ILLUSTRATION BY CHELSEA CHARLES

We are living in revolutionary times. The ground is shifting beneath us every day. We are seeing a radical shift in our collective consciousness about ideas pertaining to abolition and defunding the police. We are beginning to awaken to the idea that we can solve issues of conflict, crisis, and harm in ways that do not rely on the prison industrial complex and police systems.

Far from being new, these concepts have had recent groundswells globally. From “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” being painted big and bold across city streets, to colonial statues being toppled, to people organizing collective care circles and mutual aid networks that ensure no one is left behind—including organizing from home and from beds—this movement is so vast and so impressive a footprint that it can literally be seen from space. (Space.com reported that a satellite was able to see Black Lives Matter painted on the road in Washington, D.C. from space.)

Abolition offers a possibility for self-determination, the ability for all of us to live the lives that we choose and that we want. It offers a possibility for the end of slavery—something that was technically abolished but continues through the prison system. Abolishing police and prisons allows us to finally complete the project of the abolition of slavery—and our children’s children will be born free from that system of domination, punishment, and control.

Abolition is being taken up in the most unlikely of places—from the playground, to the family dinner table, to Cosmopolitan magazine. More importantly, it is firmly supported by a bedrock of abolitionist struggle that is 500 years strong on Turtle Island. We are fighting for this new system to be a more just one, one that is rooted in justice and freedom. We are moving steadily towards abolition and our victory seems close and sure. Now is a time to reflect on the history of the abolition movement and what the future could look like if we reach abolition in our lifetime.

Abolition, which is necessarily rooted in Indigenous resurgence, disability justice, and anti-capitalism, is based on the not-so-radical idea that we could treat each other like human beings deserving of love and care and as beings that are inherently valuable. It’s this idea that we don’t need prisons or police to keep our communities safe or secure. It suggests that we could reinvest these resources into community to ensure all of our basic needs are being met. Abolition is rooted in the idea that we could stop relying on punitive measures to solve moments of distress, interpersonal disagreements, and harm. That we could stop caging living beings. I spent a few weeks in August, in the immediate months after revolutionary action sparked in the streets across Turtle Island following the killings of George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, speaking with abolitionists from coast to coast about the movement to defund the police and about their wildest abolitionist dreams for the near future. What I found out was not surprising: there are expansive networks of abolitionists, with new additions springing up regularly. I found that these are coordinated and ready to give abolition its final push into place.

I spoke with Morgan Switzer-Rodney, one half of BlackChat, a podcast focused on intergenerational learnings and Black liberatory culture based in western Canada. She explained, “I think it’s something like above 50 percent of Canada is in favour of defunding the police. And so that’s really great. We see different cities in the states who are actually having whole defunding programs becoming a thing. And I can’t look at those things and be like, ‘Wow, there’s nothing to hope for here.’”

Rajean Hoilett is a member of the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project. I spoke to him about this moment and how he came to be involved in the abolition movement. “When the carceral system hit me personally, when my brother was locked up and serving a two-year sentence, I had to navigate how hard it was to continue to exist, to continue to maintain a connection with him. I was moved to use those skills, to use my practice as a community organizer to contribute to this movement specifically for prisoners.” He joined the project in December 2019, at first focusing on the exploitative pricing scheme that Bell Canada holds as the provider for prison calls in Canada. After the pandemic hit, the group amplified its efforts. “The pandemic has opened up everyone’s imagination into what kind of world is possible. And the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project has been very well placed as a group that has started to do activism and started to do organizing and bringing people together around this particular issue.”

The Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project has organized several COVID-safe protests during the spring and early summer of 2020 aimed at pushing for decarceration and abolition. Importantly, they used the newfound time and online world that the COVID lockdown brought about to conduct a weekly series of webinars on abolitionist topics from how to get involved in organizing to Black liberation to Indigenous resurgence. These resources aim to build up community capacity to fight for change. “I think what’s beautiful about abolition is that we hold space for everybody. And there’s definitely some space for leadership to be taken and for folks who have been doing this work to help guide all of us as we’re moving forward.” As much as drawing on experienced organizers, there’s room for everyone in this movement. Hoilett continues, “As we’ve been talking to people, as new people have been getting involved in our organizing, folks are like, ‘Oh, I need to read up on transformative justice, and I need to do all my readings about abolition, and I need to do this, and I need to do that, in order to feel like I’m comfortable enough to organize.’” Hoilett makes note that while people feel the need to be completely prepared, the movement encourages people of all knowledge levels to participate, “We need your energy, we need your ideas, we need your thoughts,” he says. The group has provided these resources in a multitude of ways; as well as the weekly webinars they’ve also been organizing a support fund for people just getting out of prison or jail.

