The Dominion - Prison solidarity

More Prisons, Higher Profits

Miles — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:51:02 +0000

Inmates have little power in challenging prison work conditions

HALIFAX—Criticism of cheap prison labour is something often aimed at privately owned U.S. super jails, but here in Canada, thousands of imprisoned people form a labour pool where wages dip below a dollar an hour.

“Motivated workers. ISO-certified plants. Flexible contracts. Your partnership with CORCAN will build your business and boost your productivity,” reads a pitch from CORCAN—a branch of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) that coordinates inmate work programs in over 50 shops in manufacturing, textile production, industrial laundry, and other industries.

Every year, about 4,800 inmates across the country participate in CORCAN work programs. Inmates are paid a maximum of $6.90 per day, have no vacation time or vacation pay and need clearance from a health professional to take a sick day. Overtime pay is just over $1 per hour and inmates are required to hand over 25 per cent of any earnings over $69 biweekly for room and board.

Prison wages have not increased in about 25 years; however, according to a 2008 report from Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator, the cost of the average basket of canteen goods inmates require has increased from $8.49 to over $60. In the 2008-09 fiscal year, inmates worked about 2.8 million hours collectively.

CORCAN sells most of its goods and services to government departments such as CSC and the Department of National Defence. In 2008-09, CORCAN had about $70 million in sales, with $10 million of those sales to the private sector. If the 4,800 inmates who worked in CORCAN shops were paid at the top rate of $6.90 per day, CORCAN would have spent just $2.4 million paying prisoners—3.45 per cent of its total sales.

In March of last year, inmates at Mountain Institution in Agassiz, BC, announced that they were attempting to organize an inmate labour union in order to improve working conditions for prisoners. It is unclear what the current status of the inmate union is, but prisoner worker action has been reported at prisons across Canada and the US over the past year, including work stoppages and hunger strikes.

"Prisoners are tremendously resourceful organizers, despite the huge barriers they face [such as] censorship, isolation, lack of funds, [and] retribution by staff/administration," says Sara Falconer, a prisoner justice activist involved with the prisoner-edited zine, Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar.

In some cases, inmates have also been able to turn to the courts to access the rights and freedoms they have been denied. In the 1993 case Sauve v. Canada, the courts struck down laws that stripped prisoners of the right to vote. Prisoners have also argued, with some success, for the right to legal counsel in disciplinary hearings and fought arbitrary transfers and disciplinary measures such as segregation.

“Imprisonment and engagement with the criminal justice system correlates to poverty and other forms of social disadvantage, and even if it doesn’t, it is still a group of people that has human rights. It is still important that our society is held accountable for how it treats them,” says Dr. Debra Parkes, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Manitoba who has written substantially on prisoner rights and why it is important prisoners have access to the courts.

“Groups [such as prisoners] that don’t always have access to the political process and to making change through that need some avenue to address [the] rights abuses that often happen when you have a majority making rules and laws [that] affect the unpopular minority,” she adds.

When it comes to labour issues though, significant barriers prevent prisoners from using the courts to challenge working conditions. Unlike rights granted under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that are intended to apply to all people, inmates are excluded from the statutes and regulations that define labour laws.

“These challenges would face uphill battles in the courts,” says Parkes, “especially because in other instances, the courts have ruled that full collective bargaining protection and labour rights do not need to be extended in every case to all people.”

A lack of labour rights for prisoners leaves inmates susceptible to exploitation in the face of prison expansion. According to Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, CSC will require at least an additional $3.5 billion in funding in order to address the increases in inmates due to the Truth in Sentencing Act, which limits the credit a judge can give an inmate for time served before sentencing. Page estimates that the Federal government would need to build two low-security facilities with 250 cells each, six medium-security facilities with 600 cells each, four high-security facilities with 400 cells each, and one multi-level-security facility with 400 cells each. Bill C-10, known commonly as the omnibus crime bill, will further drive prison expansion through the use of mandatory, minimum sentences and increases in the number of criminal offences.

Prison expansion also allows for a larger inmate workforce.

Prisoners are assigned to work programs in their correctional plans. A correctional plan is an outline of a program that determines the work, training, and activity for an inmate’s sentence. Inmates have little ability to refuse to work, even in poor conditions, because an inmate’s adherence to their correction plan influences decisions on inmate privileges and parole.

While its mandate is said to be centred on work programs that work for prisoners, decisions ultimately come down to dollar figures. In 2009, CORCAN announced it would be closing six prison farms across the country because the farms had been losing money. CORCAN's 2008-09 annual report states that farms had lost $4.1 million that year. Prison farm supporters, including prisoners, correction workers, prisoner justice activists and community members cited the role of the farms in providing local, fresh food to prisons, and in providing meaningful work for prisoners.

Closures were complete in 2011, despite opposition.

For Falconer, prisoner solidarity like that demonstrated around the closure of prison farms will be essential to successful prisoner resistance.

"There have been some inspirational groups over the years...but this kind of organizing can’t really take off without outside support—otherwise it’s easily silenced by the prison administration," says Falconer. “Outside labour unions also have good cause to support prisoners in these struggles—in Wisconsin and elsewhere, union workers have been replaced by prisoners.

