AN UNSAFE SITUATION
Christopher Van Camp did not receive a death sentence when he was convicted of armed robbery, fraud, break and enter and theft. Canada does not have capital punishment.
Nevertheless, the 37-year-old did not survive his stay at Prince Albert’s Saskatchewan Penitentiary. His cellmate, Tyler Vandewater, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with Van Camp’s death in June.
Van Camp’s death did not make it into a damning report released this week by correctional investigator Ivan Zinger. The Office of the Correctional Investigator’s 2016-17 annual report, however, contained a disturbing number of other details of violence and unsafe conditions at the ancient institution.
Jason Leonard Bird, 43, was killed and multiple others were injured during a six-hour riot in December 2016. Zinger said the riot was related to food quality and quantity, as well as the treatment of inmate kitchen workers. The situation exploded into “incomprehensible violence.”
Zinger wrote passionately about what he saw during his subsequent inspection of the facility, which he called “antiquated.”
“Standing in the middle of another cell, I could reach out and touch the sides of both walls. Long after the rage of the riot had been quelled, a palpable sense of tension lingers in that facility. I could not help but notice that the overwhelming majority of its occupants are young, desperate Indigenous men. To my mind, the year-on-year increase in the over-representation of Indigenous people in Canadian jails and prisons is among this country’s most pressing social justice and human rights issues.”
Even this evocative report is not enough to drum up sympathy from many members of the public. The comments under Postmedia stories about the riot and Zinger’s report are full of phrases like “cry me a river.” There certainly isn’t clear support for the renovations and upgrades Zinger sees as necessary.
This thinking, however, does not take the longterm safety of society into consideration. Lauren Laithwaite, Van Camp’s mother, pointed out that the vast majority of the men who walk into the prison will walk out again some day and re-enter society.
The truth is that our justice system should be a place where people — including corrections workers — have access to the basics of life and are assured of safety.
As the John Howard Society’s Saskatchewan branch chief executive, Greg Fleet, pointed out, penitentiaries are meant to be places that limit the freedoms of criminals, not places that create people who are even more damaged than when they arrived.