Far from a Toronto phenomenon, abolition work is spread all across Turtle Island and Inuit Nunangat. I spoke with Paige Galette, key organizer for the movement for Black lives in the Yukon. She explains, “We have been trained to believe that systems such as police, court, and prisons are created to keep us safe. But when we look at who is placed in these systems—predominately Black and Indigenous People—we can see how these systems rely on Black and Indigenous bodies for their functioning. It’s quite obvious to me whose ‘safety,’ ‘security,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘comfort’ we are upholding.” The police and prison system are steeped in white supremacy and Galette speaks to the disproportionate targeting of racialized people in order to keep white communities in a position of dominance and control. It is their safety that is considered first and foremost.

As we move towards an abolitionist society, one wherein we have eradicated white supremacy, uprooted racism, ableism, and classism, wherein we have ended colonial and imperialist practices, we are already planning for the world we are going to live in in the future. Talking with activists about their ideal abolitionist futures is insightful as they offer us rich fodder for imagining possibilities. As we talk about the future, we dream together about what could be.

I asked the activists I spoke to about their visions and what they were doing to prepare. As for Switzer-Rodney, her preparation is rooted in intergenerational work. “My current work in the movement is focused on bridging intergenerational relationships. Helping bridge that gap is crucial. I’ve been doing a lot of youth education, particularly in relation to abolition and Black liberation.” We do work together in community to prepare but there’s also our personal work to begin this journey. She continues, “I’ve been doing my own deprogramming. I am looking at systems of harm that I perpetuate and am working to dismantle those systems…. In the midst of a revolution, on a path towards abolition, I am trying to get myself right and build up my skills for the resistance so that I have something to provide.”

From the personal to the broader community, we are learning how to be in relation with ourselves and each other again. Ravyn Wngz, an Afro-Indigenous artist and organizer with Black Lives Matter – Toronto says, “One thing that I believe will help us get in better relationships with each other is to treat each other as if we were chosen family. To approach abolition as the most loving thing that we can do for one another. I believe the most loving thing that I can do for you is to set you free. This is what we were asking people to consider—to be a part of this struggle until we are all free.” Wngz encourages us to find familial ties and community connections as part of our work to build a more just society. Hoilett shares the sentiment: “As we move away from relying on the same systems that are hurting us, we can have those transformative conversations about how we see people who have done harm. Can we still hold space for them in our community without writing them off and without exiling them from our community?” He says, “In the future we will find ways of taking care of each other even in the face of harm or conflict. And because of this community care, there would be less harm overall to have to address. We would all have what we needed to survive and thrive.”

Switzer-Rodney is engaged in similar conversations in her community in Vancouver. “My dream is a world where Black people are everywhere and are free from police. I dream of a world where elders are seen and cared for, and are well-respected. I dream of a world where we are taking care of each other, and we are holding each other accountable in ways that are focused around healing individuals, both those who maybe enact harm as well as are harmed…. We will all get in right relations with the people whose land we occupy and work towards sustainable climate and food systems.”

Everyone I spoke with expressed the importance of the longevity of this movement and the impact of the work we are doing now on society around us. Switzer-Rodney said, “I have a sticker that I recently put on my computer, it says ‘Every generation demands liberation.’ I think that even if this current moment—this movement—if it doesn’t succeed in the way that we want it to, it has still planted so many seeds in so many people. It has done a lot of prep work for a lot of youth, youthier youth than me even! And so I think it will just come back. I think abolition will just keep coming.” Considering her words, I’m imagining cutting back raspberry cane in the heat of late summer and seeing it grow back fuller and deeper the next year. Perhaps abolition will be like this?

