has. The Criminal Code of Canada is the document that states what a crime in Canada is. The federal government is the body that determines criminal law. So it is Parliament that creates, votes on and establishes criminal law in Canada.
Criminal laws are divided into three different categories: summary offences, indictable offences and offences that could be either depending on the determination of the Crown Prosecutor. The Crown Prosecutor represents the government, much like the District Attorney does, but isn’t elected. They’re hired like any other civil servant.
Summary offences are ones that are less severe, petit theft, robbery without violence, and the like can be summary offences. These will receive community service, fines, probation or sentences that are two years less a day (with or without probation determined at sentencing). Indictable offences are more severe such as bank robbery, theft with a weapon/violence, assault causing bodily harm and murder. These offences result in sentences two years and over.
People who are sentenced to two years less a day are sent to provincial jails. They are run by the individual provinces and overseen by each province’s Department of Justice. These people will serve part of their sentence and then be released on probation (as opposed to parole) at their early release date.
People who are sentenced to two or more years are sent to a federal penitentiary. Right now a prisoner will have to serve at least 1/3 of their sentence in prison. That might be a maximum, medium or minimum facility. At 1/3 of their sentence they can apply to go on day parole. The parole board might decide to let them go on day parole or to hold them longer in the system. After a prisoner has served 2/3 of their sentence they are eligible for statutory release. This doesn’t mean they are released, just that they are eligible. Most prisoners with a finite sentence (if they didn’t get day parole) will be released on full parole at that time. Very few people are kept to their warrant expiry (end of their sentence) because CSC prefers to gradually reintegrate people back into society. It tends to be more successful that way.
The government has introduced a bill to Parliament that would get rid of accelerated parole (where day parole lasts only 1-2 months), statutory release is eliminated meaning that every prisoner will have to go through a day parole release or stay in prison to their warrant expiry and getting rid of 2X the time credit for time spent in remand. The theory behind 2X the time (2 days credit for every day spent in remand) is that remand is so unpleasant and restrictive that it counts for twice the time in a regular prison/jail). I worry that more men and women will spend their entire sentences in prison and be released into the community without any resources already set up (as they can on day parole) and without any adaptation to the outside. It’s as sure a way of setting people up for failure as the accelerated parole has been for many offenders.
The exception to this are those who are on life sentences. These people can also apply for parole, but they are rarely released on full parole straight out of the prison. The reason for this is that they have been inside for too long to cope effectively directly out of prison. No amount of watching television prepares a person for that amount of culture shock. People serving life sentences are released on day parole that will last 1 or more years at a half-way house. This is to help them get used to being out and allow for a more gradual reintegration into the community. If they are revoked for some reason (usually a breach of conditions such as drinking) they go back for a few years. They can apply for another round of day parole after they’ve been back in prison for a time. We’ve had a couple of guys a few times on day parole who are lifers who went back and were released again on day parole.
There are also a fewer number of people who are released after 2/3 of their sentence on statutory release with a residency requirement. This means that they have to live at a half-way house as a condition of their release. They have a few more rules to follow, but it functions, for all intents and purposes, the same as day parole except that they have to check in for all meals and stay during the ½ hour meal time.
The people we spoke to at the prisons weren’t just offenders. We also presented what we do to in-house parole officers. They are expecting to get more Section 84 releases (Aboriginal offenders who want to be released to places that have cultural sensitivity and/or programs in place and are Section 84 approved by CSC) from Sask Pen. We’ve already had several from Willow Cree, which isn’t surprising considering is a Healing Lodge for Aboriginal offenders. Anyway having the in-house parole officers more acquainted with our place means that they will be more likely to refer people to our place. This helps them direct offenders who are coming up to their day parole release decide where to go. We saw only 1 man at Sask. Pen, about 8 or 9 at River Bend and 4 at Willow Cree.
So now you know the population of offenders that I work with.
