Jenn – Page 16 – Jenneral HQ

Canada’s Broken Prison System

From Vicky Mochama and Ishmael Daro’s excellent podcast, Safe Space.

Guests:
Anna Mehler Paperny (Reuters investigative reporter)
Sharmeen Khan (activist w End Immigration Detention Network)

What is Canada’s prison system like? Who does it disproportionately hurt? What can alternatives look like? Although we heard more about prisons during Harper’s years as part of his platform was being tough on crime, nothing has changed since 2014.

Ivan Zinger report of national prison system

solitary confinement is overused
few mental health resources for inmates-no resources for integration of prisoners after incarceration
overrepresentation of indigenous people behind bars is “deeply entrenched”: despite only making up 5% of the population of Canada, they make up around ¼th of all inmates in Canada. And it’s worse for women
black inmates are fastest growing popn – 69% growth in black inmates from 05-16 in federal system

Common misconceptions:

most people behind bars have done something bad. Truth: in provincial jails, a significant portion are not charged, and are merely waiting for their day in court.
there are limits to how long you can put someone in solitary confinement for. Truth: as of now, any prisoner could be placed in SC for any length of time.
criminal justice system is impartial, benevolent and fair. Truth: there are systemic structures embedded within it that lead to people/groups being incarcerated. eg. the school to prison pipeline
indefinite immigration detention isn’t a thing in Canada. Truth: there are people in max security that haven’t been charged because they overstayed their visas/are here illegally – for years upon years with no movement in justice system. One man stayed in jail for 13 years before being allowed to return to Jamaica

“Administrative Segregation”

What Canada calls solitary confinement

you’re not there to be punished, and you haven’t even done anything wrong, it’s for your own safety and the safety of others

United Nations: 15 days is the most you can do, is considered torture beyond that. People deteriorate rapidly in solitary
Language makes it sounds more necessary, gives it distance from what it does. It makes it sound bloodless.
“Disciplinary segregation: is actually for punishment, but vast majority are in administrative segregation
2016: first nations man held in solitary confinement in Ontario for 4 years and lost his speech. No substantive change since then. Howard Sapers, Ombudsman, has recommended systemic reviews, stricter rules around SC, prohibition on placement of people with mental illnesses (currently, many are put in because of their mental illness, which makes them difficult to deal with)

Canada’s prisons are the "new residential schools”

When a large amount of a certain community is incarcerated, that community starts to function differently. Adults can’t find jobs, pay rent, or keep custody of their kids (which is especially awful because of a historical loss of custody on a large scale). Because of this huge disparity in who we’re locking up, courts should take into account circumstances and try their very best to divert indigenous from the prison system. Gladue reports exist, but they don’t seem to be available at the right time. They should be available when they’re at the bail hearing stage (when you might be locked up to await trial), not at sentencing.

Other Systemic Issues

Nonviolent drug crime convictions are majorily POC, but white hipsters can smoke a joint no problem. There’s a perception that POC commit more crime, but a large factor is the more intense surveillance that goes on in their communities. This increased surveillance also makes it harder to get bail – harder to get surety since less people have been not involved with the justice system. So then more people in these communities “have to” go to jail – meaning losing housing, losing jobs, losing custody.

More people awaiting sentencing than actually serving sentences in jail. During 2015-16, 15,000 adults were in remand and 10,000 in custody.

those 15,000 people are still legally innocent
justices are terrified to appear soft on criminals, so risk is over-estimated in population awaiting trial
getting out on bail depends on who you know, and what assets/resources they have. even though criminal code hasn’t changed, and still says that bail should be default unless there is a perception of high risk.
Ontario: 67% of people can’t get bail, country average is 60%.
The US has a cash bail system, which is unfair against poor. In Canada, essentially you need to have another person vouch for you (surety) with an amount of money that they can pledge (isn’t given away, but needs to demonstrate that they have that amount) to give if you breach bail. But they have to have time to spend in court, have a house for you to sleep in for like months, etc. It’s a very high burden on social networks to ask for these commitments.
the supreme court has said that these expectations are onerous and shouldnt be the norm.

re:prison abolition, we will need to destroy poverty first

after white feminists campaigned for cracking down on domestic abuse, many communities were destroyed.
prisons didn’t make women safer, didn’t impact rates of abuse and assault-so now we look at transformative solutions, because using the court systems hurt the community more.
women who don’t want to go to the police for domestic abuse because their status is tied to their husbands, for ex, could really benefit from alternative approaches
looking at this from my own personal perspective, the idea of letting domestic abusers go is really, really distasteful to think about. But we need to think about this. Our sense of justice can’t blind us here.

thinking about rehabilitation is a method towards prison abolition

Sweden started closing down jails because they had no more prisoners
Always going to be child molesters and serial murders, but the vast majority people are there for nonviolent crimes.
communities should talk about practising self-determination, what to do with people who harm, and how to heal from that.
In Canada, more indigenous communities should be empowered to create and run healing circles.