Hoilett is sure that we will continue pushing towards freedom. He says, “I’m excited. It’s a beautiful thing. I think that most of this future I can’t even imagine. I trust all the people that we sit with in community, I know that we’ll continue to push this forward.” Galette senses an urgency in this moment and says, “We need action. Time waits for no one…. The time to act is now. Start allowing your mind to imagine a world possible without police, prisons, and court systems. It is possible and is happening sooner than you think. Familiarize yourself with words like ‘community safety’ and ‘accountability’ and ‘restorative justice.’ These words exist because they are (and have been for centuries) being put into practice.”

We are on the edge of a new world. As statues topple—such as the John A. Macdonald dethroning in Montreal—and streets are painted in Tkaronto, and communities are gathering in B.C., the Yukon, Halifax, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and beyond demanding justice for the many Black and Indigenous people killed by policing and prisons in Canada—a new world is being birthed. Abolition offers us the chance to build communities founded on love and social justice values. We can finally get free. As Galette encourages us, the time is now to get involved in shaping this change. Switzer-Rodney reminds us, “I see enough people being willing to have conversations and slowly start to move along with it. And so that gives me hope.”

Have these conversations and then prepare yourself, your family, and your community—change is coming. We are all about to be so much freer. It’s time to get ready.

Left to Right: Kiersten Holden-Ada, Nicole Maunsell, Su Donovaro, Moka Case, Tiffany Gordon, Julie Hollenbach, Capp Larsen · photo by Mo Phùng

For 15 years, a group of volunteers has been lugging tote bags of books from their library in the north end of Halifax to the women’s side of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, or Burnside Jail, in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park.

The group is Books Beyond Bars, an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical collective that runs a books-to-prisoners program. Every two weeks, a few members of the 14-person group bring a batch of new books from their offsite library and collect old ones, congregating in one of two meeting rooms on the women’s side. They also run a read-aloud program, where prisoners record themselves reading a story, which members then deliver to a young person in that woman’s life, such as a child, niece, or nephew. They also deliver a copy of the book to the child.

When they can hire an employee in the summer through the Canada Summer Jobs program, the group runs a writing program, too. According to Tiffany Gordon, a PhD student at Dalhousie University who ran the writing workshops during the summers of 2017 and 2018, anywhere from five to 10 people would participate, as well as the on-duty guard, on occasion. They produced a zine comprised of writing from the women in Burnside, Words Without Walls, at the end of both summer sessions.

Dalhousie Legal Aid had been donating some of its basement space to Books Beyond Bars since the group’s inception in 2005. The space served different purposes for different groups: it was an open area with someone’s office in the back, and included a spot where law students working with legal aid would meet and work on cases. Books Beyond Bars had bookshelves in varying states of disrepair lining the walls. While the group was grateful for the space they had, they could only access it when the building was open, which meant they needed special approval to come in on weekends.

Nicole Maunsell, who has a master’s degree in library and information studies, got involved with the group in 2016 as a way to keep doing library work while employed in a different field. Her role at Books Beyond Bars is to keep their offsite library organized. In their space at Dalhousie Legal Aid, there were sections for fiction and various subcategories of non-fiction: First Nations and Indigenous studies; texts on religion and spirituality; dictionaries and writing techniques; Black studies; legal books, and books about prisoners’ rights, among others

In February 2019, the group had to find a new home. A building inspection determined the Legal Aid basement wasn’t safe and needed to close, a fate many Halifax organizations have faced before. Books Beyond Bars required a space big enough to hold its sizeable book collection, and accessible enough to make hauling those tomes in and out as easy as possible. After much searching, the group found their solution: a storage locker. With help from community members, they moved their operations into a north end storage facility outfitted with bookcases and decked out with lights and chairs to make it cozy. Once again, members were able to bring books back and forth from the jail.

Books Beyond Bars takes requests, and many that come in are for fiction. But another common request the group receives is for legal books—texts that might help women prepare for their trials.

“We’re an abolitionist organization, and we look at what we do as solidarity work, not charity work,” says Maunsell. She explains that, to the group, solidarity work looks at systems like capitalism, racism, and ableism, and works to resist them.

