Most people who encounter the justice system hope, as I did at first, for a shorter sentence to be served in a provincial jail, not in a federal prison. Yet as bad as federal prisons can be, provincial jails in Canada are considerably worse.
In Canada, prisoners on remand awaiting trial or bail, or those sentenced to less than two years, are confined in provincial jails. Federal prisons hold only those with sentences of two or more years. Of the roughly 250,000 criminal cases in a typical year in Canada, only 3,000 to 4,000 end up with a federal sentence. So the vast majority of people in the system never see the inside of a federal prison. The average sentence here is only about 30 days.
My few weeks in provincial jail (a couple of days after my arrest and then nearly three weeks after my guilty plea) and what I was told by other prisoners made it evident that these are places of abuse and neglect, where the rights of prisoners (and the Supreme Court has said that prisoners retain all rights other than the loss of freedom) are routinely violated.
Terrible conditions
Let’s just mention some of the frequent occurrences in provincial jails:
- Very often, as I did after my arrest, there are three men or women spending 16 or more hours a day locked in a cell that barely has space for two. Provincial jails are routinely very overcrowded.
- Fights and violence are commonplace.
- Lockdowns in which nobody gets out of their cell for days at a time are frequent. This means no phone calls, no showers, no visits, no exercise, nothing. In a 19-day stay, I had four showers and three exercise periods — where “exercise” consisted of 30 minutes in a concrete and cinder block space where you could not see the outside. Lockdowns are often due to staffing shortages.
- Provincial jails are terrible places for staff, with very high rates of grievances, sick time, stress and even suicide — which leads to more absenteeism, more lockdowns, worse conditions and more staff turnover.
- There is no work, therapy, programs or other activities for the 70 per cent of prisoners held on remand — and not very much for prisoners serving sentences either. Hardly any books or reading material, and hardly any writing materials.
- Visits are routinely cancelled or happen only by a video link, and when they do occur in person, they happen behind glass where you talk through a telephone.
- When a phone is available to prisoners, phone charges are at levels unheard of in any other setting — such as $1 per minute for a local call. Phones are in public places, so conversations are routinely overheard by other prisoners.
- Guards may make a point of telling prisoners when a new arrival has charges that make him undesirable (such as sex offences), which can lead to those prisoners being beaten by other prisoners. I witnessed this more than once.
- Mail from or to prisoners is often “lost.” Many of the letters I sent from provincial jail never reached their destination.
- People die at vastly disproportionate rates. The death rate in provincial jails in Canada is much higher than the death rate for the general population. Most of those deaths are due to drug overdoses, violence or suicide.
- Many people are released from these institutions into homelessness, so there is a high death rate for released prisoners also.
This litany of bad conditions has been recognized by courts across Canada. Judges routinely award additional credit against sentences for time served in provincial jails, something recently upheld by the Supreme Court. And some cases are being thrown out entirely due to terrible events in provincial jails, such as the keeping of many prisoners handcuffed and dressed only in underwear for up to 48 hours at Maplehurst jail in Ontario recently.
Why are provincial jails so bad?
Why are conditions in provincial jails worse than most situations in federal prisons, which house people who committed the most serious offences?
Because provincial jails contain some people with very serious charges (even though the vast majority of charges are much less serious), they operate as maximum-security facilities with much stricter rules and restrictions. The rules are made not for the average prisoner but for the worst one can imagine, a strategy that will always lead to bad results.
Most people do not spend a lot of time in provincial jails. It happens that people spend a year or two or sometimes even more, but the average length of stay is less than 30 days. It is easier to get away with horrible facilities, bad food and poor treatment when most people are there only for a short time.
Short stays mean there is a huge amount of churn in provincial jails. Considerable numbers of people enter and leave every day. It is harder for staff to know who the prisoners are, harder to control gang affiliations and there is little incentive for staff to take any interest in individual prisoners. The function is essentially just custodial.
It is hard to recruit and retain good people in provincial jails. These are bad jobs that get worse with more time spent in them.
There is no independent oversight in provincial jails. In the federal system, there is the Correctional Investigator who, though their powers are very limited, can at least give public exposure to the worst problems. In provincial jails, as we have recently seen in several cases, managers and governments, when charged with gross misconduct, simply refuse to answer questions and often attempt to hide the evidence of wrongdoing. Frequent recommendations of coroners’ inquests into deaths in custody are routinely ignored by provincial governments and their correctional services.
Meanwhile, governments in several provinces are proposing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build new provincial jails — when the last new one built in Ontario, Toronto South, is considered one of the worst places of all to be locked up.
I only spent a few weeks in provincial jail, but those few weeks were a lot harder than the many months I spent in federal custody. This defies reason.
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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