""Because A Man's In Jail Doesn't Mean He's An Animal"," Weekend Magazine. August 4, 1973. Page 3, 4, 6.
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Inmates, say prisoners and some penal officials, have rights too
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Story and photos by Bill Trent, Weekend Magazine
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IN NEW BRUNSWICK'S maximum security Dorchester Penitentiary, the story will be told and retold every time a new batch of inmates checks in.
It's the story of a man I'll call Joe because that isn't his name. He is a black man. The penal people think of him as an agitator. In a general way, you might call him an activist.
Joe's story began the day a guard told him to move along a corridor. Joe stood his ground, looked coldly at the officer and said, "You want me to move, you're going to have to move me."
The guards didn't argue. They moved him. Joe then protested he was the victim of physical abuse.
That might have been the end of the story. Except that there were a dozen blacks in Dorchester at the time. They made it clear they wanted no part of any disobedience program. Joe, they said, was on his own. He didn't represent them.
The blacks, however, were afraid of retaliation by white inmates. They were moved into protective segregation. The day that happened, Joe sent up a new cry racial discrimination.
Joe had obviously counted on the support of the other black men. When it failed to materialize, the plot fell through.
Had there been a plan to stir up a black rebellion? Probably no one will ever know. What the authorities do know is that prior to the incident in the corridor, a group of the prison's strong-arm men had tried to take control of things.
Dorchester's muscle men made their move in a pseudo-legal way: they got themselves elected to the inmate committee, a group that acts as spokesman for prisoners with the administration.
Most penitentiary inmates want to serve out their time as easily and comfortably as they can. They don't want trouble. So it seems likely that if they voted for the troublemakers on the committee, it was under threat of violence.
Officials soon disbanded the committee and a new one was elected. Today there is peace in Dorchester Penitentiary.
Prison flare-ups are not new. They have happened down through penal history. What sets the case of Joe apart is the suspicion that it was instigated by a formal committee using the highly topical subject of human rights as a weapon.
The whole business of rights for prisoners is a thorny one. Many old- timer custodial people are downright concerned and some of them will tell you outright that the inmates are running the prisons.
One man puts it this way: "There is a feeling among many custodial people that if the inmates don't get what they want, they'll revolt."
"Who ever heard of rights for prisoners?" another asks. "Criminals used to forfeit their rights when they went behind bars."
For some penal people who grew up in an age when a convicted man was locked in a cell, given a Bible and promptly forgotten, the new philosophy is hard to swallow.
The fact is that prisoners' rights, a red-hot topic in the United States for some time, are now a matter of serious concern in Canada as well.
Also of concern is the fact that groups of inmates and ex-inmates are already trying trying to lay the groundwork for a national association to them represent them.
Paul A. Faguy, a Quebec-born, agile-minded, athletic man of 54 with a distinguished wartime record with the air force and an equally good peace-time record with the federal government, is not a man to be pushed around. As Canada's commissioner of penitentiaries, he is boss man to close. to 9,000 inmates.
Faguy says the inmate committees were set up as a kind of communications line between prisoners and staff. The administration, he points out, wants positive suggestions from the inmates about such things as their work and rehabilitation programs on the inside. If the inmate has something on his mind, he now has a committee of his own fellows with which to consult.
It's too early to assess long-term results but at least one committee proved its worth early this year in Ontario's medium security Warkworth Institution. The inmates went on a sit-down strike and members of the committee went among them to talk things over. The committeemen told the inmates they were foolish and the strikers went back to normal routine.
"We want committees elected by the inmates themselves," says Faguy "In this way, we think we can instill a sense of responsibility. We want the inmates to work with management. But we make it clear that we are in control. We are always in control. The inmates are never in a decision-making situation.
Faguy has a no-nonsense approach to the question of inmate rights and when he speaks. to a a group gr of prisoners he leaves no doubt in their minds about where he stands.
"I'll give you rights," he told one group recently. "But you will have to assume responsibility for those rights. You want to be treated like human. beings? Then you'll have to treat other inmates and members of the staff like human beings. Rights and responsibility go hand in hand."
In Vancouver, Mervyn Davis, executive director of the John Howard Society of British Columbia, expresses similar views.
"If prisoners want rights, they have to show they are responsible people," he says. "It's all right for an inmate to beef but maybe, if he knows a guy is going over the wall, he should try to talk him out of it. Maybe he should tell the prospective escapee, 'Don't screw the administration because then you'll be screwing me."
In Ottawa, William T. McGrath, executive director of the Canadian Criminology and Corrections Association, says he is in favor of inmate rights but he adds that they need to be laid down very carefully.
