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The Current Transcript for July 29, 2016

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

HILLARY CLINTON: Imagine him in the oval office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet.

LAURA LYNCH: There is now just one man standing between Hillary Clinton and her chance to be the first woman to sit in the Oval Office as president. So, as she accepted the Democratic Party's nomination to be president last night, Clinton set her sights on Donald Trump. The race for the presidency is on. But coming out of this convention, has she galvanized the support of all of her party? We look at Clinton's chances. And then...

SOUNDCLIP

The abolishment of segregation is a completely ludicrous notion in our prison system.

LL: After news of more suicides by prisoners serving time in segregation in Canada, there is renewed debate about ending or changing the practice. But one guard says given the challenges facing those who work inside prison walls, it just won't work. We'll hear from him and from others on the problems with and potential alternatives to what some call solitary confinement. I’m Laura Lynch, and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Bernie Sanders supporters caution Hillary Clinton to push for change in party

Guests: Jerry Zremski, Zareena Grewal, Ricky L. Jones

SOUNDCLIP

HILLARY CLINTON: [chants of Bernie] Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans. Particularly the young people, who threw their hearts and souls into our primary.

[crowd cheering]

You’ve put economic and social justice issues front and centre, where they belong.

[crowd cheering]

And to all of your supporters here and around the country, I want you to know I've heard you. Your cause is our cause.

LL: And that, of course, was Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton capping off the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she made history as the first woman to lead a major U.S. political party. But she and the Democrats have had a wild ride for the past few days. The release of thousands of hacked e-mails exposing the Democratic National Committee's hostility towards Bernie Sanders raised the temperature on an already boiling relationship between Clinton and Sanders supporters. Today, we’re asking how well the heavy hitters including President Barack Obama did in persuading Sanders diehard believers to believe in Hillary Clinton too. But first, a dip into the week that was at the Democratic National Convention. Jerry Zremski is the Washington Bureau Chief for The Buffalo News. He's been following Hillary Clinton closely since her first run for the Senate in 2000. He's in Philadelphia, where he's been covering the convention. Hello.

JERRY ZREMSKI: Good morning Laura, how are you?

LL: Good. You just heard that clip from Hillary Clinton's speech last night. How do you think she did?

JERRY ZREMSKI: I think she did reasonably well. One thing that we need to accept at the start is that Hillary Clinton is not a gifted orator such as President Obama or Michelle Obama. But given that, she had all of these things that she had to try to accomplish in her speech, and I think she accomplished most of that. For example, she really had to address the fact that Americans have known her for a long time and some feel uneasy about her. And she did. She had a very very good line in the speech, which said that she was working in public service for a very long time, but was much better at the service part than the public part. And I thought that was very effective. I also thought it was very effective that she took on Donald Trump the way she did. That clip that you played where she talked about his tweeting I thought was very very effective. So generally speaking, I thought she did well.

LL: OK. Jerry, just to let you know the line is dropping a bit here and there, but we're going to plow on and listen to what you have to say. You followed Hillary Clinton for a long time, how have you seen her evolve as a politician?

JERRY ZREMSKI: The interesting thing about that is she's largely the same as she was in 2000. She has worked at that public side of things, but what I noticed from the start was that she's very different in person, in a small room, with a small group of people, than she is up on a stage. She's much more personable, much more warm and witty in a small venue than she is in a big [venue]. All along she's been willing to work with both sides, and that's another real true characteristic of her.

LL: As you say, she had to accomplish several things in her speech last night, and one of the things she needs to accomplish most people say is to woo those Bernie Sanders supporters. How successful do you think she was in doing that?

JERRY ZREMSKI: I think she was reasonably successful in that as well. One important thing to remember is that the group of Bernie Sanders people who are here in Philadelphia is not reflective of the larger population of Bernie Sanders supporters all around the country. The people that you had here were the activists, the people who worked for a year or more giving hours and hours of time to make sure that he had the support that he got. And so for people who work that hard on a campaign, it's very crushing to lose. And so they are much more reluctant to come along than Bernie Sanders people around the country. If you look at polls, most of the polls that have asked this question make it look like right now, even before the convention, 80 to 90 per cent of the Bernie Sanders supporters in America were going to go to Clinton. So she only needed to improve that a little bit.