Now, onto the prisons. Sask. Pen. wasn’t quite as intimidating as I thought it would be. I expected razor wire on top of the 99 year old tall walls. The wire was on the inner yards, but not the exterior tall brick walls. You can Google pictures if you want. The front door was just a regular door. There is a sliding locked door that closes this off when they open the door to the prison itself. This prevents any prisoners inside that door (that’s where intake and outgo are ) from bolting and trying to escape. Then you walk through a metal detector that shows the level of your body that metal is. The metal of the underwire of my bra set it off was well as my volume of earrings. Across from this are were two people in a central area who monitored the prison yards on cameras. We went through a door there and then to a meeting room where we spoke to the parole officers and to an offender who was interested in coming to our half-way house. After that, we had a short tour of the facility.
The majority of prisoners housed at PA are medium to maximum security. They have two gang ranges one on the main floor tier and the other on the third floor tier on opposite sides of the quad. When each of the gang tiers are out the entire quad area movement is closed down. This prevents the gangs from being able to recruit people and equally importantly, not fight each other. So when one gang pod is taken to meals or to exercise the other pods (rows/tiers) are locked down. They have one that consists of people who require extra security to protect them. This can be high profile sex offenders, child molesters and/or people with psychiatric issues. There are two general population ranges, two ranges of older men (40 and over and 50 and over) and segregation as well. Most of the people in this building (a very large building) were medium security prisoners. One of the parole officers we spoke to would’ve rated them at high medium security.
We didn’t go into the maximum security building. That’s where the special handling unit (or SHU) used to be. They no longer have the SHU at that facility. That’s in Edmonton. We were shown where programs, Aboriginal programs and workshops were. All in all a very interesting tour.
There was only one loud clanging door like I expected to hear all over the institution. That was the door off the front foyer to the admissions and out-go. Apparently there are a whole lot more of them in the maximum security building.
Next we went to River Bend. That’s the minimum security facility at PA. It used to be a farm growing vegetables and breeding animals, running a piggery and a dairy farm as well as chicken/egg production. The farm ceased operation about a year ago. The farm operations will be replaced with more trades training that will give the prisoners the necessary skills to get a job in the outside world. While working on the farm kept the men occupied and provided food for the facility (as well as other facilities including half-way houses) the work they did there didn’t give them skills to get jobs anywhere other than a farm. How much call is there for people to grade eggs, work on dairies, or muck barns?
This was a more relaxed facility. There are 17 houses where anywhere from 6 to 8 men live. Each house (literally) has a bedroom for each man, a kitchen and living room area. The men buy their own food, cook for themselves and clean their own living spaces. The only cameras in this area focus on the main yard. There are no fences around this facility to hold people in. The men aren’t there to make trouble for themselves. It’s atmosphere was more like ours. From the meeting we had with the prisoners there we’re likely to get more people from there. Most of our residents come from River Bend.
After we had lunch (not very good Chinese food – I rarely get gas from Chinese food that doesn’t tofu in it, today I did) we headed to Willow Cree. Willow Cree is a minimum security facility located on a reserve. The staff are nearly all Aboriginal. Elders were hired to help facilitate the healing of men who were damaged by residential schools (the root of enormous pain for Aboriginal people and their communities) and younger men who are affected by the generational cycle of abuse rooted in the harm done by residential schools and the federal government’s policies aimed at getting rid of the Aboriginal people covered under the Indian Act. It’s a very long and tragic story for Aboriginal people and a massive black scar on the image of Canada being a place where human rights are purportedly respected. Since we’d had a tour last year at the AGM hosted in Saskatoon we didn’t need one today. We talked to several men who were interested in coming to Saskatoon. Their acceptance at our half-way house is nearly guaranteed as they will be minimum security and come to us under Section 84.
Then it was a 1 hour drive back to town and home.
All in all it was a very nice, informative and interesting day. I very much enjoyed meeting the people I met and look forward to going back sometime in the future. Next time my co-worker will be going up with the Director. I hope she enjoys her trip as much as I did mine.