#prison closure

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“Notorious Prison Vacated,” The Day. February 10, 1936. Page 09. “The last prisoners from notorious Welfare Island prison - the New York city penitentiary - are pictured as they left the institution to be housed at Riker’s Island, location of the city’s new penal institution.  The 110-year old prison, called a ‘black smirch’ on the New York penal system, will be demolished (Associated Press Photo).”

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"'CLOSE DON JAIL' BOARD ADVISED WILL STUDY PLAN," Toronto Star. May 14, 1935. Page 21. ---- McBride Would Charter Bus to Let Inmates Commute to Farm ---- FEW AT LANGSTAFF ---- Consideration should be given to Con. McBride's proposal Don jail be closed and the inmates transferred to the municipal farm, board of control decided today, instructing Property Commissioner Graham D. Bland accordingly.

"I understand the farm has so few inmates they can't use all the vegetables they grow and they go rotten," said Con. McBride. He suggested a T.T.C. bus be chartered to take prisoners in and out everyday.

"We wouldn't have any more yammering then," he added.

Con. Robbins objected prisoners should be available to be produced in court at any time.

Con. Wadsworth: "It would be a long trip for a person who wanted to go bail for a prisoner, unless they were temporarily detained in the police station cells."

Con. McBride: "A good idea. They'd be more comfortable in the police cells than at the jail."

The board decided to investigate the possibility of using the farm's excess vegetables at the city hostels. Commissioner Bland reported 131 men and 5 women in the jail on May 9, and 107 at the municipal farm, these figures being considerably below the same date in previous years.

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"Last 6 prisoners leave silent Pen," Vancouver Sun. February 15, 1980. Page 12. --- By DAVE STOCKAND Maximum security holds sway as always, even with only a sixpack of prisoners left.

We are at the 8.C penitentiaryー where habits ingrained over more than a century die harder than hard men - so we drink instant coffee in the warden's office on this Thursday afternoon while he arranges the front-gate passes that will allow us up the hill and into the empty cellblocks where a not inconsiderable part of B.C. history has been written in blood, boredom and despair.

"We're a pretty dead jail," says warden Herb Reynett, understating the obvious. "It's like a quiet ghost town, really."

Up the hill from his comfortable warren of an office in the penitentiary's outer wall are the last six prisoners - and today they will be gone, to the mod rn but not necessarily more welcome maximum security of Kent institution near Agassiz.

Our tour, when it comes, is like entering an echo chamber without echoes, only the surprisingly loud jingle jangle of the keeper's keys penetrating the silence as we walk the cage-upon-cage tiers and upward to the rooftop super maximum security unit where the hard-est cases suicided, slashed up, hallucinated and plotted escapes and hostage-takings that would, in the 1970s, give the penitentiary the greatest notoriety of any Canadian prison.

The penitentiary is at once medieval and classic Canadian gothic, with even its own localized inquisitional echoes. Here in in the memory of staff still working the lash sang and the paddle fell with its cruel perforations on the bared flesh of inmates, either by court sentence on the outside or by internal disciplinary proceedings. The rule of silence was rigidly enforced.

A past like that is hard to live down But that is what our society of the time wanted, apparently, and the line security staff of old authoritarians of military moustache, bearing and back ground will point out as quick as a cat-o-nine-tails can wink that they at least kept a lid on the cauldron despite overcrowding that itself verged on the criminal.

Entering present reality, one of the reasons for staff bitterness over the long-promised closing is that, in truth, the old joint overlooking New Westminster's East Columbia Street and the Fraser River has never been in shipper shape.

The riot-ripped East Block which looked like howitzer shells had been fired through it after an inmate rampage in 1976 - has been rebuilt. The gymnasium, which resembled an indoor hobo jungle when it was used to house the inmates who had deliberately dispossessed themselves, is now a clean, well-lighted place.

The wall vault in the classification building where 15 hostages were held in 1975 in the siege that led to the death of prison social worker Mary Steinhauser, killed in shots fired by the prison tactical squad that stormed the stronghold, has been welded shut but the building itself is in fine shape.

With the Steinhauser death, the 1976 rampage, a 1978 escape attempt and hostage-taking in which Andy Bruce was a central figure, as he had been in the Steinhauser affair, the penitentiary was stamped, finally, with a public and political seal of disfavor that could no longer be ignored.

The penitentiary's 19th warden in a nearly 102-year history, Reynett, as the inmate population count headed for zero, looked back on the history he has shared for three years a history that goes back to the prison's opening on Sept. 28, 1878.

