Justin Ling: Prisoners also deserve free speech
No class of Canadians suffers more arbitrary restrictions to its speech rights than inmates
For years, Glen Assoun had to keep making new hats. Each one, like the last, read:
WRONGLY CONVICTED 1998
Assoun's ex-girfriend, Brenda Way, was stabbed to death in an apartment in Dartmouth Nova Scotia in 1995. A shambolic police investigation and court process eventually led to Assoun's conviction for second-degree murder.
Assoun insisted he hadn’t done it.
So he would grab a baseball hat, paint over the cap with black paint, and write his message in red.
Again and again, the corrections officers at Dorchester Penitentiary, a federal prison in New Brunswick, would grab his hats and destroy them. When Assoun’s son tried to leave a hat for his father on one visit, the smuggling attempt was intercepted and requests to visit his father were denied for the next seven years.
Assoun spent 16 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He was fully exonerated only last year. After leaving prison, was he was finally a given a chance to speak again: Assoun told this story to journalist Tim Bousquet for his Uncover: Dead Wrong series.
It’s an obscene case that shows just how imperfect and unreliable our justice system can be. More than that, it shows that for one class of Canadians, freedom of speech protections simply do not exist. Our prisoners suffer draconian restrictions to what they are allowed to say and express — restrictions that extend even to the repeated claims of their own innocence.
Citizens obviously lose some rights when they are admitted to prison. That’s the point. You may no longer walk beyond the prison walls. You cannot hold a job, or make choices about your meals. You sacrifice much of your right to privacy and due process: you are watched constantly, and any infraction, criminal or administrative, is punished severely.
To some extent, this is to be expected. But Canadian prisons have restricted speech rights beyond all sense or reason.
While some inmates are given limited access to computers, they are strictly forbidden from using the internet, even for legal research. Cellphones are expressly forbidden, and holding a contraband phone is grounds for punishment. Inmates can make calls on the landlines, but they often must apply to the prison warden for permission to call a given number — calls, meanwhile, cost about $3 per hour, on top of a monthly fee, which is steep given that inmates are paid no more than $6.90 a day, before room and board costs are deducted. Phone costs are just one line item: most inmates must spend some of their income on additional food from the canteen to maintain a healthy caloric intake.
I spoke to one inmate who was moved from a medium-security facility to a maximum-security prison for “inciting” other inmates to act during the COVID-19 outbreak. His infraction: encouraging fellow prisoners to file grievances about the lack of soap and social distancing.
If federal inmates want to speak to a journalist they must apply to Correctional Services Canada, who assesses the request and makes a decision based on arcane and non-reviewable grounds. When I recently applied to speak to an inmate, the request took three weeks before it was approved. Another request by one of my colleagues was flatly denied.
Violating the letter of Correctional Services’ regulations could mean being cut off from using the phone altogether. In-person visits are equally vulnerable.
Even expressive hats, as noted, are not guaranteed.
Ottawa has tried, twice, to strip inmates of their voting rights — the Supreme Court, twice, had to reinstate those rights. (Inmates still can’t run for office.) Ottawa has consistently tried to defend its use of solitary confinement, which isolates inmates in a tiny cell for up to 22 hours a day, sometimes more — a practice that is undeniably torture. The Supreme Court has forced the Trudeau government to put new constraints on the use of solitary confinement, but it’s unclear how effective those will be.
When the erstwhile Harper government decided to whip up moral panic about prisoners supposedly having it too good, the government moved to cut off access to late-night pornography — broadcast on channels the inmates had to pay for, on televisions they had to buy.
What else is left? Ripping the phone lines out of the wall? Ending mail delivery?
Of course, few free speech crusaders, who worry about a chill on our university campuses or the hidden spectre of cancel culture, would bat much of an eye at the troubling absence of rights in our penitentiaries. Hey, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, right?
