As it happened, not only was Brother Charles an expert on Vatican art, he was also a professor of medieval history, very knowledgeable about the development of the penitentiary system and the history of prison reform. He noted that most people don’t consider the fact that the penitentiary system was originally based on the monastic model and that the term itself comes from the root word penitence. That it was intended to be about penance, not just punishment. Contrition, not just conviction and containment. Repentance and redemption, not retribution and revenge. He said he would pray for us both.
The next day, when I met the Brothers and Fathers in the college dining room for lunch, Brother Charles arrived a little late with a plastic bag in his hand. He had a gift for me—two gifts, in fact. He spread them on the table: two Alcatraz T-shirts, a small one for me and an extra-large for Shane.
THERE WERE NO LONGER FRIDAY EVENING VISITS at Frontenac, but I was going for the whole day on both Saturdays and Sundays, as well as on Tuesday evenings after my appointment with Louise. Going directly from her office to the prison meant that I couldn’t perform my full pre-visit cleaning routine. This made me uneasy—as did the fact that once I got there, Shane usually spent half the evening wanting to know what Louise and I had talked about. Since most of what we talked about was him, I preferred to keep it to myself. He was not happy when I soon stopped coming to see him on Tuesdays.
There were many other things to be unhappy about, some big, some small. Because of the Harper government’s Tough on Crime measures, Frontenac had become more like Bath and less like camp.
Such privileges as ETAs, UTAs, and work releases were now at a premium, and Shane, it seemed, was no longer entitled to any of them. From his first week back at Frontenac, he had problems with his new parole officer, Dennis Walker. Each encounter was a battle, often several a day. Dennis would not let him apply for anything, Shane said, not even for ETAs, so he could start going to Sunday mass at the convent again. Shane had been attending a weekly Buddhist group in the prison, and Dennis said he couldn’t be a Buddhist and a Catholic too. As the months passed and Dennis would still not recommend him for passes of any kind, Shane repeatedly asked to be assigned to another parole officer. Their personality conflict seemed so irremediable that I wrote letters to the warden about this situation as well. Shane’s requests were denied, and my letters, as usual, were ignored. Shane was told that he and Dennis Walker would just have to learn to get along. This was never going to happen.
Now at Frontenac, as at Bath, we would only be able to spend time together in the visiting room, with no opportunities to interact outside the prison. Visits to Frontenac must now be booked in advance, newspapers and books were now considered contraband, smoking was now prohibited anywhere on the property, and both home-cooked meals and kissing were now forbidden in the visiting room. After a visit, the inmate must now return immediately to his cell—no more waving and blowing kisses in the parking lot. All security procedures for visitors had been increased. Rumour had it that by January, there would be drug dogs there too. Given all the problems I’d had getting into Bath, Alex had not visited Shane there, and he decided not to resume visiting him again at Frontenac either.
Despite the enhanced security measures, and despite the millions of dollars spent by CSC each year trying to keep them out, it still seemed there were more drugs inside than out on the street. There was frequent cynical grumbling among the visitors, because although CSC professed to recognize that inmates who received visits and had prosocial family support did better both while they were incarcerated and after release, the new security measures made it increasingly hard and more stressful for us to get in. We all resented the fact that while there were more and more hoops we must jump through to see our loved ones, none of the prison staff was ever checked for anything.
Now, on the wall beside the door to the women’s bathroom at Frontenac, there was a new sign, a single Xeroxed sheet of paper taped to the concrete block wall. It was titled SAFER NEEDLE CLEANING. Beginning with the general instruction CLEANING OF YOUR NEEDLE & SYRINGE SHOULD BE DONE TWICE—JUST BEFORE YOU USE THE NEEDLE AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER, it went on to explain the four steps of cleaning your needle with bleach, each illustrated with a line drawing. The instructions concluded with the general warning that THE ABOVE PROCEDURE WILL NOT GUARANTEE THAT THE HIV IS INACTIVATED—ONLY THAT YOU HAVE REDUCED YOUR RISK. YOU COULD BE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE!
At the bottom it said in capital letters: DON’T SHARE YOUR NEEDLES WITH ANYONE! The exclamation mark was surely intended to emphasize the gravity of the advisory, but somehow it made this command sound cheerful, as if they were saying in closing, HAVE A NICE DAY! followed by a yellow smiley face.
Peculiar though it struck me to find this sign posted in a prison, at least they were being realistic.
Conditions for the inmates had changed dramatically. Through no fault of their own, the men who’d earned their way to living in the Phoenix units had now been moved back into ordinary cells on the range. This, plus the Harper government’s increased implementation of double-bunking meant that Frontenac was now seriously overcrowded, with nearly twice as many inmates as it was designed for. Contravening both the United Nations minimum standards regarding the humane accommodation of prisoners and their own stated policy that single-cell occupancy was the most desirable and effective means of housing inmates and that double-bunking should be used only as an exceptional and temporary measure, CSC was now packing them in two to a cell. This was happening not just at Frontenac and other minimum-security prisons, but also at medium- and maximum-security institutions across the country, including in some segregation units.
