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Helen
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Serena
Nicotine
Dan
Zakreski charged
after he wrote a feature about Serena Nicotine who has fetal
alcohol syndrome. Around Christmas time in 2000, Nicotine was
part of a kidnapping of guards in the Saskatchewan penitentiary
in Prince Albert in the part set aside for federal women prisoners.
The guards were released after the kidnappers demands for fast
food were met. In March, 2002 Nicotine was in the news again
because an official at the institution spoke frankly to a Globe
and Mail reporter about the difficulties of dealing with inmates
like Nicotine.
These discussions
are important. Nicotine's limitations -- not too bright -- because
of FAS would appear to be very different from the problems of
Karla Homulka and their shared apparent lack of conscience the
only similarity.
Provincial
Court Judge Mary
Ellen Turpel-Lafond has also been seen as controversial because
she has tried to identify the social problems posed by FAS and
look for solutions.
Imprisoned women say
conditions 'brutal' Some face months in segregation without services
By NAHLAH
AYED and SUE BAILEY-- The Canadian Press, February 20, 2001
Tona Mills
would have the innocent looks of a 20-year-old if she hadn't
used her body as a disturbing canvas to cry out for help.
Every inch
of the pale skin on her slim arms and colourless cheeks bears
scars that mark moments in time when isolation got the better
of her. Mills spent nearly all of the last year in segregation
at the Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia.
"Unit
7 Max" of the prison, home to 12 maximum-security women,
is little more than a hallway sealed off from more than 400 men.
Mills is one
of about 30 inmates labelled high-risk who fell through the cracks
in recent years as the women's penal system became kinder and
more community-based.
Housed haphazardly
in three men's prisons across Canada, the women talk of being
maced without medical treatment, denied lawyers and other services
and held in isolation for months at a time.
Advocates and
others are appalled at the makeshift arrangements for these offenders,
made in 1996 with promises they would last just 18 months. The
women's lives revolve around the men's. In everything from eating
schedules to exercise breaks, their needs come second.
The small numbers
of women make it impossible to provide programs on par with what
maximum-security men receive.
Tempers flare
almost daily, landing the most troubled women in segregation
or "the hole."
Mills, 35,
was sentenced to four years for attempted murder.
She has doubled
her sentence and won't be out until at least 2003 because of
several angry assaults.
"It's
been the hardest time I've done anywhere -- it's driving me crazy."
"I feel
they won't help me here and their answer to everything is: 'Just
put her in the cell and leave her.' "
Critics say
the conditions are "brutal." Correctional staff say
they're simply follow regulations and use extreme measures only
for safety reasons.
About 90 per
cent of Canada's 350 federally incarcerated women stay in five
modern, cottage-style compounds considered a gentler, more effective
way to house them.
The rest are
deemed maximum-security, caught in a situation the federal ombudsman
for inmates has called "discriminatory" and "untenable."
An alternative
to Canada's only women's prison was long overdue when an ugly
incident on April 26, 1994 prompted outraged calls for change.
That night,
a strip-search of eight inmates at the Kingston Prison for Women
by male riot guards -- called in to quell a spate of unruly behaviour
-- would mark a sharp turning point for women's corrections.
A disturbing
videotape later broadcast on TV showed half-asleep women, mostly
docile, being manhandled by officers in fearsome black gear.
Some women, including sexual abuse survivors, had their clothes
ripped off.
Nearly five
years ago, on April 1, 1996, Justice Louise Arbour, commissioned
to investigate the incident, lambasted the women's penal system
and called for sweeping changes.
Arbour, now
a Supreme Court of Canada justice, won't discuss the subject.
Back then, she didn't mince words.
She laid out
a recipe for revamping women's corrections, calling for a more
compassionate approach -- starting with the demise of the old
Prison for Women. It closed for good last summer.
Arbour stressed
the need for unfailing respect of the law, greater public scrutiny
and an end to long stints in involuntary segregation.
The Correctional
Service of Canada says it has adopted most of her report. But
not her calls to limit isolation.
Mills spent
two years in segregation at the Prison for Women. As the Arbour
probe ensued, Mills was enduring many of the abuses later outlined
in a damning report.
Today, the
vicious cycle continues -- frustrated outbursts, stints in segregation
followed by more outbursts.
Just that morning,
Mills lost it in court when she thought a lawyer seemed amused
to hear she'd been recently maced.
"I've
been in (segregation) for a year, I said. You don't know what
I'm going through in there, I said. And you're sitting there
laughing."
Once, an emergency
squad maced her and left, she says. She got a handcuff off and
splashed her face with water to ease the burning. But Mills says
she wasn't allowed to shower for 21 hours -- a violation of prison
policy. "The nurse documented . . . the burns I had and
all the skin that peeled off my head and my back." A grievance
Mills filed was only partly upheld because of her behaviour,
said the Elizabeth Fry Society, which promotes inmates' rights.
Prison officials won't discuss the incident.
Corrections
staff admit the situation for maximum-security women staying
in men's prisons in Saskatchewan, Quebec and Nova Scotia is not
ideal. They will be moved to the newer women's centres by September,
officials say.
Yet staff for
at least one of the new prisons, in Joliette, Que., say it will
be at least January before a maximum-security unit is ready.
"We don't
want them in men's institutions either," says Solicitor
General Lawrence MacAulay.
"They
are a rough crowd and that's why we have to be careful."
In the meantime, inmates endure horrible conditions tantamount
to ongoing segregation, says the federal ombudsman who investigates
prisoner complaints.
