http://againstprison.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/broadsheet.pdf
The summer left us in a downpour of repression that sought to bury its discontents
beneath the bureaucracy of courts and behind the walls of prison. The end
of June marked an encounter between radicals, outlaws, rebels, etc, and the G20
police state in Toronto. A series of prison reforms and amendments to the criminal
code led up to that explosive encounter, and continue today. Bureaucrats in
the Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) have begun to lay out their plans for
prison expansions and the development of new super-max model prisons, hoping
to deepen prison’s isolating capabilities with large warehouse-style labour facilities.
As the overcrowding in prisons intensifies with new federal “tough on crime”
legislation, conditions within them lead to explosive outbursts of violence and
unrest. With more and more people finding themselves embraced by the brutalizing
totality of prison, it becomes essential to organize against them: to demystify
the illusion that the people in prison are a threat to our safety, in order to
clarify that prison is the threat and, like the police, does not make our lives safer.
Beginning in April 2007, CSC moved to coordinate an extensive restructuring
of the federal prison system. After taking a trip to Colorado in order to visit
the ADX Florence super-max isolation prison, CSC returned to implement
their improved ideas on incarceration, isolation, and prison labour. The implementation
of American Security Housing Unit (SHU) infrastructure is evident
in a financial consultation done in partnership with CSC and Deloitte Touche
Tohamatsu regarding the cost of building new prisons with SHU wings.
Following this trip, several pieces of legislation were changed, while new laws
await approval to transform the prison system’s legal framework. The elimination
of statutory release under Bill C-43, the suspension of pensions for
federal prisoners, and the axing of the two-for-one credit rule, all contribute
to a “tough on crime” attitude and subsequent overcrowding in prisons.
Bill C-25, the Truth in Sentencing Act, is a new law that will change more than just the
face of the courts. The bill intends to limit the credit a judge can grant for time served
by a prisoner before sentencing. Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, estimates
that this bill will result in an average addition of 159 days to sentences. With
the existing overcrowding in prisons, he predicts that this change in legislation will
require the construction of a dozen new prisons. All this interests the Budget Officer
because by 2015, the budget for corrections in Canada will need to increase from its
current $4.4 billion to $9.5 billion in order to manage the growth of prison populations.
In 2009, the CSC Transformation Team in charge of the sweeping restructuring
of the federal prison system gave their explanation for the budget increase. They
pointed out the need to “adjust interim capital plans to respond to potential population
increases associated with pending legislation.” This capital adjustment seems
to be what Craig Jones of the John Howard Society referred to when he stated
that CSC is on the verge of becoming “the largest building contractor in Canada.”
By fall 2010, CSC followed up on their “capital adjustments” by announcing
plans to expand 19 federal prisons at a cost of over $400 million. The planned
expansions total some 1,650 new beds between Mission, Kent, Ferndale, Matsqui,
Fraser Valley, and Regional Training Centre / Pacific Institutions in British
Columbia; Drumheller and Bowden Institutions in Alberta; Rockwood
and Stoney Mountain Institutions in Manitoba; Bath, Collins Bay and Millhaven
Institutions in Ontario; the Federal Training Centre, Montée St-François,
and Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines Institutions in Quebec; Renous and Dorchester
Institutions in New Brunswick; and Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia.
These federal prison expansions follow a similar provincial trend. The current
wave of provincial prison expansion started as far back as 2004. To date there are
at least 21 new facilities and 17 expansions that are at different stages of completion
from coast to coast (see: thevultures.info). The cost of construction for
these prisons is already above $2,829 billion; when these facilities become operational,
they will augment the capacity of provincial prisons by at least 6,514 beds.
We are now witnessing one of the largest prison restructurings in the history of
the Canadian state. From coast to coast, CSC ministers have carried out sweeping
reviews of the prison system, in partnership with architects and consultants of different
stripes, on both a provincial and federal level. Found in these reviews are the
concrete plans to transform Canada’s “correctional services” into a knock-off of the
American prison industrial complex. The CSC trip to ADX Florence Supermax and
the “cost estimate” of SHU prison wings carried out by Deloitte Touche Tohamatsu
only reinforces this direction in the transformation of the state’s correctional practice.
In the streets of Toronto a similar intensification of repression and harmonization
of Canada-US security took place. However, 19,000 security personnel with
a $1 billion budget were unable to defend Toronto’s social peace during the G20
meeting from the operative potential of a decentralized and anti-authoritarian
practice. On June 26th, hundreds of people broke away from a union march
and proceeded to attack police, burning three or four police cars, smashing several
other police and media vehicles, and trashing over 40 banks and corporate
storefronts along the way. Throughout the weekend, the police mass-arrested
over a thousand people, and made some strategic arrests of radicals with the
help of informants based out of Guelph and Kitchener, Ontario. A response
of solidarity actions and demonstrations took place from Quebec to Vancouver
(more info: againstprison.wordpress.com, snitchwire.blogspot.com). For updates
on the accused and their trials, check out abc-calgary.anarchistservices.ca.
In the meantime, summer was just as active in the belly of the state’s prisons. Inmates
revolted from within their cages in diverse forms and with differing amounts of participation.
Twenty prisoners in New Brunswick started a riot. In Ontario, around
70 inmates collectively refused to obey the guards and return to their cells. In Manitoba,
11 inmates ransacked their cages (more info: againstprison.wordpress.com).
The reality in prisons today is not always so vibrant. Daily expressions of violence, humiliation,
and abuse come from both the staff and inmates of these institutions. Prisoners
stab each other, guards fire off shots, and riot squads are called in to control situations.