Our population has gone from a high of around 760 inmates, at any one given time, down to now, which is the low," be said, noting that even on its first day in business in 1878 frontier British Columbia managed to round up 11 felons to get the ball-and-chain roiling.

"The six inmates is the lowest it's ever been," he added. "I tell you, it's an eerie feeling."

Eerie it is, as we are to find on our own tour but the proof is in the walking through the empty general-population cellblocks, the empty hospital, the empty gymnasium, with only the ghosts of echoes of barred doors constantly clanging, muffled curses and cries in the night

"It's been said for years that it was going to close but there's no doubt about it this time," said Reynett, saying all that is left to be said.

Caption: HERB REYNETT… B.C. Pen "pretty dead jail"

"Pen closure announced 26 times since 1948," Vancouver Sun. February 15, 1980. Page 12. --- By DOUG WARD At long last the final prisoners have left that stark and moribund rock castle overlooking the Fraser River in New Westminster.

The doors of the B.C. penitentiary, closure of which has been announced 26 times since 1948, have held their last prisoner and can now sway silently in the fortress that for decades has been rubbed raw with violence and controversy.

"As long as I can remember that place was going to be phased out," recalled Doug Jack, Fraser Valley regional coroner, in an inter view Thursday. "It became a standing joke."

Jack grew up beside the penitentiary's wall on the prison grounds. His father was a guard there in the 20s and '30s. The Pen was run like a military camp back then, run by guards who had just returned from the First World War, he said.

"There was no nonsense in those days. Guards said "Jump' and the prisoners said 'how high?' The prison was another world when I was young compared to how it has been for the last 15 years."

Still, prisoners had a lot more freedom then, Jack remembers.

"It was the prisoners who tore down the old wood walls and replaced the, with concrete. They were also able to drive trucks, hauling goods from a wharf down along the river.

"We kids used to play back by the orchards behind the walls in Glen Valley. Often the prisoners would be out there cutting the grass or picking fruit from the trees.

It was there, under the apple orchard, that 41 convicts were buried over the years. The Iast one, Frank Wilson, a 72-year veteran of the prison, was lowered into his grave in 1967.

Jack has conducted inquests into deaths of Pen inmates since 1950-an average of about five a year, he said. "The deaths ranged from natural causes and suicides, which were the most common, to Mary Steinhauser who died in a fusillade of bullets.

It's the Steinhauser death that stands out the sharpest in Jack's memory of Pen inquests. "It took me 17 full days to complete it. At that time it was the longest inquest in B.C history."

Steinhauser, a prison classification officer, died after three prisoners, including Andy Bruce, held 15 hostages in a vault for 41 hours in June, 1976. The drama came to a climax when a prison armed squad blasted through the only door of the room, taking the prisoners and shooting Steinhauser in the process. Bruce, who participated in two other hostage taking incidents, was seriously wounded.

That hostage taking incident is the most infamous of the many bloody spasms that have wracked the institution's innards. A 1934 newspaper story on a convict "strike" at the Pen reads like something out of the 1970s.

Col. H.W. Cooper, warden at the time, is quoted: "Iron tables were smashed and the legs were rattled up and down and across the iron bars of the cells, creating terrific noise. The shouts of the locked-up convicts added to the din."

The din was heard a considerable distance away from the Pen, the paper reports. In 1954, 100 prisoners wrecked their cells and plumbing in solidarity with prisoners who rioted a week earlier at the penitentiary in Kingaton. Ont.

In 1963, the Pen was hit by its biggest riot ever. Three prisoners tried unsuccessfully to escape and publicize the dilemma of a prisoner who had been transferred to a mental unit and who, they said, was not mentally ill.

Simultaneously, 300 prisoners rioted in their dormitories. The disturbance was quell ed eight hours later with tear gas.

In August, 1970, prisoners became outraged by the death of fellow prisoner Walton Brass and revolted in the exercise yard. The prisoners said Brass was murdered. The uprising last for eight hours.

In August, 1972, deputy prison director Hugh Grest and classification officer Jean Young were held hostage for 10 hours by two prisoners.

In both February and March. 1973, single prisoners held instructors at knifepoint backing up requests for tranfers to other institutions.

In February, 1976, Andy Bruce, Dwight Lucas and Dwight Lowe held three guards at knifepoint for 14 hours, releasing them when than-director Dragan Cernetic publicly promised to improve conditions in the solitary confinement unit.