Even though the group believes in prison abolition, Gordon thinks Books Beyond Bars can still make an impact from within the carceral system.

“If there are programs that women need, we can still go in and facilitate those, because they’re necessary,” she says.

The work Books Beyond Bars does is an exercise in balance: they must work within the system they’re trying to dismantle. When Gordon ran writing workshops, she wouldn’t bring material concerning prison abolition. “It’s just not the right context for that, right? I’m in a jail, the program is conditional,” she says. “I’m not in there to critique the entire system.”

“It’s work that we’re doing for our community because we all believe in it and believe that it’ll make our communities better,” says Maunsell.

Recently, Steven Blaney, minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, launched a pilot mental health plan. The idea is to begin sending intensely ill offenders to treatment centres. The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre offered to be one of the first spaces for the project. They hope to provide adequate bed space for these female inmates at their Brockville centre. However, Brockville only has two beds available to the inmates but L’Institut Philippe Pinel in Montreal has 12.

Blaney says the plan will enforce five main ideals in prison systems: timely assessment, effective management, sound intervention, ongoing training, and robust governance and oversight.

Ashley’s adoptive mother Coralee Smith and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), a group that “work with and for women and girls in the justice system“, are critical of the pilot project.

Smith believes more has to be talked over and done about the handling of women who are thought to have behavioural problems instead of mental health issues, like her late daughter.

A history: Ashley Smith committed suicide by strangulation while under custody at Grand Valley Institution for Women in October in 2007. She was 18 years old and had been in juvenile court many times for minor offences while she was living in New Brunswick.

In March 2003, at her second mental assessment at Pierre Caissie Centre (PCC), she was diagnosed with ADHD, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality traits. Ashley was released from PCC for unruly behaviour but then eventually taken to New Brunswick Youth Centre (NBYC).

This is where she became the subject of several hundred incident reports and spent many nights alone in solitary confinement

September 2006, after much push and pull and court dates with NBYC staff, she was transferred to Nova Institution for Women in Nova Scotia after about 20 attempts at suicide. After Nova, Ashley was transferred to six different institutions over the course of eight months. After April 2007, she was moved once every month.

At this point, she made so many suicide attempts that her facial blood vessels burst, which left her permanently discoloured. She had constant nosebleeds and lost sight in one eye.

During her last suicide attempt, guards stood and watched Ashley strangle herself until they took her down and she was pronounced dead. Last December, Ontario coroner’s jury ruled Ashley’s death a homicide.

The constant mistreatment she suffered through has been noticed too late. But if the government continues to recognize their neglect, there is a least some hope we could see a future with no more Ashley Smiths—and that no one will ever suffer the way she and her family did.

Consider this disquietingly funny moment from a May 30th Standing Committee on Finance hearing on the dense but important topic of proposed changes to the Investment Canada Act.

Shortly after Steelworker economist Erin Weir began his presentation Saskatchewan Conservative MP Randy Hoback actually launched into – and this is a quote – “Have you, or have you ever been a member of the NDP Party?” in a line straight out of the red-baiting McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s, only substitute “‘NDP Party” for “Communist Party”. And just like the McCarthy hearings (whatever Hoback’s intention) the effect was to get far off track from the issue of changes to the Investment Act.

And these changes to the Act are important. According to the law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg (hardly a bastion of pot-banging communards) the “apparent intention” of amending the threshold for direct acquisitions of Canadian companies by foreign investors is to, “to reduce the number of foreign investments subject to a general net benefit review under the Investment Canada Act.”

While committee hearings do get broadcast by CPAC, and there are sources of consistent news about all things Ottawa – the Hill Times, for instance – it all still can feel a little too “inside baseball”. And if you were in government and trying to push through controversial legislation this might be a state of affairs you would welcome. Hoback’s run at Weir, noteworthy at least because he was backed by the other members of the government on the committee, only got picked up that I can see by his Prince Albert riding’s local news site, while the changes to the Investment Act, making it easier for foreign companies to buy Canadian assets, has gone virtually uncovered by the media.

Angola rodeo or Angola 3?

