The Dominion - Robyn Maynard

Building Prisons, Creating Prisoners

Moira Peters — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:02:55 +0000

Harper gets “tough on crime” and everyone pays

MONTREAL—"It's wrong to believe that more time inside is what will make people safe," says James*, who was recently released from a maximum security prison. "If you want to fight crime, put money into communities, like job opportunities. The best way to fight crime is to fight poverty."

Since Prime Minister Harper took office, Correctional Services Canada (CSC)'s net budget has increased by 54 per cent to $2.46 billion for 2010–2011; it is predicted to increase further to $3.12 billion by 2012–2013, according to CSC. Much of this money is for capital expenditures such as construction of new prisons; in 2010, $329.4 million is set for capital expenditures, and in 2012–2013 that is set to increase to $466.9 million.

The number of incarcerated people in Canada is expected to soar due to new legislation introduced by the Conservative government.

"These prisons that will be coming online aren't even going to put a dent in the number of prisoners that they're going to be creating [with] this legislation," says prison justice activist Justin Piche, who notes that at least 22 new provincial-territorial prisons are being built in Canada and 15 additions are being made to existing facilities.

The Parliamentary Budget Office predicted in June 2010 that Bill C-25, which lengthens prisoners' stays by eliminating the "two-for-one" credit for time served pre-sentencing, will incur over $2 billion in construction, operation, and management costs over a five-year period. These costs correlate to the increased cost of housing these prisoners. The proposed Bill S-10, which involves mandatory minimum sentencing of six months for those producing as few as five marijuana plants, would add additional costs and increase the prison population in numbers that Correctional Services Canada says it cannot predict.

"It's like they're using a bigger net because they have to catch more fish. They're trying to pull people back in," says James. "There is no supporting data that this works, but nobody cares because it's prisoners, and prisoners are seen as second class."

Piche, co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, and author of the popular blog Tracking the Politics of "Crime" and Punishment in Canada says the government's changes in legislation, though expensive, are not needed and will not make the streets safer.

This legislation is being introduced despite the fact that Statistics Canada reports that crime rates have been falling steadily since the 1990s.

As the numbers of prisoners is set to rise, the living conditions of prisoners are far below those of the non-incarcerated population. Overcrowding is worsening, according to the Correctional Investigator of Canada's annual report, and incidents of prisoners facing violence from guards are also increasing. Suicide rates are more than seven times higher than the rest of Canada, HIV transmission rates are 10 times higher in prison, and the prevalence of Hepatitis C is 25 times greater. Access to clean needles and condoms is nearly non-existent, creating what many view as a health crisis inside the walls of prisons.

In an interview with Maclean's magazine, the Correctional Investigator of Canada notes that less than three per cent of the budget for prison expansion is to go towards programming inside prisons.

"There used to be so much more in terms of programs, and the ability to learn skills and trades," says James. "They take more and more of that away and we know that it's not coming back."

The Canadian government notes on their Public Safety website that 12 per cent of male and 26 per cent of female offenders have serious mental health problems; and about four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a serious substance abuse problem. This reality, however, is not leading to a corresponding increase in the mental health treatment for prisoners.

James notes that psychotherapy used to be easier to access; but increasingly, guards hold the de facto responsibility for prisoners with mental health issues. "Now guards play the role of the therapists," says James, "because they're there full time. They [the prison system] save money." The Correctional Investigator of Canada has repeatedly denounced the lack of funding for mental health treatment in prisons.

"It's increasingly recognized that our prisons have become dumping grounds for those suffering from mental illnesses, those who have substance-abuse addictions, and also other marginalized populations, particularly the poor, including Aboriginals, who are completely over-represented within our prisons," says Piche.

The increase in spending on prison expansion comes amidst cuts in many other sectors as part of the "austerity measures" that Harper announced at the close of the G20 meetings in Toronto. Money for community spending, for Indigenous peoples, and for women's groups have been slashed across the country.