LL: And among the electorate then, now we're into the race. What is her biggest challenge going forward in the campaign?

JERRY ZREMSKI: I think frankly the biggest challenge is unexpected surprises. And what I mean by that is we had a big unexpected surprise last weekend right, when WikiLeaks released the DNC e-mails. Julian Assange says there's more stuff to come—

LL: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

JERRY ZREMSKI: Of WikiLeaks, yes, yes. And there are other possibilities too. There is still the other e-mail situation has dogged her throughout this campaign. Her use of a private e-mail server. And there's also a possibility of more drip drip drip from that.

LL: OK, the one thing I want to do because you were at the Republican convention too, compare the two conventions for me.

JERRY ZREMSKI: It's such a stark contrast. The Democratic convention was like a big four day production number. Between the musical performances, and the speakers, and just the stagecraft, everything was pretty much perfect. The Republican Convention was just very different. First of all, you had speeches given by most notably Ted Cruz that obviously didn't even seem to be vetted by the Trump campaign. And then you had a lot of people who supported Donald Trump, average people that were asked to speak at the convention, who clearly never spoke publicly before. So, there are long passages of the Republican convention that reminded me of that tenth grade class where all of the kids had to stand up and read their book reports. Parts of it were just astonishingly boring. And I think that one of the reasons why the television ratings for the Democratic convention have been higher than for the Republican [convention], is just that when people turned on the Republican convention, they saw people who were not skilled at speaking, and it was not comfortable to watch.

LL: OK Jerry, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

JERRY ZREMSKI: OK, thank you. LL: Jerry Zremski is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Buffalo News, and we reached him in Philadelphia. Comedian Sarah Silverman faced a tough crowd when she told the Democratic National Convention why she was throwing her weight behind Hillary Clinton. Her former colleagues in the Bernie Sanders camp booed her. She wasn't having any of it.

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd noise]

The Bernie… can I just say? To the Bernie or bust people, you’re being ridiculous.

[crowd cheering]

LL: To hear more about what Hillary Clinton needs to do to ease the rifts within her party, I am joined now by two supporters of her former rival Bernie Sanders. Ricky L. Jones is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Pan African studies at the University of Louisville, and we reached him in Atlanta. And Zareena Grewal is a Professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale University, she is in New Haven, Connecticut. Hello to both of you.

RICKY L. JONES, ZAREENA GREWAL: Good morning.

LL: Zareena Grewal, let me start with you. What do you think of Sarah Silverman's response to getting booed by Bernie Sanders supporters?

ZAREENA GREWAL: Oh, absolutely rolled my eyes. I mean I think that that's the exact kind of contempt that doesn't work, and you know it just shows how tone deaf the Hillary camp is. I mean if you are trying to win over the Bernie people, what you have to have to do is to have some kind of understanding of where they're coming from. And treating them like they're stupid for being frustrated by what just happened, which is the DNC e-mail leak. Or for having you know some principled political differences with Hillary, which they have, is the absolute wrong tactic. Who handled it really well was Michelle Obama and President Obama. And Sarah Silverman and others, who sort of were dismissive—

LL: OK. I don't want to get too hung up on her, because obviously the main person here is Hillary Clinton and she spoke last night. Do you see or hear anything that made you want to support her?

ZAREENA GREWAL: Well, I think that she I think that she did take the high road and she was gracious. I think that she did sound far more progressive than I expected her to. In terms of do I want to support her, I think that the position for a lot of like the earlier speaker mentioned on the show, is that 90 per cent of the people who support Bernie Sanders are planning to vote for Hillary Clinton. I think the issue is, and this is what concerns me is that people are taking the Bernie Sanders camp for granted. Because what the Hillary Clinton camp needs is not simply the people who were going to vote for Bernie Sanders to vote for Hillary Clinton, what they need is missionaries. They need those people to not simply hold their nose and vote for Hillary, but to convince their friends in swing states to also vote for her. And a bunch of depressed Bernie Sanders voters is not enough.

