Inmates in Her Majesty's Penitentiary say they feel hopeless, alone and increasingly unwell

Inmates inside Newfoundland's notorious, Victorian-era jail say their mental health is deteriorating as they are allegedly locked in their cellblocks for days and denied visits with their families.

Jonathan Payne was distraught as he described feeling rodents crawl over his body while he tried to seek relief from the sweltering heat inside Her Majesty's Penitentiary by sleeping on the concrete floor.

He said in a recent phone call from the St. John's jail that he had only been outside a few times all summer, and that staffing shortages had led to cancelled visits with his family — even those scheduled for video.

Inmate Kevin Reid says men inside the St. John's jail feel they can't show any vulnerability or emotion, and that as their distress grows, they have nobody to turn to about their deteriorating mental state.

He said in a phone call that recreation, including time in the gym, has been cut back drastically due to staffing shortages, eliminating a crucial outlet for inmates to work off increasing tension.

The province's Justice Department was not immediately available for comment.

Officials confirmed last week that an inmate died at the 164-year-old jail, and Payne and Reid say they have been offered no counselling to deal with the death, adding that they rarely have access to counsellors or psychologists at all.

"To be honest, there are guys here whose mental illnesses are deteriorating by the day," Reid said. "Guys here are feeling like they're lost, like there's no hope. I mean, we're not having contact with family, we're not being able to see our friends." 

Payne says there is little hope for recovery or rehabilitation in the jail, and people leave in much worse shape than when they arrived.  

"We're like cows going to the slaughter," Payne said.

"We have rights that are not being met. And we're not as bad as people make us out to be. A lot of us actually want help, and we can't get it."

Newfoundland and Labrador's Justice Department has provided no details about the identity of the inmate who died last week or how they died.

The province has the highest rate of inmate suicide in Atlantic Canada by jail capacity, according to figures from all four provincial governments. Five inmates in provincial facilities died by suicide between 2010 and 2020 in Newfoundland and Labrador, where there are 281 beds across the province's jails. By comparison, five people died by suicide in Nova Scotia jails in that same decade. 

Nova Scotia has a provincial inmate capacity of about 700. 

New Brunswick reported one inmate death by suicide in that time. Prince Edward Island reported none.

Sheila Wildeman, a law professor at Dalhousie University who is part of Nova Scotia's East Coast Prison Justice group, condemned the conditions inside Her Majesty's Penitentiary. Across the country, staffing shortages are leading to unacceptable lockdowns and other harsh conditions for inmates in provincial facilities, she said in an emailed statement earlier this week.

The group is calling for more transparency about deaths and conditions in jails from provincial governments.

"However, the most obvious and constructive thing we can do to prevent further deaths and other grievous harms to the health and human rights of the nation's most vulnerable is invest in the social determinants of health, and moreover, to do so in a way that puts a priority on those experiencing intersecting forms of oppression and vulnerability," Wildeman wrote.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has promised to build a new jail to replace the crumbling penitentiary. A contract was awarded last year to begin clearing land for the new building. 

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