Piche asserts that the over-representation of marginalized populations in prisons, such as people living in poverty or First Nations peoples, "indicates our inability to use appropriate services to address the needs of [these] populations. These populations are over-policed, over-prosecuted, they are sentenced in a disproportionate fashion, and this basically leads to their over-representation in prisons."

Peter Collins, an outspoken prison justice advocate, reflects on the rising costs of the "prison industrial complex" in a time of "fiscal restraint."

"If you look at the way that they spend on things that they want to spend on, which is the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, you can see that they are not really in a time of fiscal restraint, they are in a time of abundant spending. It just depends on what they want to spend it on," says Collins. "If it involves killing people or punishing people, there is a lot of money for that."

Collins, who recently won the Canadian Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, is currently serving a life sentence in Bath Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario.

Furthermore, Piche adds, "It costs more to imprison people than it does to put money into community programs, which actually address real social ills." Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Office reports the average cost of an inmate in 2009-2010 to be $162,373, while community-based organizations across the country are fighting to survive.

To Collins and many others, it is this basic lack of justice that is putting growing numbers of people behind bars for longer and longer stays.

"It is so many people from low economic situations [who are in prisons]," says Collins. When living in poverty children "often do not do as well in school, they're going to school hungry or tired. Some of them have or develop learning disabilities [and struggle with school] and then you have schools operating with their no-tolerance attitudes...and when the kid runs afoul then he's on the street," explains Collins. "What are the kids supposed to do? When do we take some responsibility in society for that kid's opportunity or lack of it?"

Though the Canadian government refers to its prison system as "rehabilitative," Collins disagrees. He points out that it is not only poor conditions inside of prisons or the expansion of prisons that should be criticized, but the very idea of using incarceration as a solution: "At the end of the day, regardless of how pretty or how ugly a prison is, it's still a prison. Deprivation does not work, you simply can't rehabilitate someone inside of a cage."

"They treat you like an infant, like a 'bad child,'" agrees James. "They try to hold you in for so long, it harms you."

Piche says these statements are supported by the evidence. "It has been demonstrated in studies about the US system of longer-term incarceration and mandatory minimums that indeed, though much more money is spent, American-style justice and imprisonment systems do not work in reducing or in preventing crime".

Collins sees a deep injustice in a system he says doesn't make the streets any safer but puts public money into locking away economically and racially marginalized people, while others walk free. "There are different ways that we can see criminals. If you look at the tar sands—the way that they're pumping toxins into the Athabasca river and poisoning everybody downstream, and the air—how is that not criminal?" asks Collins. Collins has faced severe repercussions and the denial of his parole as a direct consequence of speaking out from inside prison, yet he continues to do so.

"There is a punishment for speaking out. But I think that there is punishment for shutting up as well. At the end of the day, if you know that something should be said and you don't say it, you're going to pay some price in terms of your integrity, your dignity. So you've got to make the choice of where you want to pay your toll."

* Not his real name.

Robyn Maynard is a movement writer, radio journalist, and activist based in Montreal. She co-hosts No One Is Illegal Radio and is involved in various grassroots campaigns for migrant justice, and against police violence and impunity.

Cookie-cutter prisons

Ball and chain

Migrating Justice

dru — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:02:05 +0000

Globalizing labour rights, regardless of status

MONTREAL—As the G8 and G20 meet in Huntsville and Toronto from June 25 to 27, resistance movements in the making since 2009 will take to the streets. A major focus of the community organizing and protests is migrant justice. On June 25, a “Free the Streets” demonstration will highlight the differences between politicians and dissenters on the themes of migrant justice, women’s and queer rights, and economic justice.

Fred McMahon, a globalization expert at the Fraser Institute, an influential pro-free-market think tank, says these protests are misguided.

“Nobody forces anybody to become a migrant labourer to Canada,” says McMahon. “The people who are protesting on the streets should ask how the migrants would feel if they were disallowed from coming to Canada. They wouldn’t be happy with the rich-kids street protesters. Migrants come here and see a better life for their families.”