"We need to raise prisoners' voices in our everyday lives and movements—from labour unions to schools to community groups to families," she says. "Those of us on the outside have the resources and relative freedom to spread the word about the conditions prisoners are facing and what actions they want us to take."

Kaley Kennedy is a journalist and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Prison labour Canada

Honouring Unfree Friends

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:31:11 +0000

Prison solidarity for man charged in RBC arson

TORONTO—It’s two days before Christmas, and it's Matthew Morgan-Brown’s birthday. It’s hard for him to celebrate, however; his friend, Roger Clement, is being transferred to Millhaven Institution, where he will begin serving the rest of his three-year, six-month sentence for the firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch in Ottawa in May 2010. No one has heard from Clement for over a week, which isn’t unusual during transfers, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Morgan-Brown.

“It’s that time of year,” Morgan-Brown says. “It’s difficult to be separated from family and friends.”

Clement, a 58-year-old retired civil service employee, is well known to local activists from years of social justice organizing. He was sentenced on December 7, 2010, having pled guilty to the RBC arson, as well as breaking windows and ATMs at a different branch in February 2010. It’s an unusually harsh sentence for property damage crimes, given that both the defense and Crown attorneys acknowledged he took great care to eliminate any possible injury to people.

Morgan-Brown’s own arson and mischief charges in the May 18 RBC firebombing were stayed due to lack of evidence. He is now taking an active role in Ottawa Movement Defense (OMD), a group originally formed to support the three people arrested on June 18: himself, Joseph Roger Clement, and Claude Haridge. Haridge, who was never charged with arson but with careless storage and handling of ammunition, had his final day in court postponed in December 2010.

In addition to returning to his job at Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG)-Ottawa and devoting his spare time to OMD, Morgan-Brown says he is grappling with the psychological scars of the arrest and months of uncertainty. “I often put my emotions on hold, and then try to find time to deal with them later,” he says. “It’s just not a skill that I have. I don’t know how to deal with what happened. I know that it was a traumatic experience.

“It was also a learning experience. It was the first time I’d ever been in prison...other than two or three days when I challenged some conditions I’d been given. That was scary in itself, not knowing what was going on, what it would be like. I’d be a lot more prepared if I had to go to prison again.”

Morgan-Brown spent two months inside, including the addition of a 20-day sentence for participating in a Barriere Lake First Nation blockade on Highway 117 in 2008. Algonquins from that impoverished community in north-western Quebec are struggling to protect their land and environmental resources.

Morgan-Brown has long been an active member of Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement (IPSM)-Ottawa, a grassroots organization that directly supports Indigenous peoples in diverse struggles for justice. “Not being able to organize was really shitty. It’s very important to me,” says Morgan-Brown, who had limited communications with colleagues due to his bail conditions. “The day they lifted my conditions I started organizing again.”

His number one priority these days is supporting his friend Roger Clement. Morgan-Brown encourages activists to write to Clement and connect with him, as a way of showing support. “[Clement is] quite limited about what he can say,” he says. “I expect that he feels he can’t comment about his politics, which I know are super-important to him.”

One way to honour Clement, Morgan-Brown says, is to learn about and discuss subjects that are important to him. As a communist, he is passionate about the Cuban revolution. “I know that he’d like to see people becoming engaged, learning about different issues,” says Morgan-Brown. “He’d be happy if people were finding out about what’s going on in Cuba now and how to support [the Cuban people].” In this way, supporters can keep Clement involved in everyday organizing and dialogue.

As with writing to any prisoners, it’s extremely important not to speculate about illegal activities, or to act on behalf of a prisoner without their guidance. “He’s got a parole board hearing coming up,” Morgan-Brown cautions.

Complicating matters, the issue of police infiltration in Ottawa activist groups has been a source of rampant rumours. "As far as we know from the disclosure the lawyer saw, and from what we heard in [our] bail hearing, there’s no evidence he was involved in either of the actions Roger pled guilty to,” says Morgan-Brown.

Meanwhile, Morgan-Brown still finds it challenging to speak freely, although a publication ban on the case has finally been lifted. He’s on a relatively short leash, as his charges have only been stayed, not dismissed; the Crown still has a year in which it can reinstate them. “It’s definitely something I’m more mindful of than I usually am,” he says. “Hopefully I can find something positive in it, step back in certain situations where I would usually step forward, and encourage people to take on roles that I enjoy.” An avid public speaker, he is working to help other group members develop those skills.

Morgan-Brown was already familiar with prison issues through his activist work, but witnessing first-hand the ways in which imprisonment is so blatantly tied to race and class, he says, was eye-opening. “So many guys were in there just because they didn’t have the resources to get bail.”

Moving forward, Morgan-Brown aims to link his Indigenous solidarity and prisoner justice work more closely, starting with support for people arrested from Barriere Lake. “There are so many Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, and so many people being arrested for resistance,” he says. “I feel more emotionally connected to prisoners than I did [before], and I hope that Ottawa Movement Defense will find a way of connecting with other people who are supporting political prisoners, and the G8/G20 defendants.”

Sara Falconer is a Toronto-based journalist. She helps publish Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar and is a member of Toronto Anarchist Black Cross, which produces www.4strugglemag.org, a zine of analysis by and for political prisoners.

For more information about supporting Clement and Haridge, visit http://www.exilebooks.org/en/links/ottawa-movement-defense.

Solidarity for friends