Assoun, of course, didn’t do the crime. He is one of the few wrongfully convicted who received a full exoneration. Plenty of others are still fighting, to be cleared of crimes they insist they never committed. Many other cases are overturned or stayed on appeal, quashing the primary conviction. Exact numbers aren’t collected.
We do know that more than one-third of inmates in provincial jails are innocent. How do we know that? Because they haven’t been convicted of a crime yet — they are awaiting trial.
Innocent or guilty, it’s time we give prisoners’ some basic rights back.
Kelvin Purdy is the leader of the Beaver Party, a political party which has not yet been recognized by Elections Canada. I’ve spoken to Purdy at length: although he was convicted of murder in 2005, he voraciously maintains his innocence. In a classic free speech kafkatrap, his application for early parole has been denied, in part, because he continues to deny responsibility for the crime he says he didn’t commit. (A B.C. court has dismissed the appeal of his conviction.)
Purdy, in his party’s platform, lays out a detailed plan to reform prisons, including access to cellphones and personal computers, with all traffic monitored by the government. “Offenders when released must have a handle on current technology for education, recreation, and business ventures,” he writes.
I spoke over the phone recently with another inmate who is seeking to clear his name, as he bitterly lamented that he was forced to rely on decades-old law books to prepare his case for clemency, while “you guys have access through frickin’ smartwatches.”
I asked him, if he is released, how he would fare in the modern world. “No doubt about it,” he replied. “I would be lost.”
This is no small problem. There are around 40,000 people in federal or provincial custody at any given moment.
Provincial jails hold people who are awaiting trial or sentencing, as well as those sentenced to prison terms of less than two years. Those sentenced to time in provincial jails include plenty of white collar and non-violent criminals. The facilities in which they are held are, often, overcrowded and lack basic infrastructure.
Let’s, however, look at federal prisons, and the 14,000 people who live in them. Of them, yes, about one-in-five is incarcerated on a murder charge, meaning they will spend decades inside. A small fraction are considered dangerous offenders, and may never be released.
But most inmates go home eventually. Half of all federal inmates are serving a prison sentence of fewer than five years. Not all of them are even violent offenders: around 18 percent of the total population are serving federal time on drug charges.
Is it becoming of a rights-based society, especially one clearly vigilant about possible limitations on freedom of speech, to strip one of the ability to speak openly because they were caught selling cocaine?
Philosopher John Locke, a hawkish believer that violations of the social contract must be met with both punishment and retribution — up to and including death — wrote that penalties should only go “so far as calm reason and conscience dictates.” There is no calm reason to our current system. We mete out jail time based on the severity of the crime, yes, but rights will be equally deprived whether an inmate is a drug king or a small-time dealer.
We know that depriving people of their liberties is an inherently dangerous proposition. It breaks the human will, and turns governments and their agents into despots. Like all tinpot dictators, Correctional Services Canada weaponizes its authority over prisoners as an end unto itself. We should foster rehabilitation, not subservience. Prisons are not places to learn total deference to the state.
It’s also patently absurd that someone locked up before the advent of the internet can be released and expected to re-integrate seamlessly. Our prison industries teach inmates how to use a drill or push a mop, while the prison school system is geared towards handing out GED diplomas.
Affording prisoners rights is never a popular opinion. Social animus to inmates is pervasive as it is potent. But reasonable accommodations should be sought. Any push to liberalize these archaic institutions will need to be done thoughtfully, and not without constraints.
The status quo is inexcusable. And yet the Trudeau government, like its predecessors, shrugs off the question. They don’t think anyone cares about prisoners. They may be right.
Justin Ling is a freelance writer based in Montreal.
Elsewhere on The Line, Kaveh Shahrooz writes about the racism of expecting all People of Colour to parrot progressive talking points.
Flipping the Line: Moms react to Laura Mitchell’s plan to homeschool — and they are not happy.
Send us a note on Facebook; subtweet us without tagging @the_lineca. Pitch us something that will be rebutted in a future Flipping the Line: lineeditor@protonmail.com