LL: I just want to turn to Ricky now. Ricky L. Jones, why were you a Bernie Sanders supporter?

RICKY L. JONES: Because when you really look at the media narrative pundits in America coming out of the Democratic convention and even before see the GOP kind of as a party that paints a picture of a dystopian, angry, suffering America in need of rescue. Whereas the Democrats are pushing a humane, hopeful, American ideal reminiscent of John Winthrop or JFK or even Ronald Reagan's idea of this shining city on a hill. And the reality is that both of these things are true depending on who you talk to. So being an African-American and certainly a person that is connected to everyday people, when you look at things like incarceration, under education, under employment, recidivism, poverty, infant mortality, all of these things that the country's really struggling with, there needs to be something that changes systemically where most people are connecting to their world. And what I saw Bernie Sanders as being — and I still do see him as being — is really a person who was a tribune of the people, where Hillary Clinton is more of a transactional politician. But the question moving forward is coming out of this primary season, can she make some alterations to speak more to the Sanders ethic that really sees this need of change. So that's why I supported Sanders.

LL: And now you are supporting Hillary? You will vote for her?

RICKY L. JONES: I will vote for Hillary Clinton now. And I don't think Professor Grewal is saying that she will not, but I think it's very important that we don't just see Hillary Clinton as an individual, we see Hillary Clinton as a representative of a system that simply does not work for a good percentage of people, and something needs to be done about that. But I think the Democratic Party needs to pay attention to that on the on the local, state, and national level as we move forward. I don't think it's just about the election in 2016.

LL: Zareena Grewal, let's just make it clear for Ricky L. Jones and our listeners, are you going to support Hillary Clinton?

ZAREENA GREWAL: Well, I happen to live in a solidly blue state. So I will vote for Jill Stein. But if I lived in a swing state—

LL: Jill Stein, who is the leader of the Green Party. Just wanted to make that—

ZAREENA GREWAL: Yes.

LL: Go ahead.

ZAREENA GREWAL: So, I will vote for her. Because she does actually represent my progressive values. If I lived in a swing state, I would definitely vote for Hillary. I actually will call all my friends in swing states and beg them to vote for Hillary Clinton. I certainly don't want a Trump presidency. My nine-year-old daughter asks me every day very frightened if Trump is going to be some president. So I'm very concerned. I obviously don't want Trump to become president. That's something I'm really worried about. At the same time I want to reward someone like Jill Stein, who actually represents the policies that I'm deeply committed to. And someone like Hillary Clinton, I did hear a lot of the things that I wanted to hear yesterday. But, there is also some things that happened in the DNC convention that concerned me. I mean, even last night when there was one line in the speech where she sort of said imagine putting yourself in the shoes of black and Latino children. It's like well why can't we think of black and Latino children as we? As part of the we. Or when Bill Clinton made that sort of offhand remark about Muslims, if you love America and are opposed to terrorism, stay here. These kinds of things are still not quite the vision that I was kind of hoping for.

LL: OK. Because you mentioned it, I just so happen to have that clip of Bill Clinton right here ready to play. Let's listen to what he said at the convention.

SOUNDCLIP

BILL CLINTON: If you're a Muslim, and you love America and freedom, and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you.

[crowd cheering]

LL: But then last night, a man named Khizr Khan took the stage at the convention to urge Muslim Americans to vote for Hillary. His son Humayun was a military veteran who was killed in Iraq. I just want to play a little bit of what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

He wants to build walls and ban us from this country.

[crowd booing]

Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?

[crowd cheering]

LL: You can hear the reaction that got. Zareena Grewal, what did you think when you heard that? We are already hear that you didn't really appreciate what Bill Clinton had to say.