The cells now housing two inmates were not larger cells meant for double occupancy. They were former single cells of approximately sixty square feet, about the same size as my small bathroom at home, retrofitted with two narrow metal bunks screwed into the wall one above the other, so close together, Shane said, there was hardly room enough to roll over, let alone swing a cat. Because of his bad leg and other health issues, he was allowed to have the bottom bunk. He said the man on the top bunk weighed at least three hundred pounds. There was no air-conditioning in any of the cells. As the population continued to grow, there were no commensurate increases in programming, medical and mental health resources, or basic services like bathrooms, showers, telephones, or laundry facilities. Nor had the number of correctional officers yet been increased.
Shane said, “You don’t need to be a sociologist, a psychologist, or a criminologist to know what happens when you put too many rats in a cage.”
As numerous studies have indicated, prison overcrowding adversely affects inmate health, morale, and behaviour. Increased frustration, tension, and conflict leads directly to increased disruptive and aggressive behaviour including more violent assaults of all kinds requiring more use-of-force interventions by staff. There are also more incidents of inmate self-harm and suicide as well as an increase in the spread of infectious diseases.
The implementation of all these changes did, as intended, make prison life harsher and more punitive, but it also made it more volatile and dangerous for everyone, including the staff. Their union president was frequently on the evening news expressing concerns about double-bunking as an unsafe and ineffective practice that put not only offenders and correctional staff at higher risk but ultimately the public as well. For once, it seemed that the guards and the inmates were on the same side.
WHEN I ARRIVED FOR MY USUAL VISIT on the first Saturday of December, I could see before I even turned onto the prison property that something was going on. Shane had now been back at Frontenac for exactly one month. A cold and snowy morning, it was not yet eight-thirty. Usually at this hour, the parking lot closest to the road was still empty, save for a scout truck or two. This morning it was crowded with guards, dogs, vans, and police cars from the OPP and City of Kingston forces. For a brief moment, I thought something terrible had happened inside. But as an unfamiliar guard waved
me into line behind the three or four other cars ahead, I realized it was a car sweep. Much as I’d been through several of these at Bath, there had never been one when we were here before.
Although Frontenac itself didn’t have socials, Collins Bay, the adjacent larger medium-security prison, did, and today was the day, three weeks before Christmas. When I told the guard I was going to Frontenac, I hoped he’d wave me on through. But no. They were searching everyone. I waited my turn, then got out of my car and lined up with three or four other visitors I didn’t recognize, all of them, I assumed, going to the social. By now it was snowing heavily.
One of the handlers from Collins Bay, a large man who looked angry even from a distance, brought over his dog, a muscular mixed-breed with a broad chest and a stumpy tail who also looked mean. The dog sniffed first our backs and then our fronts. He was disturbingly interested in me but did not sit. I made the mistake of looking him in the eye, even though I knew better. He jumped at my face and nearly knocked me over, but still he did not sit. The handler brought him down the line again. This time the dog liked me even more, nuzzled up and down my left side, then stuck his nose into my jacket pocket. Again he did not sit.
The handler pulled me out of the lineup. The dog circled around me wagging his stumpy tail. The handler leaned his angry face close to mine and yelled, “What have you got in your pocket? What kind of drugs are you carrying? What are you trying to hide? What are you trying to pull here?” I was stunned and shaking. In all my prison years, I had never before been yelled at by any guard, anywhere, at any time.
He led me to a CSC van and ordered me to sit in the front seat, while his dog searched my car. The van driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and did not look at me. At least he had the heater on. After rummaging around in my car for a few minutes, the dog sat on the console between the front seats and looked proudly up at the handler.
I was then put into the back seat of an OPP cruiser. The female OPP officer behind the wheel was pleasant enough. The male City of Kingston police officer in the passenger seat was not. He interrogated me angrily for fifteen minutes or more. No matter what I said, I could not defend myself. When I said I didn’t know why the dog had stuck his nose in my pocket, that in fact, I’d washed my jacket just yesterday, he said, “Why did you wash your jacket? What were you trying to hide?” When I said I’d taken my own dog to the vet also just yesterday, that she was given a flea treatment and a veterinary steroid, that she had sat in the front passenger seat and was possibly in heat, he ignored me. When he asked who else had been in my car, I said my son. While running his name through the computer, he interrogated me about Alex: where did he work, who did he associate with, was he involved in the drug trade? Alex’s name did not come up on his computer.
I was taken out of the police car and put back in the CSC van to wait for the keeper from Frontenac to come down. I was relieved to see it was John Logan, an older man with whom I’d always had a good rapport when we were here the first time. Surely John would bring some sanity to this situation. I started to cry when he said he couldn’t let me in, he had to send me home. For a person who doesn’t like crying, I seemed to be doing a lot of it. John handed me the paperwork. Visit denied.
I could see he wasn’t enjoying this any more than I was. “But John,” I cried, “you know I have nothing to do with drugs!”
“I have to do my job,” he said.
“But can’t you use your own judgment here?”
“No,” he said sadly. “I can’t.”