Women whose
behaviour or mental state prompts officials to deem them maximum-security
were moved to men's prisons in 1996. That year, a series of escapes
and an inmate's death marred the opening of the new Edmonton
Institution for Women and fuelled public fear. It also threw
off plans to house the most dangerous inmates in the new prisons.
Critics say
the Edmonton opening was rushed without proper security measures
and inexperienced staff added to the chaos.
Many observers
agree that for most federally incarcerated women, those serving
two years or more, life is better since the Arbour report.
But inmates,
lawyers, investigators and advocates say corrections has squandered
a golden opportunity to set things right for everyone.
Some prison
staff still view the law as a guideline to be followed when convenient,
critics say. Women are still denied their right to legal counsel,
says Kim Pate of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.
"We've
taken a step forward and two back," she says. "We now
have 11 institutions where women are serving federal time, not
one." In the last decade, the number of female inmates has
nearly doubled and they're more isolated, says Pate.
"Lawyers
in corrections say Arbour was nullified when those women escaped
(in Edmonton)."
The debate
continues against a perplexing backdrop of falling crime rates,
an incongruent rise in public concern for safety and a thirst
for vengeance.
Few are sympathetic
to complaints from beyond the razor wire. They want assurances
that criminals are locked away, not living in luxury. Victims
of crime want more inmate information and real input to ensure
offenders pay.
Corrections
is trying to strike a balance between the competing concerns
by responding to almost all of Arbour's recommendations, says
Nancy Stableforth, who oversees female offenders.
Although the
law allows male staff to strip-search women in emergencies, corrections
policy since 1996 prohibits it, she says.
Women are typically
strip-searched when they enter segregation or return from unsupervised
absences. Staff are usually looking for weapons and drugs.
As for other
recommendations, "there's only a couple of matters that
are still outstanding" and they require changes to the law
that the Justice Department must spearhead, says Stableforth,
senior deputy commissioner for corrections.
For example,
Arbour stressed that involuntary segregation of 30 days or more
should be justified before a court. She also said that inmates
who can show they were unlawfully treated by corrections staff
should be allowed to argue for a shorter sentence. Asked why
Justice hasn't taken the lead, a department spokeswoman said
responsibility lies with the Solicitor General, who oversees
corrections. A judge may not be consulted before an inmate is
isolated for more than 30 days but "we review segregation
regularly" to see if there are alternatives in each case,
says Stableforth.
She recently
visited Saskatchewan Penitentiary for the first time in more
than a year.
There were
two hostage-takings and a suicide in the women's unit in 2000.
In December, a guard was abducted, assaulted and terrorized by
four inmates. Sandi Paquachon has lived in the prison since 1996.
Violent outbursts
have earned her repeated stays in segregation, isolated from
most of the 15 maximum-security women who live in an area sequestered
from 425 men.
She most recently
attacked a female guard.
By mid-January,
she had spent 60 continuous days in segregation. Paquachon described,
in rapid-fire detail, how her surroundings can make a person
"flip out."
"We have
access to zilch . . . You see those four (segregation) cells?
We're sitting on the range all day long and maybe we have a little
work, like laundry, but that's done in an hour and a half."
The only exercise
option for segregated women is an empty, fenced yard too small
to jog around.
"Karla
(Homolka) makes it look like we're all happy, having parties,"
says Paquachon. "Hey, we don't even see a birthday cake
here."
Homolka, convicted
in the sex slayings of two Ontario schoolgirls, is a medium-security
offender. Pictures of her partying at the Joliette women's prison
caused a public furore last fall.
"We don't
get treated like that, us maximum women," says Paquachon,
41, who first entered prison at 18 for robbery and has never
left. The death of an inmate 10 years ago got her a second-degree
murder conviction and a life sentence, although some say it was
a suicide case that should be reopened. "It is barbaric
. . . This ain't our prison . . . They should have left Kingston
open." Paquachon, sexually abused as a child, was among
those strip-searched at the Prison for Women who received $50,000
in compensation. "Nothing has changed," she says. "Nobody
listens to the Arbour commission." Staff say they must weather
endless verbal and frequent physical abuse from inmates and the
most troubled women won't improve until they want to. "Working
with one woman is the same as 20 men," says one guard. That's
because the conditions exceed fair punishment, says Suzette Peters,
an inmate at Springhill. "I deserve to be penalized for
what I've done . . . but this is crazy," says Peters, 41,
who's serving time for robbery. "I feel like I'm warehoused
. . . like I've been thrown away." Ed McIsaac, the ombudsman
who investigates federal inmates' complaints, blames a correctional
service that still largely operates in a vacuum. "Arbour
. . . did not believe there was any hope in hell that the service,
without judicial guidance, was going to correct . . . its past
practices," he says.
The 'nice'
jails
"The service
is very closed. Openness, accountability and integrity: those
are the slogans they place on their investigative process. They're
certainly not the slogans they necessarily operate by."
McIsaac reports
annually, but the government is not bound by his recommendations.
Little will change while corrections avoids the prying eyes of
the public and the courts, he adds.
"For a
short period, there was a broad, public awareness and concern
about incarceration of women in Canada because it was exposed
to the light of day," says Trisha Jackson, lead lawyer for
the Arbour commission.
"Some
people said that something badly had gone wrong and people saw
that, indeed, it had."
Jackson commends
corrections for vastly improving the extent to which the law
is now respected by its staff.
But she laments
what might have been. So does Sandi Paquachon. "It's like
you're never going to see society again," she says. "You
have no hope. There's no rehabilitation in this place."
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
