Tag Archives: legal system

Dumb and Dumber

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With the conservative government dragging their heels on anything proactive regarding the recommendations put forward by the inquest into the Ashley Smith homicide I must speak.

Sometimes surfing the internet is a vice but I have been fortuitous in stumbling on the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) Commissioner’s Directive. The Commissioner’s Policy Objective Regarding Health Services is:

1. To ensure that inmates have access to essential medical, dental and mental health services in keeping with generally accepted community practices.

From personal experience and more radically from the circumstances of Ashley Smith’s death I feel obliged to point out to the commissioner or anyone else who doesn’t care, that community practices do not include solitary confinement as a default. It seems individuals in corrections feel solitary confinement is a panacea. We leave medicine up to people who are trained to turn keys and push food carts. I can’t believe we pay correctional officers $50 000 a year to call surnames, inspect anuses, turn a key and distribute diets. In Canada we need at least two guards and a lieutenant to orchestrate the ordinary.

Please don’t assume I am a disgruntled delinquent. The same stupidity can be found in many public services. Last month the London Fire Department was experiencing some form of inefficient insomnia or doing some sort of safety blitz. On three separate evenings a full size fire truck pulled in front of my house. I tend to self-isolate and have a degree of agoraphobia so I ignored them the first two times when they knocked on my door. I finally relented and decided my discomfort was less important than the tax dollars that were blowing down the street.

It took two “blueshirts” or regular firemen and one “whiteshirt” or supervisor to canvas me about having fire detectors on each floor and a carbon monoxide detector. It was costing Londoners about $153.00 per hour to have these bored but brave men go door to door and that doesn’t count whatever the hell it cost to fuel a fire truck at $1.39 a litre. Get a Smart car dumbass! I may be an idiot but wouldn’t it make more sense to have a 15 year old who needs volunteer hours to pull a Radio Flyer wagon full of batteries and smoke detectors through the same neighbourhoods to hand out to citizens without? We could save money as taxpayers and probably save more lives. I understand the dilemma. What would fire services have to bargain with if they did less than less?

I digress but it is an honest diversion. While I was in jail I also had “blueshirts” or guards come to my door with the odd “whiteshirt” in the background making sure my captors didn’t screw up simplicity.

According to the Correctional Service of Canada Commissioner and their Response to Medical Emergencies: the primary goal is the preservation of life.

• Non-health services staff arriving on the scene of a possible medical emergency (like a ligature around the neck) must immediately call for assistance, secure the area and initiate CPR/first aid without delay.
• Non-health services staff must continue to perform CPR/first aid until relieved by health services staff or the ambulance service.
• The decision to discontinue CPR/first aid can be made only by authorized health services staff or the ambulance service.

Here I can only wonder why “whiteshirts” were making decisions they were not authorized to make. “Blueshirts” overrode the commissioner’s directive as well. Insubordination and insanity.

Any poor “blueshirt” or guard who can read or remember must have been pacing frantically at watching Ashley choke when we consider the following directives.

• Initiation of CPR by non-health services staff is not required in the following situations:
• Decapitation (i.e. the complete severing of the head from the remainder of the body)

Correctional officers must be known to be overzealous in administering life saving measures if they have to be formally called off when a head is not attached to a body. The correctional officers outside Ashley’s cell must have been convulsing with compassion when they could see she was not dismembered. “But Boss, her head is still on.”

Another instance that does not necessitate CPR is:

• Decomposition (i.e. condition of decay, deterioration, disintegration of the body)

This directive has a place in a correctional setting considering the care many inmates receive. One would assume that an ordinary citizen wouldn’t require i.e. and an explanation of decapitation or decomposition but apparently correctional officers are so thorough in their first aid they need “too far gone” spelled out.
Only in a correctional setting where charges are checked every 20 minutes could one find a corpse in a state of decomposition. “But Boss, I counted him for the past three weeks.”