The National’s Paul Hunter recently went to the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, or “Angola” prison. His reason for going? To cover the prison’s rodeo. Now it’s true the prisoners of Angola do stage a rodeo every year – and that’s interesting as it goes – but the whole time I was watching I was thinking that only a month before Hunter’s report human rights campaigners were marking an anniversary that also takes place at Angola.

Two of three men known as the “Angola 3” have now been in solitary confinement for forty years – the longest known stretch spent in prison isolation in the U.S.. Found guilty of killing a prison guard during an inmate uprising against conditions in the former slave plantation in the early seventies, the Angola 3 have filed a civil lawsuit against the state for prolonged, “cruel and unusual punishment” to be heard by the courts in 2013.

They couldn’t have been very far away from where the rodeo was being staged, and it wasn’t very hard to find information about their case. For me it was four or five items into a Google search for “Angola prison”, right after the official prison page, a page about the religiosity of the prison’s warden, and pages pumping the rodeo – which gave me the uneasy feeling that a message was being crafted here (Both the story of the Angola 3 and the rebranding of the prison were taken on by Jim Hightower in a Mother Jones article in 2011 – also available through the Google search.)

And the only CanCon I could pick-up in the National piece was a throwaway line about how Canadian officials are contemplating bringing the idea of a prison rodeo this way. But again, in light of the massive changes expected by the passage of Bill C-10 the more important question, seems to me, is should we expect prolonged solitary confinement in Canadian prisons of the type experienced by the Angola 3?

It’s not like Hunter doesn’t tackle hard topics – he extensively covered the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Who knows, maybe his crew were shooting b-roll and biding their time before bringing us the story of the Angola 3 at a later date? – I mean they were already down there.

As was mentioned last time, this blog will appear bimonthly, every other Monday, on This.org. I’ve now created a twitter account, follow me @StoriesUndone.

That was on July 21, 2011. And the irony was likely lost on De Young and his executioners that, only days before this execution was filmed in the interest of scrutinizing lethal injections, Canada was entering its thirty-fifth year without the death penalty.

On July 14, 1976, the House of Commons voted to strike capital punishment from the Canadian Criminal Code. The road to abolition had been a long one. The first time an MP had introduced an anti-capital punishment bill was 1914, and several more such bills would be shot down over the following decades. After 120 years, and 710 executions, Canada’s capital punishment laws were pretty well-ingrained into judicial society.

It wasn’t until 1956 that Parliament even considered removing the death penalty as a punishment for youth offenders. But by the end of that decade, politicians and the public alike had begun to question the humanity of capital punishment and its effectiveness as a deterrent. Anti-death penalty protesters had started picketing executions, serving as foils to the rabid crowds who had once gleefully swarmed public hangings.

As resistance to capital punishment grew, the death penalty was removed from several crimes, including rape and some murder charges. By 1963, it had become de facto policy for the federal government to commute death sentences and, in 1967, a moratorium was placed on capital punishment for all crimes except the murder of on-duty police officers and prison guards. Nine years later, total abolition was made official. The vote on the hotly contested bill, which had prompted Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau himself to take the floor and make a plea for abolition, transcended partisan lines, and split Canada’s MPs 131 to 124.

Canada, post-death penalty

Thirty-five years on from that landmark legislation, and nearly 50 years after the last executions were carried out, debate over the death penalty in Canada still rages on. Public opinion has almost always favoured the death penalty in theory, if not in actual practice. A poll conducted by a private research firm this past January found that 66 percent of respondents support capital punishment in some cases, though only 41 percent of Canadians surveyed actually want to see the death penalty reinstated. Those figures are still astonishing considering how long Canada has been without capital punishment, and that the only attempt to reinstate it was defeated in 1987, 148 to 127, an even greater margin than the one in the original abolition vote.

Is there an empirical reason for the continued support of the death penalty, or the need for harsher sentences in Canada? The numbers would suggest not. Canadian murder rates have been on a steady decline since their peak in the mid-1970’s, the years leading up to abolition. As of 2009, the murder rate was at its lowest in 40 years. There has never been any conclusive evidence that abolishing the death penalty directly results in lower murder rates, but the trend debunks the theory that capital punishment is necessary to keeping murder rates low. What’s more, according to Amnesty International, the conviction rates for first-degree murder cases doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent, within ten years of abolition, the implication being that the high stakes of capital punishment actually got in the way of justice.