"Let's define what we mean by rights," he urges. "I don't like arbitrary power of any kind on anybody's part. On the other hand, how can you run a prison if everything you do is going to be challenged?"
The Inside News is fresh off the mimeograph machine and the inmates of Drumheller Institution, Alberta's medium security penitentiary, stop to ponder an editorial viewpoint on pris on escapes
The editors are concerned with the great rash of them, mostly in Quebec, because they have resulted in parole procedures being tightened, the temporary leave of absence program being curtailed, and more stringent security measures being instituted.
It's a matter of vicarious responsibility, they say, a situation in which a large group of inmates living by the rules find themselves penalized for the misdemeanors of a few.
Convicted Quebec wife-strangler Yves Geoffroy, given a 50-hour pass at Christmas, 1971, to marry his mistress, Carmen Parent, gets special mention:
"After his marriage, he takes off for an unauthorized honeymoon in Spain. (Well, where would you go for a honeymoon, Bunky?) Who should be punished for this fiasco? The authorities who approved the caper? Wrong. Bunky. Obviously the people responsible are all the other lifers across Canada."
The May 13, 1973, escape of five men from the Correctional Development Centre in Laval, Que, also is singled out:
"You see, Bunky, you are responsible for those escapes in Quebec. You say, 'What about those guard towers that were left unmanned during the lunch hour, permitting the escapes?" Don't get smart, Bunky."
Drumheller's four-man inmate committee is concerned and its members tell me so. I sit with them this day at a conference table and talk it over. There is no officer around to supervise things. Flanking me are Wayne, a 29-year-old
kidnapper, Robert, 32, who is serving term for theft, and Cliff, 23, who is in for armed robbery. Beyond them is the committee chairman, a quiet, soft- spoken, 45-year-old former electronics technician named Bill. He has been doing time on and off since 1946. Currently he is doing a stretch for break and entry.
Wayne and Robert tell me about the small but important improvements to prison life. The amount of money an inmate can spend on a hobby has been increased from $75 a month to $150.
Durand, an old-timer when it comes to prison sentences, says: "What we have to do is put on a real public relations campaign. Less than one percent of the temporary absences granted inmates during the past year have produced any problems. Unfortunately, the public sees our failures, not our successes."
Drumheller is one of the institutions trying out what the Penitentiary Service calls the living unit concept. It is not one sprawling prison. It is divided into four separate buildings, each of which is a living unit for about 100 men.
The basic principle of the living unit is that social skills and rehabilitation. go hand in hand. No matter what good work habits or technical skills have been learned, they are negative if adequate self-control and the ability to get along with other people is absent. The living unit concept provides for increased contact between staff and. inmates. Staff members posted to a unit stay with that unit. Group meetings are held frequently to discuss what is happening and why. If there is a problem, the group must define it and then try to find a solution for it. The group learns why it is often necessary to make a compromise between ideal and realistic solutions.
"What is most important," says Dr. Jean Garneau, acting director of living unit development, "is that the staff is perceived as ready to help, rather than repress, and the hostility felt toward them by inmates diminishes."
He adds, "The control of inmates becomes based on the relationship which exists between staff and inmates, rather than walls and weapons. Once acquired, the advantage of this type of internal control is that it remains with the individual when he leaves the institution."
Drumheller is one of those centres officials point to with pride. Warden Pierre Jutras and his deputy, Stanley Scrutton, run a tight, efficient operation. So far, there has been no trouble. I had proof of that as I chatted with an inmate, a man serving life for murder.
"There's no tension here," he said.
"A guy doesn't have to worry what another inmate might do to him here." John Stewart, head of Drumheller's living unit program, agrees. "I'm all for the inmate committee," he says. "Through it, the men can air their beefs. They can tell us what they don't like about the food and they can ask us outright why they may not qualify for a leave."
At one point, Stewart took me for a drive. We followed the highway around the rim of Alberta's famous Badlands and turned onto a side road at a sign advertising a golf driving range. We pulled up at the clubhouse and Stewart introduced me to the two men in charge, both of them Drumheller inmates. Their range is a commercial business which attracts many people. The money they make goes into an inmate fund.
"The committee has brought about a vast improvement in communications," Stewart said.
One of the inmates handed him club and the other teed up the ball. Stewart eyed the ball, raised his club and let go. There was a resounding whack and the inmate pros applauded. On the way back to the car, he said, "They put up the building themselves. Run the business themselves, too. We've come a long way, haven't we?"
