Prison watchdog slams ‘antiquated’ penitentiary
Tension at Prince Albert facility palpable amid overcrowding, investigation finds
Canada’s prison watchdog called the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert “forbidding and antiquated” after visiting the prison following what he called a “full-scale riot” last year that began with inmate dissatisfaction over bad food.
Correctional investigator Ivan Zinger in his annual report recommended that the lessons learned from the December 2016 riot, which remains under investigation, be circulated within the federal corrections department and released as a public document.
“In search of some other plausible explanation for the incomprehensible violence and mayhem beyond bad or inadequate food, I noted that some of the cells in that forbidding and antiquated facility housed two inmates even though there is barely adequate space for one,” Zinger said in the report, which was released on Tuesday.
“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.”
The riot began on Dec. 14, 2016. At its peak, it involved some 200 inmates.
One of them, Jason Leonard Bird, was killed. Eight others were taken to hospital outside the prison with injuries stemming from assault, inhaling smoke and chemical agents and being struck with pellets from the shotguns used to suppress the riot.
Several cells were rendered uninhabitable in what Zinger described as the “rampage,” which he said began when last-minute attempts to resolve demands related to the inmates’ dissatisfaction with food — including shortages and portion sizes — as well as “perceived mistreatment of inmate kitchen workers” by prison staff failed and tensions escalated.
“Prison riots are not random or inevitable events,” he wrote in the report. “They are most likely to occur when a certain threshold of defiance and desperation is reached among a group of prisoners who take matters into their own hands to violently force change or express a long-standing grievance.”
Fourteen men aged 19 to 35 face a host of charges, including participating in a riot, obstructing justice, rioting while wearing a mask, wearing a disguise with intent and criminal mischief over $5,000.