ZAREENA GREWAL: I thought Khizr Khan’s moment in the convention was one of the most powerful moments in both conventions. Incredibly moving testimony from these two parents who lost their child. A very simple statement, very powerful statement. And I think it really moved the crowd. It went wild.

LL: But he was also urging Muslim Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton.

ZAREENA GREWAL: Yes. And I like I said I appreciate the sentiment, I agree with him. And I like I said, I would I would encourage Muslims to vote for her too if they live in a swing state, in a critical state. I think that I have the luxury, as something who lives in a solidly blue state to vote my conscience.

LL: So even that is not going to get you going out and stumping for her, knocking on doors, that sort of thing.

ZAREENA GREWAL: No, I will in swing states. Like I said, I would do that in states where I think it's up for grabs. In a place like Connecticut, she's going to get Connecticut.

LL: Ricky L. Jones, I'm not ignoring you. [laughing]

RICKY L. JONES: No. [laughing]

LL: You tweeted that Bernie's revolution isn't ending, it’s beginning. What did you mean by that?

RICKY L. JONES: Right. I think we have to understand that first of all I didn’t take as much umbrage to Bill Clinton’s statement as Professor Grewal did. But, I think we need to understand that both parties really depend on fear, but in different ways. The GOP is speaking to its mostly small, white base, afraid of being overrun by the country’s coloured hordes, it seems. And the Democrats respond that the GOP is now a party of out of step conservatives, currently epitomized by a madman. But the question is really how long can we depend on a paradigm for either party, where Americans vote against one candidate, rather than for another. I think what Bernie Sanders was trying to do was set up a situation where we move to a point where we don't have economic, political, and cultural elites functioning in a way where they really are tone deaf to the masses. And to some extent disrespect them by saying look we understand your problems better than you, and we certainly understand the system in a way that you do not, so you have to depend on us to run it. So, one of the beauties of representative democracy is that you can have talented people that give everyday people the chance to go on with their lives without worrying about all of these political problems. And one of the dangers of representative democracy, is that you is that you give these people the chance to run the country, while you don't really worry about things. So, I think what Bernie was really saying, and I think those of us who support him are saying, we have to get to a point where we really can believe in what politicians say, and what they do. A point where they're connected to everyday people, and we haven't to this point. And the Democratic Party really really needs to change that. You know to speak to Canadians, when you look at Bill Clinton, you look at Barack Obama, the party I think has been a very average team, with a couple of outstanding players. Kind of like, you know the Edmonton Eskimos with Warren Moon, or the Edmonton Oilers with Wayne Gretzky. You take them off of those teams and things kind of fall apart. So I don't know where the Democratic Party goes if they stay on that track.

LL: Got to appreciate those Canadian references. But do you think that what you want to see in change, do you think revolution can be achieved within the Democratic Party, or is that the test for Hillary Clinton in the months to come?

RICKY L. JONES: Well, I don't think it should be lost upon us that there have been some revolutionary things that have happened. For all my concerns, and you know also I don't want to be completely dark about the possibilities, or even the current state of American politics and where we're going with the evolution of this country on the political landscape. For all of our problems, like Professor Grewal, I have an eight-year-old daughter, and she said to me months ago, I don't want Barack Obama to not be president anymore. I mean for all her life she's seen an African-American president. And so I said to her, I’m like well look, you know there may be a chance for a woman to be president in Hillary Clinton, and she goes oh OK, well I'm voting for the girl. So when you look at the evolution of this country, I think it says a lot that we're coming out of a time, where for eight years we've had an African-American as president, even though Barack Obama certainly is not a Frederick Douglass. But he is an African-American. And so no matter what his politics were before, he probably wouldn’t have been elected. And we're moving into a time where less than a hundred years after women secured the right to vote in 1920 in this country, we have the possibility of having a female president. So that says that there have been some revolutionary changes that have taken place, and we have to stay on that track.

LL: OK. We have about a minute left, and here's the final question to both of you. Will Hillary Clinton be the next president of the United States?

ZAREENA GREWAL: I think so.

LL: Why?