Arthur Montague pretty well fits the accepted student profile. He invariably shows up on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon wearing a turtle-neck sweater under a corduroy jacket. His hair is long and his facial expression almost painfully serious. The books under his arm are about Far Eastern history.
But Arthur Montague, 29, Toronto-born, now Saskatoon-based, is really not the average Canadian student at all. He once knocked over a drugstore in Los Angeles and was deported. In British Columbia, he served time for writing false cheques, possession of stolen goods and owning a sawed-off rifle. He was paroled, picked up again for writing false cheques in Saskatoon. and went back to prison. He is now on parole again.
Montague is editor of a monthly publication called Transition, written and edited by inmates and ex-inmates of federal penitentiaries in Prince Albert, Sask., Stony Mountain, Man., and Drumheller, Alta. The publication guarantees anonymity to any writer who requests it and boasts that it has complete editorial freedom.
Convicted felon, ex-con, student. editor, Montague is one of the voices of what may be loosely described as a kind of penal underground, a disjointed, non-cohesive movement that surfaces periodically in different parts of the country, to espouse the cause of rights for prisoners
Every prison in the country has at least one inmate who delves into law to help his cellmates. Montague was such a person.
Today, on the outside, he claims he is still uptight about the situation of inmates.
"I think the system is inherently unjust to a great many," he says, Montague thinks that an inmate who is charged by a staff member and goes before a disciplinary board should be entitled to legal counsel and have the right to present witnesses.
He thinks, too, that an applicant for parole should have the right to examine the contents of reports made about him and be able to cross-examine persons presenting them.
Montague says there is a need for a national association of inmates and ex-offenders, though he doubts that it would work effectively. He says it could be useful in lobbying for changes in the system of justice. One of its foremost obligations, however, would be to take up the cases of inmates who consider they have been treated unjustly in one way or another.
Montague's Transition talks openly of such an association under the heading of Prisoners' Rights and National Convict Unity. It says prisoners' rights have become a fiery issue in the United States with respect to treatment of minority ethnic and racial groups such as the blacks and the chicanos. Since the Attica and San Quentin uprisings, the concern for rights involves all inmates, whatever their racial background.
Transition says in Canada the lead in the fight for prisoners' rights has been taken by the Indians and Métis, White inmates have been generally passive so far. However, in some penitentiaries they are beginning to resent what the others have achieved for themselves through organizing.
Transition adds this sobering note: "If the US pattern of organization is accepted, this resentment can be regarded as the first step by white Canadian inmates because this was what happened in the US when the blacks began to move."
Montague smiles when he reports that some of the money that keeps Transition going comes from working thieves. It amuses him to think that robbers have now entered the corrections field.
He has no smile when he talks of the great public backlash he says is occurring in the wake of recent prison reforms. The prisons are crowded and the climate explosive. Montague's prediction:
"I see major riots occurring in at least two penitentiaries before Christmas."
I sit at a kitchen table in an old house on Grant Street in the east end of Vancouver and I realize that Arthur Montague's thoughts are shared.
The man I'm talking to is William Pick, 39. He is late of the British Columbia Penitentiary and is now executive director of a halfway organization called the Joshua Town House Society.
"Inmate committees are all right but they're going to have to be able to deal with all the problems," he says. "For example, the committee should be represented on the prison disciplinary boards. It should also sit in on parole hearings."
We are joined by a 41-year-old man named Grant who agrees that committees are worthwhile. "I got 10 days in the damper [in segregation] at Matsqui Detention Centre because I got stoned," he says. "The committee at Agassiz Correctional Work Camp (where he had been posted previously) interceded for me."
As we talk, several men come into the room. They listen for a few minutes, then leave. They are recently out of prison and calling Joshua House home until they get on their feet.
"I've had 27 guys on temporary leaves and not one of them ever screwed up on me." Pick says. "Let's face it, guys come out for three reasons: to have a couple of beers, get laid and look for work. But a few do screw up and these are the cases that make the headlines."
Pick's Joshua House is one of several self-help centres, places where ex-inmates help ex-inmates. There are seldom any serious problems. Communications are good because, as Pick says, everyone speaks the same language.
"What we have to do is humanize the prisons," Pick says. Grant looks at him and nods. "Just because a man's in jail doesn't mean he has to be considered an animal. Prisoners are entitled to their rights the same as other citizens."
Page 3: At Drumheller Institution, Alta., John Stewart heads a "living unit" program, increasing the contact between staff and inmates,
Page 4: Arthur Montague, 29, ex-convict, student and editor, predicts "major riots in at least two penitentiaries before Christmas."
Page 6: William Pick is executive director of the Joshua Town House Society, a self-help centre for ex-convicts.