Considering these directives it seems incomprehensible that Ashley Smith was watched by corrections officers as she choked to death. How is it that when she fell unconscious with her head attached and in no way decomposing no one intervened? It seems ironic that inmates are in these facilities for not following written rules but those who are charged with assisting and encouraging offenders to become law-abiding citizens can pick and choose or even fabricate their own. In Ashley’s case the result was both sadistic and sad.

http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/plcy/cdshtm/800-cde-eng.shtml

You Can’t Ingest Its Nature

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I think at least 117 people out of 100,000 have an idea of what it is like to be incarcerated. We have images of guards and inmates but like many things, unless you have lived it you are not in possession of a complete picture. Unless you have been wrestled to the ground you won’t understand the damage. Unless you have been stripped you will not understand what it essentially does to you. Unless you have been lead to and lived in a cell with nothing in it but a toilet and a 24 hour light, unless you were the one to not witness day or night outside of meals you can’t understand what it does to you to lose the orientation of time. Unless you have been locked down in a cell built to punish 2 men with a third you will not understand what it means to lose all value.

I know there are some who would have us chained to walls and flogged every breakfast. My suggestion would be to travel to such a country where such practices are upheld. Many of these countries may not offer you the quality of life you can claim in Canada. How we treat the disadvantaged and the least among us spreads through all our lives. Part of the advantage of a social net is the mental outlook we all gain from it. When you can look around and see people who need assistance getting assistance something in the back of your head relaxes. It’s the place where you actually know that there is the possibility that there is very little that separates you from their disadvantage.

I am one of a very small percentage and I became at times an even smaller percentage. I experienced the legal system, the correctional system and the forensic system. Many of my experiences involved me in full psychosis for extended periods. The conditions we accept as a society for those we wish to punish are in many cases the conditions we are choosing to accept for people who are mentally ill. They are your neighbours’ relative if not your own. If we expose someone with a mental illness to all of this it may be worrisome enough. When an illness carries you off to jail rather than a hospital you would hope your treatment is humane. You may be of the mindset that it should be therapeutic.

We hear about jails with capacity issues and we yawn. We hear about 3 men bunked into cells built as punishment for two men while we sip our coffee. These jails are often in lock down. To be in lock down is basically a suspension of all movement. I think it is not therapeutic to prisoners of mental health when you enter a cell as the third person. You can bet you are the one on the floor. It’s no less comfortable but you get to deal with the toilet and each man who uses it. Normal access to showers are also suspended which when mixed with the fact that you never have the privilege of entirely new clothes on a daily basis means you are living in your own stink. Normally there was a common area to relieve your bowels. It was rare that a cell toilet would be used. I can remember a guard entering our common area when the conditions were normal, “It smells like ass in here.” I’m sure it did. There are no windows in jail and no switches to pull for the fan to kick in.

If you own a tape measure lay out on your floor a space roughly 5 by 8. This is your “house”. Bring in a toilet sink combo and two people you don’t know, three mattresses and a set of bunks. Your movement basically consists of twisting in and out of bed. I can recall being on the top bunk. I was in possession of the entire atmosphere but the traffic was light. I knew the one man a little but nothing of the new man on the floor. He was a harmless alcoholic. When he was not on a park bench he was in jail.

To have a mental illness through all this in my case amplified some of the experience. There was a drawing on the wall which terrified me. I was at times directed to stare at it and other times I would be directed to lay on my left. It was like having the devil beside you as you lay awake on your cot. I was at times reading a book I was fortunate to have in my cell. I read it at night to help the other prisoners to sleep. My thoughts were being broadcast so reading to myself or any thought carried a long way. This was also a nightmare for me as I was possessed by thoughts that I felt I had no control over. I had enemies and tricksters and they were my cellmates at certain times. Even my food intake was being directed by something. We sometimes fantasize about a day in bed, when it is the only option and for longer than could ever be comfortable it loses meaning.

Unless you have a mental illness which was alive as you lived these moments you will likely not understand. I am a small percentage but as I was stricken, it can be unpredictable. Mental illness does not look into your wallet or dodge your fancy car. Mental illness doesn’t seep out of the ground in the neighbourhoods you occupy. Mental illness doesn’t look at your age or measure your Body Mass Index. You can’t open your mouth or touch some surface and ingest its nature. You can’t study books or plan a vacation to flee it in any way. It may strike any of us and will surely strike someone we know.

When we don’t care about people with mental illness who come in conflict with the law it invisibly ripples through all our lives. It allows us to draw lines as to who or what we care about. It’s like my hitch hiker theory. If you remove the option of picking up hitchhikers you are less likely to help someone with car trouble. When we totally disown our responsibility to prisoners it is easier to do the same to the mentally ill. When they are one and the same you might want to consider their treatment because we are all one and the same.