Open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marco Mendocino, and Health Minister Patty Hajdu in support of #HungerStrikeLaval

31 March 2020 – We are writing you to echo the demands of those yearning for justice, safety, and health who are now entering the eighth day of their indefinite hunger strike at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre. We demand that you release all immigration detainees who are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their incarceration during this unsettling and precarious time.

In any given year, dozens of lives are lost while in the custody of the Canadian Border Services Agency and Correctional Services Canada. Thousands more have had their lives shattered by imprisonment and have developed life altering mental health and health issues or have existing conditions that have worsened while under your ‘care’.

It is undeniable that putting human beings in cages undermines public health and community safety. Both can be improved through the depopulation of immigration detention spaces and federal penitentiaries to the extent that is possible. Leaving existing federal human caging systems in place in the context of COVID-19 is not only unnecessary, but also dangerous to prisoners, institutional staff, their loved ones and communities. Imprisonment is obsolete, causes significant harm, and we demand a just transition from the prison industrial complex starting now.

Canada’s continued settler-colonialism and genocide – which now sees Indigenous and other racialized populations incarcerated en masse – and all the oppressive systems built to support it must be dismantled. In the short-term, we demand the release of detained migrants and the decarceration of federal prisoners where possible. They are human and should not be made to face injustices and a disproportionate risk of illness and death. No one is disposable.

In these exceptional times when we are collectively responding to a global crisis, many provinces and territories are starting to implement measures to safely depopulate their jails and prisons. The Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP), a joint Carleton University and University of Ottawa community initiative, is calling upon the Government of Canada to free the Laval Hunger Strikers and free all migrant detainees. Build communities, not cages.

Sincerely,

Souheil Benslimane
Lead Coordinator,
Jail Accountability & Information Line
819-592-6469 / jailhotline@gmail.com 

Justin Piché, PhD

Associate Professor
Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa

613-793-1093 / justin.piche@uottawa.ca

Toronto South Detention Centre prisoner tests positive for COVID-19 revealing the urgency for Ontario to take more measures to depopulate its jails

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Less than a week after reports emerged that a staff member who recently travelled to Europe and returned to work at the Toronto South Detention Centre tested positive for COVID-19, today the Ottawa Citizen broke the news that a prisoner recently admitted to the same jail has also tested positive for COVID-19. According to the news story, the prisoner was admitted to Toronto's "$1-Billion Hellhole" despite having "been identified as a possible case" by public health authorities.

Given the urgent need to prevent the further transmission of COVID-19 amongst people who are caged and working in Ontario's provincial jails and prisons, the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project is again urging the province to take additional measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission behind jail walls to protect prisoners and staff, as well as public health and community safety.

The provincial Ministry of the Solicitor General must work with the Ontario Provincial Police and municipal police across the province to encourage officers to increase their use of discretion instead of arresting and detaining people where there is not an immediate risk to the safety of others. The criminalization of acts such as, but not limited to, the simple possession of prohibited drugs should be suspended indefinitely. Police forces across Ontario also ought to order their officers to release people they arrest on their own recognizance with a promise to appear in court at a later date to reduce the forced displacement and containment of people in provincial jails. As noted in the Contain COVID-19, Not People statement released last week, local police forces and the "Canadian Border Services Agency should also not conduct immigration enforcement operations, especially in or around shelters, hospitals, or medical clinics" so that every single person in Ontario feels safe to seek support to practice social distancing and seek care should they experience COVID-19 symptoms. Such measures will also reduce the number of people entering Ontario's jails.

In addition to these policing measures, the provincial Ministry of the Attorney General must issue directives to Crown attorneys to increase their consent to bail, including without sureties and less stringent conditions, with the goal of limiting imprisonment during this the COVID-19 crisis. Crown attorneys and courts should also immediately review the roster of prisoners being held on pre-trial detention in Ontario to identify who can be safely let out on bail with resources to practice social distancing and self-isolate where required. 

Over the past two weeks, the Government of Ontario has taken a number of steps to decrease the number of prisoners forcibly confined in its jails and prisons. On 13 March 2020, the Ministry of the Solicitor General announced that weekend prisoners will serve their intermittent sentences at home or in the community through temporary absences. A week later on 20 March 2020, the Ministry also announced that the 72-hour limit for temporary absences had also been removed. The Ontario Parole Board can now also conducting hearings through "electronic or written means", which will hopefully increase the use of this form of community release. 

The Ministry of the Solicitor General can do much more to depopulate its jails to the extent that is safely possible, including having its provincial prison and parole authorities review the roster of sentenced prisoners to see who can safely be let out of jail on temporary absences and parole immediately. They also need to pressure the federal government to request that immigration authorities review the roster of immigration detainees being held in places like the Lindsay super-jail to identify prisoners who can live in the community. 