In April, 1976, Jean-Mare Gariepy, Serge Barrett, John Lucas and Leonard Paquette held three guards for 13 hours.

In September, 1976, nine prisoners held a food services worker and a guard hostage in the prison kitchen. Meanwhile, prisoners in the east wing destroyed that wing, causing #1.5 million in damage.

Finally, in January, 1978, a week-long hostage drama unfolded as five prisoners unsuccessfully tried to break out. The prisoners, including Bruce and Stephen Hall, held 10 people hostage.

Ironically, the last protest to be heard from some of the prison's inmates was against having to leave the place that so many before them had struggled to escape.

The prisoners were concerned about being transported long distances away from their families and from their best chances for pa role.

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"PENITENTIARY SALE TO YIELD MILLION," Daily British Whig (Kingston, Ont.). September 27, 1920. Page 1. ---- Edmonton Institution Stood On Top of a Valuable Coal Deposit. ---- Ottawa, Sept. 27. - The dominion of Canada is expected to profit handsomely by the sale of the Edmonton penitentiary reserve, which contains valuable coal mining property, and which, it is stated, is soon to be offered for sale. An order-in-council gazetted this week gives formal notice that the tract of land established as a penitentiary to Alberta on July 20th 1006. shall cease to be a penitentiary from and after Sept. 1st. 1920. The penitentiary property at Prince Albert, Sask., becomes the penitentiary for the provinces of AIberta and Saskatchewan, and shall continue to be designated as Saskatchewan penitentiary.

The lands contained in the Alberta tract are in the heart of the city of Edmonton, and a valuation of more than one million dollars has been placed upon them, The surface rights have been sought by the city of Edmonton and others, and the mining rights have also been the subject of offers to the government at various times.

For sometime coal has been mined in the penitentiary reserveе, and this has been used for heating the Edmonton penitentiary, as well as the Saskatchewan institution and other public buildings. It is stated that the vein of coal so far uncovered is only the beginning of a valuable deposit, and that a much more important supply of fuel lies beneath that which is now being mined. Several mining companies are stated to been made offers for the mineral rights on the properly, which was purchased for a low price by the dominion government in 1906.

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“The chorus of calls to reform or close New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex is louder than ever, notwithstanding Mayor Adams’ commitment to drive down rising crime. Violence among detainees and with guards, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, environmental health hazards and regular suicide attempts are among the most egregious problems facing the incarcerated population.

It’s clear to everyone from a federal monitor to laypeople: The city has lost control of Rikers. Much-needed reforms have proven elusive, either through lack of political will or lack of imagination. Even high-profile atrocities like the protracted incarceration, dismissal of charges against and subsequent suicide of Kalief Browder have not catalyzed sufficient change.

And yet, in times of crisis, we find that politics and administrative hurdles can fall away, and reform can be possible.

In March of 2020, when New York City was struggling through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio took action to prevent a large-scale outbreak on Rikers Island. Specifically, he ordered the discharge of incarcerated individuals deemed to be at high risk of COVID infection and/or low risk of criminal reoffense. De Blasio’s order grew into an unplanned demonstration of how public safety and criminal justice reform can be achieved simultaneously.

The Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (QSIDE Institute), which we co-founded, recently published a study of the Rikers Island population in the journal PLOS One. We found that during the week of March 23-29, 2020, immediately following de Blasio’s order, the population incarcerated there decreased by 662 individuals — a 13% drop. This unprecedented weekly reduction was nearly double the size of the next largest one, which occurred the week of December 16, 2019, and was part of a month of reductions that occurred when judges retroactively applied an impending bail reform law.

But it’s not merely that the March 23-29, 2020, discharge was large. Only 20% of those released were reincarcerated by the end of the calendar year. Compared to the average of 36% for the same calendar week in 2014-2019, the 20% figure represents a decrease by nearly half.

The public does not know the details of how New York City implemented de Blasio’s order. It seems plausible that individuals judged to be at high risk of contracting COVID would have been older, since age is a leading risk factor. The data do not show substantial differences in age distribution as compared to previous years, and so in light of the 20% recidivism rate, we speculate that individuals assessed to be at low risk of criminal reoffense made up the bulk of discharges. We also found that the discharged individuals had already served comparatively long incarcerations: a median of 64 days for March 23-29, 2020, versus 23 days in the same period in 2019.