And yet support for the death penalty remains. Amongst the cohort of Canadians who believe in capital punishment is Prime Minister Stephen Harper who, during an interview with CBC earlier this year, said he “think[s] there are times where capital punishment is appropriate.”

Although the PM also insisted he has no intentions of trying to reinstate capital punishment, his remarks sparked a minor furor during the recent election, as members of the opposition suggested that a Conservative majority would push the death penalty back into the lawbooks. But the most notable controversy surrounding the PM and his stance on capital punishment has been over the case of a Canadian fighting his own death sentence in the United States.

A Canadian on death row

In 1999, Alberta-born Stanley Faulder was put to death in Texas, becoming the first Canadian in almost 50 years to be executed south of the border. In the run-up to his death, the Jean Chrétien government tried to have Faulder’s sentence commuted, but the appeal was rejected by Texas’s then-governor, George W. Bush. Today, with another Canadian facing the death penalty in the States, the government is less interested in helping.

Ronald Allen Smith, of Red Deer, Alberta, has been on death row in Montana since 1983. His death sentence has been overturned three times and, each time, he has been resentenced with the same outcome: death by lethal injection. Just as they did in Stanely Faulder’s case, the Chrétien government went to bat for Smith. Throughout the early years of his appeals, Canadian officials had stayed in constant contact with Smith’s council, and made a formal request for clemency on his behalf in 1997.

Clemency requests for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries had been standard government policy at the time. But Harper’s Conservatives, who took power in 2006, changed that policy, announcing that they would not seek clemency for multiple murderers convicted in democratic states. They withdrew their support for Smith in late 2007, prompting Smith and his lawyers to appeal to the Canadian Federal Court. A judge there determined that the government had to follow the old policy until a suitable replacement was enacted, and Harper finally complied, and the Canadian government resumed its talks with Montana officials. Smith has currently been granted a stay of execution while he fights a civil court battle against lethal injections, which he argues are unconstitutional.

Looking ahead

Thirty-five years after it abolished capital punishment, Canada continues to soldier on without it, in spite of the opinions of 41 percent of its populace, and even the personal opinion of its prime minister. The U.S., meanwhile, continues to hand out death sentences in all but 14 states.

But American capital punishment laws are being challenged, as some people look to revive the brief ban on executions that existed between 1972 and 1976.

The execution of Andrew Grant DeYoung, was filmed in order to determine the effectiveness of the drug pentobarbital in sedating condemned criminals during lethal injections. The video will be used in the appeal of another inmate on Georgia’s death row who, much like Ronald Allen Smith, is fighting his death sentence on the grounds that execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

These men’s appeals will bring before American courts the same question that was put to Canada’s legislators 35 years ago. Is the death penalty fair and just in a liberal democratic country? At the end of that long debate, it was Pierre Trudeau who, as was so often the case, provided the most eloquent, definitive answer:

“I do not deny that society has the right to punish a criminal, and the right to make the punishment fit the crime, but to kill a man for punishment alone is an act of revenge. Nothing else. Some would prefer to call it retribution because that word has a nicer sound. But the meaning is the same. Are we, as a society, so lacking in respect for ourselves, so lacking in hope for human betterment, so socially bankrupt that we are ready to accept state violence as our penal philosophy? … My primary concern here is not compassion for the murderer. My concern is for the society which adopts vengeance as an acceptable motive for its collective behaviour. If we make that choice, we will snuff out some of the boundless hope and confidence in ourselves and other people, which has marked our maturing as a free people.”