The evidence that imprisonment undermines public health and community safety is robust and incontrovertible. To limit the spread of COVID-19 behind and beyond jail walls, the Government of Ontario needs to take additional measures to reduce the flow of people into its prisons and to take steps to release as many prisoners from custody as is currently safely possible to do. In so doing, a portion of the $235 it costs to imprison a single person in Ontario for a single day can be redirected towards providing community supports that help criminalized people meet their basic needs such as housing and food in order to facilitate a broader just transition from policing, punitive justice, and the prison industrial complex to compassionate and caring communities. The Criminalization and Punishment Education Project has long advocated against new and bigger jails like the failed Toronto South Detention Centre experiment, and urges the province to invest more in communities, instead of infrastructures of human caging starting today.

FOR MEDIA INTERVIEWS CONTACT:

Justin Piché, PhD

Associate Professor, Criminology, University of Ottawa

613-793-1093 / justin.piche@uottawa.ca 

Health care remains a pressing issue at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre as COVID-19 risks cause concern

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

16 March 2020 – The Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP), a joint Carleton University and University of Ottawa community initiative, is calling upon the Government of Ontario to shift from pretrial detention to pretrial freedom, and to take other immediate steps to significantly reduce the use and harms of imprisonment to limit the spread of COVID-19 and improve community safety. With inadequate health care cited as a major area of concern for people caged at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC) who have called our Jail Accountability & Information Line (JAIL), CPEP is very concerned the jail’s already scarce health care staff and resources will be overwhelmed, leading to preventable virus transmissions behind and beyond the bars.

As has been extensively documented in publicly-available JAIL hotline reports, even in times without a global pandemic threatening our collective well-being, people incarcerated at OCDC are often unable to access essential healthcare services that should be readily available. Sarah Speight, JAIL hotline Coordinator and Researcher, explains: “OCDC prisoners regularly report to us how pre-existing conditions have been exacerbated behind jail walls due to a lack of continuity in care. We also know OCDC is an environment where the risk of developing new health conditions is all too real, particularly during lockdowns and when segregation is used. The jail fails to provide adequate health care when it’s business as usual. In times of pandemic the situation may deteriorate further”. Recognizing some of these challenges, the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General has extended temporary absences to intermittent prisoners, who usually report to provincial jails to serve their sentences on the weekends, as part of public health efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. CPEP has recommended this be done in our reports for years. Aaron Doyle, Sociology Professor at Carleton University and co-founder of CPEP, urges the Government of Ontario to do more: “The province needs to extend temporary absences to other prisoners. For years, experts have also been calling for the police, Crown counsel and the courts to focus more on diversion measures and to reduce the number of people awaiting their trials in jail. Officials from the Solicitor General’s and Attorney General’s ministries have been saying for some time that bail should be used more often and that people shouldn’t be locked-up for administrative reasons like breaches of bail conditions, yet pre-trial prisoners still account for approximately two-thirds of people held in Ontario’s jails. With the courts reducing their case processing capacity to limit the spread of the coronavirus, now’s the time to make such changes before our jails become even more crowded. It will save lives and reduce the harms created by our current penal system”.

JAIL hotline callers have also reported difficulties staying connected with their loved ones and community supports. Maintaining such connections is all the more important in the context of a public health emergency where communication and access to accurate information is essential to reducing tension on both sides of jail walls. Justin Piché, Criminology Professor at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of CPEP, explains how Ontario’s jail phone system contributes to this disconnection: “Under the province’s current deal with Bell Canada, people held in places like OCDC can only reach their families and community contacts through expensive collect calls to landlines. Loved ones that only have cell phones and care providers with switchboards are out of bounds. Ontario’s jail phone system is harmful and needs to be changed”. Souheil Benslimane, Lead Coordinator of the JAIL hotline, adds: “Ontario’s Solicitor General has suspended visits to jails to try to limit the spread of COVID-19. This is extremely concerning. I urge the province to implement measures on its own and with the federal government to divert and decarcerate people, including immigration detainees, to keep them in their communities and to pilot free calling to keep people connected on both sides of prison walls to promote health and safety. If the province won’t take this necessary step, Bell Canada and other phone providers need to step up by temporarily waiving fees for collect calls to ensure people pushed to the margins can stay connected during this crisis”.

While measures are being taken in our community to promote social distancing, the JAIL hotline remains open, with our staff taking calls from OCDC prisoners on weekdays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm at 613-567-JAIL (5245). The line has taken 4,204 calls since it was launched in December 2018, and hundreds of the calls have centred on inadequate health care at OCDC. Given this, it is urgent that the Government of Ontario take steps to significantly reduce imprisonment to improve public health and safety.

FOR MEDIA INTERVIEWS CONTACT:

Souheil Benslimane

Lead Coordinator, Jail Accountability & Information Line

819-592-6469 / jailhotline@gmail.com 

Justin Piché, PhD

Associate Professor, Criminology, University of Ottawa

613-793-1093 / justin.piche@uottawa.ca