RICKY L. JONES: I agree. Go ahead, I’m sorry Professor Grewal.

ZAREENA GREWAL:. I just think that while there are many people that believe Trump has not been bought, there's still more people that are afraid of him.

LL: Ricky Jones?

RICKY L. JONES: I agree. I think there's too much fear of Donald Trump. And I think there are people who really understand politics. They understand that there's so much Republican control already, they control the US House and Senate, 31 of 50 governorships, 68 of 99 State House and Senate chambers. And I don't think that that anybody really wants to give the executive branch of the Republicans as well [unintelligible] of Donald Trump. So, I think Hillary Clinton gets it this time, but I think the Democrats really need to get on the ball moving forward.

LL: All right, thank you to both of you for coming on today, appreciate it.

ZAREENA GREWAL: Thanks.

RICKY L. JONES: You’re very welcome.

LL: Ricky L. Jones is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Pan African studies at the University of Louisville, and we reached him in Atlanta. And Zareena Grewal is a Professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale University. She was in New Haven, Connecticut. Well, coming up next. Making the case for and against segregating prisoners in Canada's correctional institutions. It's quite a debate, and you can hear it coming up. I'm Laura Lynch, you are listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Ending Theme]

Deaths of two prisoners renews solitary confinement debate

Guests: Debra Parkes, Howard Sapers, Jason Godin

LAURA LYNCH: Coming up, debating the usefulness and danger of isolation in Canada's prisons. I’m Laura Lynch, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Last week a coroner's inquest began investigating the death of Christopher Roy, an inmate at the Matsqui Prison in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Roy hanged himself in his cell last year, after spending 60 days in segregation. His father, Rob Roy, blamed the isolation as contributing to his son's death.

SOUNDCLIP

My wife and I never thought in a million years that we would ever be attending something like this for a family member. Chris is our son. We’ve lost a son, and a friend. And all I can say is, everybody that knows Chris, family, friends, acquaintances, all know that Chris has never been a suicidal human being.

LL: Earlier this month, there was another death at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario. Terri Baker was being held in segregation, when officers found her unresponsive in her cell. It's the same facility where Ashley Smith died in a segregated prison cell in 2007. It's been two years since an Ontario coroner's jury investigating Ashley Smith's death made numerous recommendations to prevent the deaths of mentally distressed prisoners in segregated custody. But they continue to occur. There's a chorus of voices now calling on government to legislate the end of segregated custody for all Canadian prisoners. Today we convene a panel to discuss the use of segregated custody in Canadian correctional facilities, and the challenges of ending the practice. Debra Parkes is a law professor at the University of British Columbia, who studies the use and impact of segregation in prisons. She's in Winnipeg. Howard Sapers is the correctional investigator of Canada, and he's in Halifax. And Jason Godin is the National President of the union of correctional officers. He's in Montreal. Hello to you all.

MANY VOICES: Hello.

LL: Howard Sapers, let me start with you. What do the death of Chris Roy and Terry Baker tell us about the current use of segregation in Canadian prisons?

HOWARD SAPERS: Very troubling, because when we see a death in a segregation cell, we of course look to see if there were any precipitating factors. And sadly in those cases and in others, we see similar facts time and time again. Segregation is really all about who goes in for how long, and how do they get out. And is it is safe form of custody. And for some federally sentenced offenders, we’re convinced that they’re just simply too vulnerable. It's too dangerous. And it's not a safe form of custody for them.

LL: And it keeps happening again and again, these suicides.

HOWARD SAPERS: It does, it does. And in fact, we reviewed over a three year period, 30 suicides in federal penitentiaries, and what we found was that nearly half of them, 14 of the 30 took place inside a segregation cell. And for most of those individuals, those 14, there were previous attempts at taking their lives, and there were well documented mental health concerns.

LL: Jason Godin, I'm wondering as a corrections officer, what goes through your mind when you hear about these kinds of deaths? Not referring to these cases in particular, but these kinds of deaths of prisoners in segregation?