Child soldier? War Criminal? Both? Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr’s trial may be over, but his ordeal is not. Here are some of the crazier details about the affair, now that Khadr’s sentencing is complete:

1. The facts remain unclear: The prosecution argued that since he was the only Al Qaeda fighter still alive at the end of the fight, it must have been him who threw the grenade that killed an American soldier. But another U.S. soldier who was present at the battle testified under oath that there were two fighters alive at the end of the fight.
2. The case is likely to affect child soldiers worldwide: The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict sent out a statement denouncing the trial, arguing that the prosecution was completely inappropriate since Khadr was a child soldier at the time of the battle. The statement said that charging Omar Khadr for war crimes would set a precedent that would endanger the status of child soldiers all over the world. Khadr is one of at least 12 (and as many as 21) people under the age of 18 who were held at Guantanamo Bay.
3. The jury’s sentence is purely symbolic: The plea agreement (which the jury was not told about) was for 8 years, the prosecutor asked the jury for 25 years, and the jury came back with 40 years.
4. Khadr’s living conditions are going to get worse before they get better: Now that he has pleaded guilty he will spent the next year in solitary confinement. As a compliant, non-violent prisoner at Guantanamo Bay he had for the past few years been kept in a communal, more open section of the prison. Khadr will probably not serve the full eight years, and after one year in US custody, his lawyers will seek to bring him back to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence. The Canadian government has told the American State Department that if Khadr requests to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada that they would “favourably consider his application to be transferred.”
5. A book deal won’t save him: The plea agreements include small print which seek to prevent Khadr from benefiting financially from his ordeal. Profits from any book or film deal will be re-directed to—and how’s this for adding insult to injury?—the government of Canada.

Last week we learned that the federal government spent $107,749.52 on Nikon DSLR D300s for the G20. For those of you who, like me five minutes ago, don’t know anything about photography let me tell you all you need to know about the D300s: it’s a really good camera. You can check out the reviews but, take my word for it, this is a whole lot of camera for a whole lot of money.

Now I don’t know what these particular cameras are used for but I do have a guess: mug shots. I asked a friend of mine who was arrested at the G20 protests about this. Here’s his response:

DSLRs? Well there were a whole bunch of cops with point-and-shoots — but I honestly think that was mostly for themselves: “Posterity’s sake?” I asked one of the (many) officers taking a picture of me with cuffs on, and he looked a little embarrassed. Initial “mug shot” at Queen’s Park was an SLR, but for some reason they had to do it again at the jail — an SLR there too… And then they had to do it again at the jail — which I assume was just a lack of organization. So yeah, at least two DSLRs, two high-quality video cameras, and piles upon piles of point and shoots, for what it’s worth to you.

To be fair, I’m sure the lighting conditions at the Eastern Ave. Jail weren’t exactly optimal so, um, maybe the cops did need something slightly better than a cell-phone camera. Either way, cameras, and lots of them, seem to be part of the new policing.  Again, my friend:

I remember one cop saying to another, in reference to some of the people that had been arrested, “that’s the biggest thing: You just don’t take pictures.” There is, in short, something they really don’t like about all the protesters with cell phones/cameras, etc., and they literally armed themselves with their own cameras in anticipation of this… and apparently arrested some people for the same reason.

In other G20 expense news: the feds also spent just under $18,000 on snacks at the Pickle Barrel. At that price, you’d think they might choose a better restaurant to eat at.

Credit: PearlyV

1. Mental health, depression, and suicide are rampant

We all know that prisons are too often warehouses for those amongst us suffering addictions or mental health problems. The actual numbers, however, are harrowing.  In federal penitentiaries 11% of prisoners have some sort of mental health diagnosis and 21.3% take prescription anti-psychotics on admission.  Almost 15% of male prisoners, at some point prior to their incarceration, had a psychiatric hospitalization; the number almost doubles for women.  The suicide rate in prisons is seven times the rate outside of prisons; as is the rate of people hurting themselves in prisons. All this and more can be found in a report issued by the Office of the Correctional Investigator last week. The punch line: “The mental health needs of offenders exceed the capacity, services and supports of the federal correctional authority to meet the growing demand.”

2. Women are the fastest growing prisoner population in the world

That’s true in Canada, too. Canadian Elizabeth Fry society executive director Kim Pate argues that the massive cuts made to the welfare state in the 1990s and 1980s particularly affected women. It’s no coincidence, she says, that mentally ill, poor and racialized women were imprisoned just as support services were scaled back.