WHEN I GOT IN THE DOOR, IT WAS STILL SNOWING, I was still crying, and the phone was ringing. For the rest of the day, Shane kept calling, ranting and raving, going further and further off the deep end each time, accusing everyone of having set him up. When I told him to get a grip and calm down, he said, “So I guess I’m just not supposed to get upset about anything ever again.”
“Oh, come on!” I cried. “Nobody’s saying you should never get upset again. Everybody gets upset sometimes. The important thing is how you handle it, how you deal with conflict, problems, disappointments. Haven’t you learned anything from all those bloody programs you’ve taken?”
John Logan called too. He said he was sorry about all this, but I wouldn’t be allowed to visit again until the VRB had reviewed the incident. In the meantime, I should write a letter to the warden and bring it to him, John, on Monday afternoon. He would see that the warden and the VRB got it immediately, so they could do their review when they met on Wednesday afternoon.
On Monday morning, I delivered my letter to John Logan—yet another “Do you know who I am?” letter, even though they already knew full well who I was. You could just never get any traction with these people. John shook my hand and thanked me for handling this in a “mature and reasonable manner”—unlike some people, neither of us said. Unlike Shane.
We were put on designated seating for our next three visits. Just a week after we’d completed these, I was in trouble again. For a month and a half now, I’d been bringing my car keys into V&C just as I had when we were there before. No one had said anything about it. But one day right before Christmas, the guard on duty objected when she saw the keys in my hand. It wasn’t as if I’d tried to hide them before, but now I was breaking the rules. This involved an unpleasant few minutes at the X-ray machine and me then being sent back out to the lobby to put the keys in a locker before I was allowed to proceed to V&C.
Shane spent the entire visit making a ruckus, sure once again that this was somehow directed at him, even though I was the one who had been reprimanded and embarrassed. He was upset with me too. When I pointed out that it was an honest mistake on my part, he said bitterly, “There’s no such thing as an honest mistake in prison.”
So much for being happy to have returned to a more relaxed routine in which the rules were clear and consistent. For the next year and a half, each time I went to visit, I put my car keys in a locker and watched all the other visitors going in with their keys in their hands.
I WAS VISITING ONLY ON WEEKENDS, and while that should have made it easier to keep up with the other parts of my life, still I was constantly juggling to get everything done: writing, housework, errands, spending time with Alex and my friends. Although I was only actually at the prison two days a week, still it was the focal point around which everything else must be arranged. Much as the other parts of my life had been somewhat neglected the first time around, in this second incarnation of our relationship, they seemed to be in danger of falling away altogether.
There was also still the matter of the phone calls. I could only call the prison in the event of an emergency, but there was no limit to the number of calls an inmate could make in a day. They had now implemented a phone card system. As long as Shane had put money on his card, the calls were cheaper, but once that money was used up, we were back to collect, at a dollar a call. With almost fifteen thousand inmates in federal institutions across Canada, I cannot imagine how much money Bell Canada and other phone companies make on inmate phone calls on any given day.
It was still not unusual for him to call me several times a day, delivering a play-by-play account of all that was happening there. I understood by now that in his circumscribed world, small things took on an exaggerated importance all out of proportion to their actual significance. It seemed that everything on his end was urgent, while everything on my end was, in his opinion, infinitely interruptible. This was a problem I still had not solved.
After a hundred or more phone calls a month for all these years, I had become an expert at gauging Shane’s mood just by the way he said hello. One afternoon in early January 2011, he sounded excited in the way I knew meant something out of the ordinary was happening there—a kind of negative excitement generated by prison drama to which I knew I too had become somewhat addicted.
The city police had come in, he said, and hauled one of the guys right out of his cell, put him in handcuffs, and took him away. The inmate in question, Richard Joyce,
was someone I knew too, in that way I knew the other inmates who were often in the visiting room. Almost every weekend, an older man I assumed to be his father brought his two young daughters to see him. I’d never actually spoken to him, but they were a familiar family in the room, and I’d noticed how good he was with his little girls. He was a lifer too, and now in his early forties, he had already been in for almost twenty years on a first-degree murder charge. Clearly his daughters had been born while he was incarcerated. Their mother never came, so I assumed that relationship had ended but that he was doing his best to be a good parent. Pleasant, polite, and congenial, he got along well with the guards. He was always smiling.
But the murder he had committed back in 1991 was especially horrific, well-known, and still remembered around Kingston, a crime that was said to have changed the entire city, the kind of crime that had been given a name: the Nozzles Gas Bar Murder. Early on the morning of May 6, 1991, Richard Joyce and his friend Terry Kennedy had killed a young wife and mother of three named Margaret Yvonne Rouleau in the kiosk of the Nozzles Gas Bar in downtown Kingston. Yvonne ran the gas station, and Terry Kennedy had been working there. The two young men left her dead on the floor and made off with seven thousand dollars, money they later said they intended to use to finance their dream bicycle trip to the southern United States and Mexico. After they killed her, they went home and got cleaned up, then went back downtown for breakfast at a restaurant right across the street from the gas bar. They got there just as Yvonne Rouleau’s sister discovered her body in the kiosk. She ran to them for help.
This Is Not My Life Page 25