Being imprisoned is also an experience that keeps on giving. You will never stop remembering it. It is a lifetime source of shame for hundreds of thousands of Canadians — and their friends and families. It makes it harder for rest of your life to find a job or place to live. It changes how you think about other people and how they think of and treat you. You will never again be free in the way you were before prison, even many years after you are released and even if your stay was short.
The drive for harsher conditions
There are currently about 13,000 people in Canadian federal prisons. Eighty per cent of them are in maximum or medium (not minimum) security prisons. Of those 13,000 prisoners, 12,998 of them are not named Paul Bernardo or Luka Magnotta. You wouldn’t know that from the recent public debate, in which the worst of the worst are invoked as the grounds for how everyone should be treated. It’s never wise to define a whole group by the worst people in it. It’s as if we decided to treat all church leaders on the basis that some of them commit sexual abuse.
The feigned outrage over the (non-operational) skating rink at La Macaza prison rang a bell for me. Similar outcries occur regularly whenever someone sees a political advantage or a media headline in pretending that prisoners are well-treated in Canada. During my time in minimum security, one of the teachers told me that a group of MPs (also Conservatives) had complained that the classrooms in the school had coffee makers and that prisoners should not drink coffee while doing their schoolwork. Too much luxury! The minimum security prison I was in also had no Kleenex for the same reason. Prisoners could use toilet paper to wipe their noses.
Most prisoners are ordinary people who made some bad choices
The reality is that most of the people in prison are pretty normal people who made a bad mistake. Yes, a small number are dangerous, even very dangerous. Most are not, as shown by the many, many thousands of former prisoners who live in Canadan society and never commit another crime. More than half a million Canadians have received a pardon, and some three to four million have a criminal record. Most are never arrested again. Those being held up to us as examples of what we should fear are in reality never getting out.
To shift the focus, let me introduce you to a few of the other guys I met in prison, with names and details altered for anonymity. (Note: I profiled a few of the lifers in one of my first columns in February 2022). These stores are far more typical than the ones we hear over and over again in the media.
- Alex is a musician who did, among other things, a lot of church music before his conviction. Well educated, very smart, but did not put up easily with stupidity by officials, which sometimes got him into trouble in the prison, where stupid behaviour was the norm. His marriage broke up while he was in jail. He had a parole officer who refused to send in his parole application, though he was eligible, on the grounds that, in the PO’s opinion, he had not been in prison long enough. After release he was harassed over his record and found that churches were not willing to employ him again.
- James also loved music and worked for an airline prior to his arrest. He was 70 when I met him, convicted of an offence that happened 40 years earlier. A very mild-mannered and gentle man, he lost his job, his relationship with his (adult) child and his marriage.
- Ibrahim was a devout Muslim who spent most of his time in his room or reading prayers. I shared a house with him for a few months during which I never heard him utter a harsh word or do anything to upset anyone.
- Dean was in his late 60s when we met. He had done technical work in broadcasting and was also a very gentle and kind person, always looking for a way to help others. He helped facilitate musical activities in the prison. He lost his career and many friends.
- Joe had been a lawyer and spent a lot of his time helping other prisoners understand how the system worked and what their rights were.
I could go on. The vast majority of the men I met were like anyone else you might meet; people with faults to go along with their virtues. These were not dangerous people who needed to be locked away from society or deprived of even the small pleasures of life. In fact, the longer people are locked up, and the worse the conditions, the harder it is for them to rebuild a reasonable life.
You don’t have to take my word for this. About one adult in eight in this country has a criminal record. Anyone reading this almost certainly knows someone in that category. Are they people who needed to be treated more harshly?
The instinct to punish
The human instinct to punish is very deep in us and very powerful. When we are angry we want to lash out. We want those who have hurt or angered us to suffer, even as we know that anger and vengeance don’t solve our problems but tend to make them worse. Those who study criminal justice agree that a harsher system doesn’t make us safer. If anything it does the opposite. Mistreatment begets more mistreatment and more pain for everyone.
That’s why when we see people playing on our anger and fear we should be suspicious. Are they interested in our welfare? Or their own political advantage?
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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