| First published in 1983, Prisoners
of Isolation charts the history of the Penitentiary as
an institution of punishment, the role of solitary confinement
as the centre-piece of penitentiary discipline, first in Europe,
then in America, and the influence of this history on the Canadian
penitentiary. The book looks back at the Canadian experience
with solitary confinement in the Prison of Isolation, established
in Kingston Penitentiary in 1894, and traces the use of solitary
into the 20th century, culminating in the regime established
at the BC Penitentiary in the 1960s-70s in the infamous "Penthouse".
Through the vehicle of the landmark case of McCann
v. The Queen, which successfully challenged the conditions
in the Penthouse as cruel and unusual punishment, Prisoners
of Isolation holds up for analysis the legality of
carceral authority in the Age of Corrections. By reviewing
the evidence and arguments presented to the Federal Court
in this case Professor Jackson foreshadows many of the ideas
and principles that were later to be reflected in decisions
of The Supreme Court of Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
The book also contains Professor Jackson's Model Segregation
Code, designed to subject the prisons ultimate power to the
Rule of Law.
The story told by Prisoners of Isolation of the abuse of
carceral authority in the practice of administrative segregation
is continued in Justice
behind the Walls, particularly in Sector 4. But
the two books are complimentary in other ways.
Prisoners of Isolation lays
out a reform agenda, circa 1982, just as the Charter
of Rights was introduced, and only a few years after
the Canadian Courts had recognised the importance of judicial
intervention in prison. New correctional legislation was still
a decade away.
Justice behind the Walls, published 20 years
after Prisoners of Isolation, provides an assessment of how
the new reforms have actually changed the scales of justice
for prisoners, guards and prison administrators, and raises
anew the challenges to Canadian law and society to implement
human rights standards and the Rule of Law in the deepest
recesses of Canadian institutions.
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