3. It’s worse than ever to be Indigenous, poor, or illiterate in prison

It used to be (as of February of this year) that those convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison would receive a 2-for-1 credit for the time they spent in jail awaiting trial. Jails, unlike prisons, are notoriously overcrowded, dirty and dangerous. The 2-for-1 credit was an explicit acknowledgement from judges that prisoners remanded to jail suffered inordinately.  The Conservative government, however, disagreed and last year passed the Truth in Sentencing Act. An internal Corrections Canada report, obtained by the Canadian Press, finds that, as a result of the new law, Indigenous individuals, low-income people, and people with low literacy are spending much more time in prison.

4. There are over 2 million people in prison in the United States.

For comparison’s sake, on the eve of the Second World War there were 1.3 million people in Stalin’s gulags. 3.2% of America’s adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults, is in jail, on probation or on parole.  The rate of incarceration for black men is four times that of white men.  If prisoners, who are generally idle, were counted in unemployment figures along with discouraged workers the United State’s unemployment rate would jump two percent.  The number of people in prisons in the United States has increased roughly ten times over since the 1960s. Canada’s incarceration rates are lower but have jumped in similar proportions over the past four decades.

One of the most notorious images from Saturday was a Twitpic of a burning police cruiser, snapped by Alex Posadzki, which as of this morning had been viewed more than 18,000 times. As many commentators pointed out, the G20 saw four police cruisers burnt, compared to the 16 destroyed in Montreal by celebratory rioters after the Montreal Canadiens won a hockey game in April. But this has still become an indelible image, and footage of burning police cars quickly became a recurring motif of the television coverage over the weekend.

The sense of creeping anxiety didn’t start for most of us until Friday afternoon when Jeff Robson tweeted this photo of riot police crammed dozens deep in an alleyway as peaceful protesters went past on College Street. In hindsight, it was a harbinger of things to come:

The strange juxtapositions came hard and fast this weekend; while protests and a record 900 police arrests continued outside, reporters from the foreign press were a the international media centre at the CNE, where the Toronto Star‘s Richard Lautens found them watching the Germany-England match at the World Cup. For big-media skeptics (like us!) this photo says a lot about the failings of the mainstream media covering the G20.

And lastly, from the Department of Grimly Hilarious Symbolism came this Torontoist photo of the “eternal flame” at Metro Hall—a symbol of the “hopes, aspirations and triumphal achievements burning within the human spirit,” says its commemorative plaque—extinguished and encased in a plywood cover. It’s been lit since May 1996, but the G20 was enough to snuff it out:

At a protest against Arizona's SB 1070 law that allows police to demand proof of citizenship. Creative Commons photo by Flickr User Fibonnaci Blue.

Canadians like to feel good about our official policy of multiculturalism, and in general there’s plenty to feel good about. But as the introduction of the ominous new law SB 1070 in Arizona in April swept the news—a law that allows police in that state to demand proof of citizenship from people in public and detain them if they suspect them of being illegal migrants—Canadians seemed blind to similar tactics being deployed in their own backyard.

We have every right to condemn Arizona’s law, but we have nothing to be smug or self-righteous about. No One Is Illegal, the national network of migrants, refugees and immigration activists who have been doing some amazing work on exactly these kind of topics, issued an alert recently reporting that Canadian Border Security Agents are working locations in Toronto’s west end, stopping people, asking for identification, and making arrests, and have already detained more than 20 people who don’t have “adequate documentation.”

This kind of “papers please” policing is sinister and—while I generally dislike this kind of phrase—un-Canadian. (As far as I can tell, this hasn’t been reported by a major news outlet, which means so far all the reporting we have is from NOII itself.) Here’s their advisory:

Immigration Enforcement is stopping people on the streets, at work, and while shopping based on their skin color and accent. This is systematic racial profiling that creates fear in our communities. It is part of the social-cleansing of Toronto in the lead up to the G20 Summits. It is the same racist policy that is being opposed vehemently in Arizona in the United States.

No One Is Illegal-Toronto has received confirmed reports that further raids are being planned specifically in the St. Clair Area THIS WEEK. Latin@ restaurants will be targeted, and ID checks based on racial profiling may take place. We believe that raids on Bloor West will also continue.

This fundamentally unjust harassment must be opposed.

Read the full alert at No One Is Illegal’s website. I’ve also submitted NOII’s report to OpenFile.ca to see if we can’t get some more reporting on this issue.