Hotline to open for detention centre inmates and families
It would be nice if the telephone hotline that Justin Piché helped set up never rings, if there is no need for it to ring, but he knows that’s not so. The question to be answered soon is just how busy the line is and how dire the callers’ needs are.
At 1 p.m. on Monday, the Jail Accountability and Information Line (JAIL) will go live, allowing inmates at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre and their families and friends to call with complaints and concerns about anything from human rights abuses to support services for recently or soon-to-be released inmates. Some, Piché believes, will just need to call to vent their frustrations.
The hotline, at 613-567-JAIL (5245), will operate daily between 1 and 4 p.m. Created by the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project, it’s intended to track abuses and advocate for inmates and their needs.
“The A in JAIL is for accountability; improving conditions on the inside,” says Piché, who adds that poor confinement issues and human rights violations have been common at OCDC. The organization will attempt to work with jail officials to resolve issues, but will going higher up the political ladder when necessary. “It’s not our goal to make a lot of noise,” he says. “We want to improve conditions.”
Criminalization and Punishment Education Project was formed in September 2012 by professors and students at Carleton University and University of Ottawa who were interested in criminology. Their goal was to engage in research and to raise public awareness about that research. “We want to reduce our reliance on imprisonment, and for those who were in prison, to improve their conditions of confinement.” Over the years, the group has organized and participated in numerous panels and public forums on topics such as solitary confinement and alternatives to pretrial detention. It has also brought conditions at OCDC to the fore and suggested ways to address them, and it has organized demonstrations and vigils.
Over the years, the organization added former inmates and their families to its ranks.
According to Piché, the hotline is the group’s first foray into more practical applications beyond research and awareness. “We want to actually contribute more to things that will lead to meaningful improvements to conditions in confinement, as well as when people get out, and that we’re able to build communities that keep people out of jail instead of contributing to this revolving door.”
The phones will be manned by two volunteers each shift. Other operations, such as contacting jail and government officials and social agencies, will likely extend beyond those hours. The group also intends to produce annual reports and fact sheets about such issues as human rights and re-entry.
“It will be interesting to see whether what we hear from OCDC prisoners and their loved ones will be all that different from what is reported to the Community Advisory Board and Ombudsperson,” Piché says. But that, he adds, is not the focus of the group or the hotline. “We are doing this to ensure human rights are being respected and the needs of people that are being criminalized and imprisoned are being met to the degree that is possible in a jail.”