At least four people died in prison this summer from the end of July to mid October;
some of these deaths took place while pushing back against the jailers and their jails.
On July 21st, two people died from smoke inhalation and eight were incapacitated after
14 prisoners refused to return to their cells, fought the guards, and lit fire to a mattress
and some clothing at Orsainville Jail in Quebec. They were killed when the guards fled
the riot, locking up the F-Wing of the prison along with the inmates, fire, and smoke.
It took 55 minutes for the paramedics to arrive after the first sounding of the fire
alarm and another hour for the first ambulance to ferry the injured to local hospitals.
Others have chosen to act in kind with the riot at Orsainville and turn their frustration
against the ones who jail them. In August, a prisoner in the Central Nova Scotia Detention
Centre decided to turn the shiv against the jailer, sending the screw to a hospital
with a stab wound to the stomach. Prison guards in Manitoba and Nova Scotia
have been issued puncture-proof vests after an elevated level of riot and stabbings.
On the outside, anti-prison activity turned New Year’s Eve 2009-2010 into
an expression of solidarity with the struggle against prison, as a noise demonstration
took place outside of the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre
in Ontario on the last day of an international hunger strike carried out by anarchist
prisoners. In April and July, noise demonstrations took place against
prisons and in solidarity with social combatants outside of the Vanier Centre
for Women and the Maplehurst Correctional Complex. Another demonstration
at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre also took place in July,
in solidarity with the hunger strike of prisoners in Korydallos prison in Greece.
In Kingston, Ontario, a campaign was fought against the sale of prison-farm cattle, the
closing of the federal prison farm program, and the expansion/ restructuring of the
prison system. In June, hundreds marched to the CSC regional headquarters to protest
this stage of the prison system’s transformation. Then in late July, demonstrators
blockaded CSC headquarters. The herd of cows were auctioned off in August and,
after a two-day blockade at the Collins Bay Institution and 24 arrests, the cows were
driven away on trucks, giving way to the redevelopment of the prison grounds. Today,
former prison farm workers repair Canadian military vehicles at the Frontenac Institution
and prospective developers are bidding on the federal expansion of Collins Bay.
In August, following the deaths at Orsainville, it was made clear once more that
fire is not just the weapon of the jailer. A new police station under construction in
Guelph, Ontario was set on fire. The blaze was quickly extinguished, but caused
close to $500,000 in damage, set the development back 6 to 8 months, and showed us
that no amount of police infiltration can stifle the potential of decentralized attacks.
Within the past handful of years, decentralized and clandestine tactics
have been used more and more by those seeking to attack the ones responsible
for their exploitation. Those who target collaborators in the prison
system or other forms of authority have taken it upon themselves to
vandalise and burn corporate and state property, from banks to government offices,
from police vehicles to construction equipment, from Vancouver to Halifax.
Anti-prison agitators are also making efforts to move their
activity beyond the veil of night actions in an attempt to communicate
and share struggle with prisoners. On August 10th, also known as
Prisoner Justice Day ever since prisoners at Millhaven Institution issued a
call-out and staged a one-day hunger strike in 1976 in order to remember
those who died in prison, prisoners across the country carry out collective acts of
resistance. This year, noise demonstrations took place outside prisons in Kitchener,
Hamilton, and Montreal, and in several prisons, like the Toronto East Detention
Centre, hundreds refused to eat for the day or participate in programs. In some prisons,
inmates also wore t-shirts with upside-down Canadian flags and hands grasping prison
bars across it, in protest of the conditions in the state’s prisons. These efforts to share struggle
with prisoners must gain momentum in order for us to develop a necessary base of
communication that can make ongoing solidarity a possibility.
This possibility only increases with the overwhelming incarceration of less desirable parts of society.
Two days after Prisoner Justice Day, officials in British Columbia rounded up 492 Tamil refugees and
locked them up in several prisons, like the Burnaby Youth Custody Prison and the Fraser Regional Correctional
Centre. Noise demonstrations outside the prison in Burnaby have been a regular occurrence in response to this repression.
The state’s policies on immigration and its “tough on crime” legislation only serve to fill existing prisons well beyond capacity. Even with the overall decline
in police-reported crime in most jurisdictions since 1991, and the overall decrease in the severity of police-reported crime between 1998 and 2008, both
federal and provincial governments continue to expand and restructure their prison infrastructure amidst what they call a fiscal crisis.
By 2015, the federal government intends to double the budget for corrections and add to it the security budget for the G8 and G20. They have introduced
new taxes and austerity measures, while building the prisons they intend us to fill when we can no longer pay the bills. The state, architects, developers and
company are sucking up ever-increasing profits off of mass incarceration and prison labour. This is a major reason for the expansion of the prison system
in times of economic and social instability: to extend the most stable industry and repressive capabilities the state has at its disposal, as a capitalist amongst
capitalists.
Prisons have not and will not make our lives any safer. This accelerated “tough on crime” transformation of correctional practices and expansion of the
slave-labour economy only shows us that the state is more inclined to restructure itself in order to wage war on its citizens than it is to protect us. These
are the conditions under which we live, and against which we should struggle. It’s up to us to create the means to defend ourselves; by developing a practice
of solidarity we’ll learn to exercise our power and gain ground in our struggles. The state and capitalists have already shown us their cards and thrown in
their chips; it’s time we see their bid and raze them out of the game.
antiprisonvancouver 