In short, it seems that at the start of the pandemic, New York City succeeded in following de Blasio’s order, identifying and discharging individuals from Rikers who were unlikely to — and didn’t — reoffend in large numbers. This success begs the question: Why is discharge of low-risk individuals, and especially low-risk, long-serving ones, not an ongoing policy?

We run an institute whose work lies at the intersection of social justice and data science, and we know how careful, ethical use of data can inform smart policy choices. Unfortunately, without good data, we are lost. A secondary set of findings in our study reveals the need for drastic reform in the data collection and management practices in the New York City corrections system.

As merely one example, albeit an especially glaring one, consider the city’s historical data on race in jail admissions and discharges as available through the city’s OpenData portal. In this data, there is no information about ethnicity, and an individual’s race is classified as one of three choices: “Black,” “Asian” or “Unknown.” This taxonomy erases many — actually, most — racial/ethnic identity groups. Moreover, since the individuals associated with the 45% of incarceration records reporting “unknown” race might in fact be Black or Asian, we cannot even have accurate information about those two racial categories. The lack of meaningful data hinders transparency, precludes accountability and renders impossible any public understanding of racial inequity in incarceration.

Regardless, the jail remains open, overcrowded, unsafe, out of control, inefficient and an unnecessary expense on taxpayers, with the state’s corrections budget topping $3.5 billion in 2019 and the average cost of an incarceration sitting at $80,000. While former de Blasio put in place a plan to close Rikers Island by 2027 and replace it with smaller jail sites spread throughout the city, the fate of that plan is not clear. It would require a substantial decrease in jail population, and yet Mayor Adams has promised policies that are likelier to put people behind bars.

Rikers is serving no one. Massive reform is needed. The city administration has demonstrated the ability to identify individuals with low risk of reincarceration. One route to reform, then, is to simply grant these low-risk individuals their freedom, as was done at the start of the pandemic. Refusal to do so defies ethical and practical sense.”

- Jude Higdon and Chad Topaz, “What happened when Rikers let out hundreds? Follow the facts,” New York Daily News, Feb 11, 2022.

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July 14, 1920 W.S.H.-H.L.  Sir:- I have your letter of July 12th, regarding Kingston Penitentiary. I note you are of the opinion the buildings are too congested, supervision of many of the officers wasted and that the penitentiary could be, profitably, moved to a more suitable location. I wish to thank you for this information as we have already been discussing the subject of a better location with newer construction. Yours sincerely,  W. S. Hughes Superintendent. The Warden, The Penitentiary, Kingston, Ont.

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“Eight staff and 60 inmates at a Brampton jail have tested positive for COVID-19 in by far the largest outbreak reported so far in an Ontario provincial correctional institution, according to the Ministry of the Solicitor-General.

The Ontario Correctional Institute is being closed temporarily and all inmates are being transferred to the Toronto South Detention Centre, where they will be kept in a separate area.

All staff from OCI are being asked by Peel Public Health to self-isolate for the next 14 days.

Three correctional officers from OCI tested positive for COVID-19 last week; until Monday, the ministry had not reported any positive tests among inmates.

Following the guards’ tests last week, inmates who were showing symptoms were “rush-tested,” with some placed in segregation units before being transferred to the Toronto South Detention Centre. All 140 inmates at the jail were tested over the weekend, according to inmates.

The jail is a treatment facility focused on providing treatment for addictions, sexual offending and mental health.” - Alyshah Hasham, “Eight staff, 60 inmates test positive for COVID-19 at Brampton jail. Inmates transferred to Toronto South Detention Centre.” Brampton Guardian. April 20, 2020.

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“May Be Sold Soon,” British Daily Whig (Kingston). Feb. 25, 1920. Page 07. --- The Edmonton Penitentiary May Be Wiped Out --- Ottawa, Feb. 25. - There is a likelihood of steps being taken to reduce the number of Western penitentiaries, it is stated here. This may mean the closing of the Alberta penitentiary at Edmonton and the division of prisoners from that institution between the penitentiaries at Prince Albert, Sask., and Stony Mountain, Man. At the last report made the population of the three Western penitentiaries named and also the one at New Westminster, B.C., was only 477 against a population of 413 at Kingston, therefore, there is a feeling that some change could afford to be made in the West.

The closing of the Edmonton penitentiary has been strongly advocated by citizens of that city. One reason strongly urged is that the penitentiary at Edmonton is practically in the heart of the city and lies in the midst of a good residential district.