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It’s not completely fair to say that
the Kent administration did not implement some changes within the dissociation
area ...
- Tables and beds have been installed in the cells,
prisoners no longer have to sleep on the floor;
- Prison population is now allowed to send canteen
items to the H Unit via the Prison Committee;
- Inmates in dissociation are now supplied small
amounts of toothpaste in place of the powder that was once given out;
- The Inmate Committee now has access to the keepers
of H Unit ...However, they are still not able to see the prisoners;
- If there is a rumour that a prisoner in H Unit
has been beat up by staff, it has started to happen that the administration
would produce the prisoner for inspection by the Inmate Committee. This
is indeed a very positive step forward;
- The use of special food trays was recently approved
for H Unit and now prisoners no longer have to eat off soggy paper plates.
133
Since this description was written there have been further
changes. A small library has been placed in H unit; some prisoners are
now employed as librarians, tier cleaners, and food servers, jobs which
allow them extra time out of their cells; prisoners are permitted to shower
every night; some prisoners have been permitted open visits; a plastic
mirror has been supplied to prisoners for their own use, and they are
now allowed to retain their own Bic pens in their cells. A few hobbies
are now authorized for H unit, and several pieces of work-out equipment
have been placed in the exercise yard. Following the practice in SHU,
television sets have recently been provided to prisoners on a selective
basis. Prisoners who keep their cells clean and abide by all rules in
the unit are permitted a TV in their cells. Prisoners’ discontent with
the discretionary manner in which the TV privilege is dispensed is reflected
in the fact that within two months of the introduction of the ‘TV program,’
the three prisoners who met the criteria for a TV voluntarily surrendered
the sets.
A prisoner who had served time in segregation both in the
British Columbia Penitentiary and in Kent made this comparison:
The segregation area itself I found to
be worse than the infamous BC Pen Penthouse. Worse in the sense that a
modem updated prison allows an archaic back- ward attitude to exist. They
continue to strip people of their dignity and lock us away in a little
cement box for periods of 23 ½ hours a day. The exercise area that does
exist is only 30 x 20 completely enclosed with wire bars and cement ...Unlike
other segregation areas in Canada that allow prisoners in segregation
to have their cell effects with them that they would normally have within
the main prison, the Kent segregation area does not. Even the Commissioner’s
Directives which govern the conditions in segregation units in Canada
are ignored by the people who are put in charge of each unit here at Kent.
One guard said to me when I asked for my personal effects as per CD 209:
‘We don’t follow the Commissioner’s Directives here.’ In 1975, the Federal
Court of Canada declared solitary confinement to be cruel and unusual
punishment. Yet the administrators in charge of the H Unit at Kent continue
to run and operate the solitary confinement unit that is similar to, if
not worse than, the BC Pen penthouse.
I ask you, the outside free community,
to picture yourselves locked up in your washroom for weeks and months
on end. This is the dilemma that prisoners in segregation units are confronted
with. It slowly drives you insane. It eats away at you until the hate
inside you somehow gives you the strength to survive. 134
Since Kent opened, I have interviewed many of the prisoners
who have been in segregation in H unit, and I have been permitted by the
administration to inspect the cells and other areas of the unit. I have
also had the opportunity to discuss the conditions with officers in charge
of the unit. It is highly significant that one of the officers in charge,
who had extensive experience of the penthouse at the British Columbia
Penitentiary, was of the opinion that H unit was worse than the penthouse,
from both the prisoners’ and the staff’s point of view. As he explained,
the unit is smaller than the penthouse and has a much smaller complement
of staff. Most staff members have had no previous experience in dealing
with the problems of segregated prisoners. He agreed that there were no
programs in H unit and that, given the fact that the unit was often filled
to capacity, it was extremely difficult even to ensure that each prisoner
had his daily exercise. He conceded that the officer in charge of the
unit was left with a great deal of discretion as to how strictly he enforced
the regulations. For example, the segregation rules require that prisoners
‘shall be skin- frisked whenever they move from their cell to the exercise
area and back to their cells.’135 The officer
recognized the degrading effects of skin-frisks and did not insist on
them when the prisoners went to exercise unless there was a particular
reason to believe that a prisoner might be armed. Similarly, this officer
had permitted one prisoner, who in the past had had extreme difficulty
handling solitary confinement, to spend substantial periods of time out
of his cell cleaning the tier. The officer readily recognized that when
his tour of duty was over the next person in charge would probably adhere
more closely to the letter of the regulations. Page 2 of 9
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