Preparing for prison | David Dorson

Facing imprisonment is a daunting prospect. Most people have no idea of what prison is like and the impressions we do get, often from American TV or movies, can be quite terrifying. I remember the fear I felt when I realized that I could well face a substantial term of imprisonment with all its potential violence. I had quite a few nights of considerable anxiety thinking about what might happen.

Internet

Initially I turned to the Internet to see what information might be available about Canadian prisons. Sadly, there is almost nothing. The website of the Correctional Service of Canada, which runs Canadian federal prisons, has virtually no information about life in those institutions either for prisoners or family members. Even basic information such as how you would send goods or money to a prisoner, or how to visit, or how to communicate by phone or mail, is not there. I found that a shocking state of affairs, as it made everything harder for prisoners and families who are already highly stressed.

I also found a site called prisontalk.com (PTO). Created years ago by a former prisoner, it was a discussion site for and around jails and prisons. Though it was run from the U.S., and the vast majority of people on it were in the U.S,. I was able to find some useful information about Canadian prisons around things like possessions you can have in jail even if many important questions did not come up there. 

After I got out of prison I rejoined this site and tried to answer questions from Canadians about how the system worked. It was quite pathetic to see family members asking how they could find out where their loved one was, or how to visit him, or how parole worked — questions for which good answers ought to be readily available from official Canadian sites. Sadly, PTO stopped operating around 2020, so even that resource is no longer available.

Personal contacts

Through support and therapeutic groups which I joined while on bail, I met a few men who had been through the process before. Like me, they were men who never expected to be imprisoned. Most had served provincial jail terms, whereas I was looking at federal prison time. I already knew that most prisoners who had been in both had found time in federal prison to be less difficult.    

One man in one of the groups had received a federal sentence and spent his time in a medium-security prison. He was a kind, soft-spoken and gentle person. He described the process to me of being first in the assessment unit and then a medium-security federal prison. He didn’t minimize the hardships, like spending 23 hours a day in a cell in assessment, but he didn’t overstate them either. Most prisoners, he told me, were far from the psychopathic types portrayed so often in movies. They were, as he experienced them, mostly rather ordinary people who had got caught up in something wrong or made a bad decision at the wrong time. 

Pretty well everyone I spoke with said that the times in a provincial jail, and then in the federal assessment unit, were likely to be the hardest. Another group member, who had spent a lot of time in provincial jails, told me this maxim: “The first hour is the hardest hour; the first day is the hardest day; the first week is the hardest week”… and so on. That thought turned out to be quite helpful. 

Other preparations

I did a couple of other things as well to prepare myself, and those I cared about. One of these was to learn some yoga. Others in my family had long been doing yoga and extolling its benefits. Now I realized that this was something I could do in a very small space, such as a prison cell, and that it would have both physical and psychological benefits. In addition to keeping my muscles more toned, its meditative aspect would be useful under the stressful conditions of jail. So with assistance from my family and a lot of online videos, I learned enough to be able to do some yoga routines each day. That did turn out to be a very effective strategy, which I would recommend to anyone facing jail time.

There were also some practical things that had to be done. When you are imprisoned, someone needs to be able to manage your affairs for you. While you have the possibility of communication through mail and phone, it is not entirely reliable, and in particular getting signed documents to someone outside can be quite challenging. A task like filing income tax or looking after a property or renewing a key document such as a drivers’ licence is very hard to do from inside a prison. So I prepared a power of attorney for a family member to manage my affairs and took that person through many of the things I did to manage my life, especially financial matters. I wrote out a list of tasks with various instructions or advice to refer to. I went to see my family doctor, my eye doctor, my dentist and got caught up on all my health needs.   

Most importantly, I tried to have as much contact as I could with the people who mattered most to me, and to spend that time in as positive a way as possible. I wanted others to worry about me as little as possible, and in my own mind I had the idea that if my time in prison was going to be miserable, I should try to make the weeks before that as positive as I could. For example, I made a trip to another city to see some people important to me. This was hard in some ways because of the impending separation, but I had already had nearly two years of restricted contact with them while on bail, and I was confident of their continuing love and support, so overall the visit was very good. 

I continued to go for walks, go to events and meet friends for coffee. I also wrote an update on my situation, expressing again my remorse, but also my optimism about the future and my intent to make amends in whatever ways I could, which was circulated by e-mail to a list of people in my life.

With all that done, I felt as ready as possible to face imprisonment.

David Dorson is the pen name of someone who went through arrest, case disposition, imprisonment and parole in Ontario a few years ago. The Lawyer’s Daily has granted 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, The Lawyer’s Daily, 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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