SK Hussan from No One Is Illegal Toronto and the Toronto Community Mobilization Network counters that the migrant justice movement’s opposition to the G8/G20 emerges from a widespread dissatisfaction within migrant communities.

“People are angry and afraid of being deported, of unsafe working conditions, and of the rise in workplace raids,” Hussan told The Dominion.

Mostafa Henaway, director of the grassroots Montreal-based Immigrant Worker’s Centre, calls attention to economic “push factors,” factors that compel people to migrate. He specifically names Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and their negative effects on the economies of the global South in recent decades.

“The de-regularization of labour laws has been an outcome of the race to the bottom, which is necessary in this system to remain competitive. In this time we’ve seen the largest migration in human history,” says Henaway.

Henaway believes this migration trend largely benefits the governments of the global North, due to the way migrant workforces are exploited by host countries such as Canada. Henaway says that changes to temporary worker programs bring workers rendered impoverished by SAPs to Canada, meaning companies don’t have to relocate for low wages.

“Since NAFTA, we’ve seen tens of thousands of Mexicans working in exploitative and precarious conditions under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker’s Program,” says Henaway, who explains the workers generally cannot challenge these conditions because they’re afraid of deportation.

Henaway notes that in previous generations, immigrants who worked in Canada became citizens, but that this is no longer the case.

“They do not have the same rights as those with citizenship, and under these programs it is impossible for them to [become citizens].”

The numbers of temporary workers has been steadily increasing, nearly doubling since 2004 according to the Canadian Council for Refugees. Simultaneously, the number of refugees allowed into Canada has been drastically reduced. According to the Ottawa Citizen, in 2008 almost 22,000 refugees were accepted; in 2010, the projected acceptance rate is between 9,000 and 12,000.

Hussan says increasingly more migrants are being brought to work in exploitative conditions through temporary workers programs, but not allowed the benefits of Canadian citizenship.

“The increasing use of ‘flexible’ workforces allows Canada to profit from migrant labour without allowing migrants the right to remain,” he says.

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s recently announced changes to immigration policy reflects these ambitions, deepening the “temporary” nature of these jobs. After having worked in Canada for a cumulative four years, temporary workers are not eligible to work in the country for six years, a move Henaway likens to a deportation order.

“If migrants are seen as good enough to work, then why aren’t they good enough to stay?”

Other proposed changes in Kenney’s newly announced “Balanced Refugee Reform” include measures that deny the right to appeal negative decisions to refugees deemed to come from “safe” countries, rather than evaluating claims on individual cases of persecution.

Henaway says it’s important to bring the voice of migrant justice to the anti-globalization movement. “The G8 and G20 [countries] are crucial to these policies that create migration, and are beginning to regulate migration. The G8 and G20 manage the global economy, and migration is becoming sort of a central pillar of the global economy. If they want to globalize capital then we have to fight for the right for the freedom of movement and for labour rights for all, regardless of status.”

The G20 protests this spring are attracting a wide variety of community members. Hussan expects around 5,000 people for the “Free the Streets” march, largely to be led by racialized people and immigrant communities.

“We have been and continue to host community forums in 15 migrant neighbourhoods in the months leading up to the G20. Each of these should bring out from 100 to 300 people,” says Hussan. “People want to talk about status, and about labour standards, about the world that they want to live in.”

Robyn Maynard is a radio journalist and community organizer based in Montreal, focusing primarily on issues of migrant justice, police violence, and racial profiling.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Permanent Status demo

Double Punishment for Villanueva

dru — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:14:58 +0000

MONTREAL—In August of 2008, 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva was playing dice in a parking lot in Montreal North when he was shot and killed by police officer Jean-Loup Lapointe. Two other youth were also shot, but survived.

All three were unarmed youth of colour. The killing has been described as emblematic of racial profiling at its most violent by community members, as well as by community groups, including Montreal-Nord Republik (a group of residents that formed, after the the killing of Villanueva, to denoounce racial profiling and economic marginalization), and Head & Hands (a non-profit youth service centre based in Montreal's NDG).