Ontario’s Solar Energy

So it’s the day before I have two midterms back to back, which means that obviously I’ve spent the last few hours getting sucked into the energy section of the Auditor General’s Report. There’s some fascinating stuff in there about solar power, which I’m learning just in time for wowing the bae on Valentine’s day!

-When you make an electrical grid, you need to achieve parity between supply and demand. When there’s too much power in the grid, you need to shut down some generators. When there’s too little, you need to turn some on. The solution that we came up with is to have two tiers of suppliers:

base load plants which provide the minimum supply of power in the system, and
peaking plants, which provide additional supply during peak hours.

-Nuclear and hydroelectric plants are base load plants; they are large, their energy is really cheap, and they’re very expensive to turn off and on again.

-Fossil and alternative power sources make peaking plants. Their energy is more expensive, but they’re easy to turn off and on again.

-Solar energy throws a giant wrench into this. They 1) can’t be easily turned on and off, 2) are not reliable enough to be a base load supplier, 3) are also not reliable enough to be a peak load supplier, and 4) is incredibly expensive.

-We have a microFIT program in Ontario, which is when the government pays you to hook your solar panels up to the grid. The government pays in total $491 million per TWh for solar. Compare to the traditional source of peaking power:

fossil: $153 million
wind: $119 million
bioenergy: $200 million.
(If you’re curious, base load plants cost around $60 million per TWh)

oh, and 5) it’s actually messing with our energy grid because it’s unpredictable and it must be embedded within our system due to its not-easily-turned-on-and-off-ness. Because of all the panels hooked up now, Ontario has started experiencing a lot of days with surplus energy generation (defined as when base load power generation exceeds demand) – from 172 days in 2011 to 319 days in 2014. On a yearly basis, we waste more energy than the maximum amount that Manitoba can produce.

This is bad because consumers have to eat the costs, exporting power happens at a loss, and some other reasons like wearing down infrastructure.

There’s even more interesting stuff in the Auditor General’s Report, which you should read on a day that is not a day before you have two midterms.

Like how the incentive scheme to get renewable energy off the ground was supposed to have their goal met in 10 years but managed it under one, but the government kept it going anyways, or how it’s apparently not actually the most efficient way to stop GHG emissions.

Embarrassing confession time: through the course of writing this I realized that last year we had a guest lecture about this, but I don’t think I was paying attention. If anyone in my year is reading this, this is apparently supposed to be old news to us? From the notes of that guest lecture though, I rediscovered http://ieso.ca/ which has some rad graphs about the current status of energy generation in Ontario.

On Toronto Police at Pride

So. Speaking as someone who identifies as queer (NOT that this should matter because purity politics are the worst), I think Pride Toronto’s decision to ban policemen in uniforms from pride this year is pretty gross.

I can’t believe that after all the outcry about Rob Ford not going to pride, we’re sticking up our noses at the thought of the establishment showing their support for us. I don’t understand how dialogues and reparations can even begin if one side refuses to even be in the same space as the other. Common ground is absolutely essential for building rapport, and we’re destroying what little we have.

And if you believe that all policemen live in insular, hate-filled bubbles, why would you want to deny them a chance to leave it? And if you think that the awful relationship that police have historically had with the queer community justifies banning them, why doesn’t this argument extend to mayors and prime ministers?

Regarding queer people who have had a bad experience with policemen and feel genuine fear at having to be near them, I absolutely empathize. They’ve constantly turned a blind eye to our pain, and punished us disproportionately through the over-surveillance of places that we gather.

And if it was any other city, I would think that that’s a pretty big deal. But look, Toronto is really, fantastically, gay. The pride parade isn’t your only option during pride month, to celebrate being you. There’s dozens of really cool smaller events going on through the month, those that aren’t as corporate and visible as the parade. I encourage you to go to them, even if you don’t specifically need a safe space away from cops. But policemen had one event that they had to go to and participate in. That number is now zero. This isn’t progress.

I remember the world being amazed at the wonderful photos of our rainbow-decked police force every summer, a symbol of Canada’s real, amazing progressiveness. As a young person coming to terms with my queerness, it meant the world to me that my country and my institutions would support me, even if my family wouldn’t.

The thought that these photos won’t happen this year breaks my heart. I don’t like the messages that this sends – that police and uniforms aren’t to be trusted by the queer community*, and that the queer community is picky and difficult to work with (in the case of any organization or institution that was thinking of helping us).

If you agree with me, help me make a difference. Take a moment out of your day and jot out a tweet or shoot a Facebook message at Pride Toronto. give arguments, let them know that the people against this decision aren’t just racists and Facebook trolls. pride’s still a while away, i’m sure we can change this if we put our minds to it.

*Ok look, this is true. I don’t want to make any excuses for the gross negligence that is the way the Toronto Police Force treats the queer (and other minority) communities. But I don’t think the answer lies in a withdrawal from their services.