Another example: while I was in the assessment unit, my first months in federal prison, we were locked in our cells most of the time, and only rarely got off the range, usually for things like psychological tests. But attending religious services on Sunday was always a legitimate reason to be off the range, though one I did not use.
And another: federal prisons will provide halal and kosher food for prisoners who requested it. In the assessment unit, these meals were generally considered to be much better than the standard fare for prisoners, so some prisoners who were neither Muslim nor Jewish tried to get these meals.
It’s hard to see why religion has been accorded such a prominent place in prisons. Perhaps it’s because religion is associated with morality, and prisons are places filled with people who have been found to have behaved in ways widely regarded as immoral and in need of instruction. But as long as religion provides prisoners with some alternatives to the bleakness of their regular life, it will be embraced by many regardless of their actual beliefs. At the same time, for some prisoners, religion can provide a form of consolation, one of the few to be found there.
Chaplains
Every federal prison has a chapel and a chaplain. Every prison holds Christian religious observances on Sundays and provides some access for prisoners of other faiths. The chapel in the minimum security was used for many other purposes as well. For example, the yoga classes were held there, and so were many other group meetings.
Chaplains play an important role in prisons. They are the people who communicate bad news — both to prisoners and to family members. If a prisoner or a family member of a prisoner dies, it is typically chaplains who do the communicating (even though it is very rare for prisoners to be allowed to attend even close family funerals). Chaplains do much more than this, because they are somewhat outside the usual prison hierarchy. They aren’t guards and don’t have security responsibilities. Their focus is supposed to be on the welfare of prisoners as people.
I was fortunate in that the chaplain in this prison was an outstanding person. She was a trained counsellor as well (as mentioned briefly in my September column). She organized several groups for prisoners — for example, on dealing with grief and shame. You might think that such initiatives would be common in an institution that says it is dedicated to rehabilitation, but they aren’t. In fact, they only happen through the initiative of someone like our chaplain.
Most of all, she was a level-headed, calm, positive person in an environment where those qualities were much needed but not always found. Many times, she defused significant tensions between prisoners, or between prisoners and staff, in a way that nobody else in that institution could have done. Widely respected by prisoners, she was my favourite staff person.
I can’t speak about the work of chaplains in other institutions. I would imagine it’s intensely frustrating to try to do work that treats people — even people who have done really bad things — with basic dignity in a system that clearly does not believe in those things. Chaplains have my respect for trying!
Contracting out religion
The Correctional Service has a very ambivalent relationship to its chaplains. I think this is mostly because the chaplains are not in the formal chain of command and are not, as the system overall is, obsessed with control and “security.”
In 2012, the Conservative government announced it was getting rid of non-Christian chaplains; the Christian ones would serve everyone! While I was there, the government decided to contract out and take bids for chaplaincy services. All chaplains then had to reapply for their jobs! I remember how upset our chaplain was with this state of affairs; how she understandably felt that the important services she and her colleagues were providing were seen as trivial by the institution they worked for.
In response, some of the chaplains organized a company and won the contract, but two years later, the contract was awarded to the Canadian branch of a U.S.-based religious organization, which has held it since then. Their bid was about $1 million lower. Correctional Service Canada had many years of budget cuts under the Conservatives, and this was one of the results. (Many other harmful choices were made for budget reasons, such as eliminating many programs and supports for prisoners.) At that point, chaplains were also prohibited from providing support or services to prison staff, which they had previously done.
A couple of years later, the chaplains joined the United Steelworkers union to get some protection for themselves. In 2021, they got their first contract, with a second one in 2023. Isn’t there something perplexing in prison chaplains being part of a steelworkers’ union?
How ironic!
The ironies in this set of events are easy to see. The whole idea of contracting out religion seems bizarre. But it is also typical of the government’s disregard for people it is legally responsible for looking after. Whether a service would be better or worse for prisoners or fair to long-time staff appeared to be of no consequence compared to saving a million dollars in a budget of $2 billion.
The treatment of the chaplains mirrors the way prisoners are treated. They were dispensable — replaceable cogs in a big machine. The people whose job it is to care about prisoners found that their organization didn’t care about them — or about whether the prisoners were cared for either.
Then one boggles at contracting with a U.S.-based organization to provide services to Canadian prisoners (though the services are provided by Canadians). Perhaps there should be a tariff on religious practice.
Finally, the chaplains, presumably doing the work of God, found it necessary to join a union — and the Steelworkers to boot!
If you had written up these events as the premise for a comedy, it would have been rejected as just too wildly improbable. Yet in the bizarre world of Canadian criminal justice, it has somehow come to pass.
David Dorson is the pen name of someone who went through arrest, case disposition, imprisonment and parole in Ontario a few years ago. Law360 Canada has granted him anonymity because he offers a unique perspective on a subject that matters deeply to many readers, and revealing the author’s identity would make re-establishment in the community after serving his sentence much more difficult than it already is.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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