In 2010, the tragedy faced by the Villanueva family got worse. Having lost one son, Lilian Villanueva is now facing the possibility of being forcibly separated from another.

Dany Villanueva, who was an eyewitness to the killing of his brother, is slated to be deported to Honduras, a country in which he has not resided since 1998, when he was 12.

“They have already taken the life of my youngest son....now they want to take away my other son!” a tearful Lilian told the audience at Montreal's Forum Against Police Violence and Impunity in January 2010. Lilian had to struggle for a coroner’s inquest into her younger son's death. Now she is fighting her surviving son's deportation.

Fredy's killing, and the community response that it sparked, have exposed what some describe as the fault-lines of systemic discrimination in the forms of racial profiling, police impunity and a two-tiered immigration system.

Alexandre Popovic, a spokesperson with the Coalition Against Police Abuse and Repression, says the timing of Dany's deportation order is suspicious.

“It is hard for me to believe that the way that they dealt with Dany Villanueva’s file is not related to the public inquiry [into Fredy’s death]. It’s hard for me to believe that the people at the CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] are making those decisions, at those specific dates, without having in mind the coroner’s inquest,” he says.

The Villanueva family led a long struggle for a coroner’s inquest, which they hope will uncover details surrounding Fredy’s death, and which is set to continue through the summer months.

Though their initial strategy was calling for Jean-Loup Lapointe to be put on trial for murder, or at least for a public inquiry with legal repercussions, it was difficult for the family to win any sort inquest into Fredy's death, and the current investigation represents a modest victory in the family's search for justice.

The role of the inquest, by definition, is to investigate and reveal to the public the details surrounding the death of the unarmed 18-year-old, and to put forth recommendations to avoid such situations in the future. It does not, however, have the judicial power of a criminal investigation, which Montreal-Nord Republik, among others, have said is warranted, given the details of the case.

Dany was charged with robbery in the spring of 2006 and served the full sentence for his crime that same year. More than three years later, in August of 2009, and while the Villanueva family was in the final stages of securing the coroner’s inquest, Dany received a letter informing him of his upcoming deportation. Popovic points out that Dany’s appearance before the immigration board closely coincided with the dates of his witness testimony for the coroner’s inquest about his brother's death, much to his family's distress.

Popovic believes the city's lawyers, who are defending the police, are unjustly using this highly-publicized immigration issue to shift the blame away from Lapointe, the police officer who fired on the three youth in the park. It is Lapointe whose actions are under scrutiny in the coroner’s inquest. While the city of Montreal planned to pay for the legal fees of the police, the Quebec government, the body responsible for the inquest, initially refused to cover the legal fees for any witnesses, the family, or the victims of the shootings. The government's position changed after witnesses threatened to boycott the proceedings.

In December 2009, the inquest revealed that Lapointe’s partner at the scene, Stephanie Pilotte, did not feel that her life was in danger when the shots were fired. Lapointe had previously testified that shooting at the three youth was necessary because he felt his life to be in danger.

The defence lawyers' strategy, says Popovic, has been to attempt to shift that police culpability onto Dany.

“The police lawyers are using, or attempting to use, the coroner’s inquest to criminalize Dany Villanueva. They are the ones who are questioning Dany Villaneuva the most. Their agenda is very clear: first they want to convince the coroner that the whole thing is the fault of Dany.”

Popovic says this is explicit in the proceedings at the coroner’s inquest. He points out that Pierre-Yves Boisvert, a lawyer for the city of Montreal, has stated that Dany is responsible for the death of his brother.

“The city will argue Fredy Villanueva is the victim of his own behaviour and the behaviour of his brother and his friends,” Boisvert said in a statement at the inquest.

By painting Dany as a criminal, Boisvert’s arguments in the inquest attempted to simultaneously justify Fredy's death and Dany’s deportation.

“He has an immigration order against him and Canada Border Services want to send him back to Honduras, a nice country, probably, but one he doesn't feel like going to,” said Bosivert.

As a result of this strategy, Dany has been painted unsympathetically as a gangster and a criminal by much of the corporate media. Numerous articles in the Quebec media kept Dany’s supposed criminality as their focus during the time of his testimony for the inquest this April. The Montreal Gazette ran an article with the headline “Dany Villaneuva was in a gang,” under which they printed photos taken from a hip hop website to show that the colour of Dany’s touque suggested gang membership. These photos were also used by Boisvert at the coroner’s inquest.

Popovic decries this media sensationalism, which places Dany under enormous pressure to defend his own character during his testimony, where his only focus should be his provision of an eye-witness description of the shooting incident in which his younger brother was killed by police.

Dany Villaneuva's pending deportation has also drawn attention to a phenomenon known as “double punishment.” The term was coined to describe the use of the immigration system to mete out additional penalties to non-citizens convicted of crimes, after having already subjected them to the punishments defined by court rulings. Migrant justice advocates call it a de facto two-tiered justice system.

Jared Will, a Montreal-based immigration lawyer, explains: “Non-citizens who are convicted of crimes often face punishment not only in the form of the sentence they get in the criminal courts, but also in the form of their loss of immigration status and deportation from the country.”

Dany’s case is an example of this practice. Having already served a sentence for his crime in 2006, Dany is now facing a second punishment for the same crime by being deported to his native Honduras, which would mean leaving behind the rest of his family in Montreal, who all have citizenship status.

Will stresses that double punishment is an issue that brings together aspects of racial profiling and the criminalization of migrant communities.

“The problem of racial profiling in the targeting of youth of colour has a disproportionate effect on migrant communities,” says Will.

Increasing documentation shows that racial profiling, especially of youth, is a harsh reality in Montreal, most recently documented by the Quebec Human Rights Commission. Montreal-Nord, St. Michel, Cote-des-Neiges, Notre Dame de Grace and Parc-Extension are the neighborhoods with some of the highest concentrations of immigrants in Montreal, as well as some of the highest populations of people of colour.

“When police target those in racialized communities there is a double fear for those who are refugee claimants and permanent residents,” says Will.
“Obviously the targeting of those communities has the effect of bringing a lot more people into immigration proceedings.”

Will says racial profiling increases the numbers of migrant youth in the justice system, and due to the de facto two-tiered nature of the legal system, it also places their fate in the hands of the immigration system.

A growing grassroots campaign in support of Dany Villanueva brings a broader analysis to and a rejection of the practice of double punishment. A solidarity statement drafted by Montreal-Nord Republik, No One Is Illegal-Montreal, Solidarity Across Borders, and the Coalition Against Police Repression and Abuse lists two demands: “An immediate end to all removal proceedings against Dany Villanueva, and that his permanent resident status is restored; and an end to the double punishment against migrants with criminal records.”

Organizers who have endorsed the statement are working to accrue the support of community organizations, human rights groups, and unions.

Though Dany’s deportation has been officially announced, the campaign in solidarity with the Villanueva family’s quest for justice continues. An appeal has been filed by Dany’s lawyer Stephen Handfield to overturn the decision. In the meantime, supporters of the family are asking for assistance in the campaign, calling for people to endorse the solidarity statement, and also to attend the on-going coroner’s inquest, which is open to the public.

To support the Villanueva family, send endorsements of this campaign to solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com, and condemn Dany Villanueva’s deportation order and double punishment by letter, fax, or phone to both the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the Minister of Public Safety. Support the Villlanueva family by filling the courts during the course of the coroner's inquest and during Dany’s appeal. Dates can be found here.

Robyn Maynard is a journalist, writer and activist based in Montreal, and a member of No One Is Illegal-Montreal. She is active in various struggles against racial profiling, police violence and impunity.

Rally for Dany Villanueva