JASON GODIN: Well, I think overall we do a pretty good job of the care and custody of our offenders. I mean, you have to realize that these are the most difficult cases to manage in all of Canada. At the same time, we continue to ask for more tools at our disposal, so that we can manage the most dangerous offenders. And in fact, we actually were calling for a high risk women unit, for high risk women as far back as 2005. And the government this year in the budget didn't include any money for those types of things. The bottom line is, correctional officers, it's a last resort for us as well. I mean, we try to manage these cases as much as possible in the general population, but just not always possible. The abolishment of segregation is a completely ludicrous notion in our prison system. Simply because if we were to abolish segregation, we would just take those problems and put them back into general population, which creates more problems inside the institution. In fact, we're doing a pretty good job overall. If you take a look at 2014-2015, correctional officers did over 2,000 medical interventions with inmates across the country. So, we're obviously certainly preserving life at a higher rate than sometimes people who do commit suicide. Unfortunately, it takes about three minutes for someone to commit suicide, and of course there's hundreds of suicides that occur every year.

LL: OK Jason, I just want to back it up to one of the first things you said. You brought up this idea of abolishing segregation entirely. And I want to turn to Debra Parkes to talk about that. Do you think that that is what needs to happen?

DEBRA PARKES: Ultimately, yes Laura. The reality is that there's vast fluctuations if you look in Canada, in comparable just actions around the world, in terms of when, for how long that they use solitary confinement. And this is what we're talking about. We're talking about solitary confinement. It has all kinds of different names in different institutions. And the reality is that it's not actually required in every case. There's certainly times when people need to be separated from other prisoners for short periods of time, and to have their mental health needs addressed, to have a cooling off period. Whatever. All of that is understood. But what we have is actually very prolonged use of solitary confinement. We have it normalised. It's a very harmful practice. We know this now from decades of research, that it's actually very harmful to mental health. It exacerbates mental health disabilities, and it creates new ones. It creates various health problems. It is clearly a harmful practice.

LL: Howard Sapers, I wanted to get you to actually lay some groundwork for us here. Talk to me about what Canadian law currently permits and prohibits when it comes to the use of isolation cells.

HOWARD SAPERS: Sure, so there's different forms of segregation in federal penitentiaries. And what we're really talking about is the kind of segregation, it’s called administrative segregation. There are a few reasons why somebody can be put into administrative segregation by the warden. Typically, it's got to do with the safe operation of the institution, or to protect somebody’s personal safety, or to prevent any interference with an ongoing an investigation. There's also disciplinary segregation. [unintelligible] But the majority of segregation is administrative, so it's discretionary. There are mandated legislative and policy controls around segregation. So there are segregation review boards, and there's a five day review, and 30 day review, etc. The policy framework around segregation is not so much the problem, it's how that policy framework is applied. Right now there are no legislated caps on the maximum amount of time somebody can be segregate—

LL: Is that is a problem?

HOWARD SAPERS: Yes, yes. Because right now, one in ten people in segregation in a federal penitentiary have been there for more than 90 days. About six per cent are there for more than 120 days. It’s long term segregation which tends to be the most problematic. These have been some of the most challenging cases, and unfortunately these are also some of the individuals with the most significant mental health issues. That's a very bad combination. We've recommended not abolition of segregation, we've recommended prohibition for those who are most vulnerable. Like those with a serious history of chronic self-injury, for example. We've recommended there be legislated caps. So it can't just be an ongoing form of incarceration. And thirdly, we’ve recommended that there be independent review of continued segregation placement. So it's not just the same authority that made the initial decision to put somebody into that kind of custody, 23 hour lockup every day. But that there be an independent review of that.

LL: And Jason Godin, what do you think of those kinds of ideas?

JASON GODIN: Well, I think first of all we have to set the record straight. I mean for my colleague, we don't have solitary confinement in Canada. I mean, that exists in American movies. That doesn't exist here in Canada. We have a first rate correctional system around the world, it's recognised for that. As Mr. Sapers points out, we call it administrative segregation. There's all kinds of reasons why we would place an inmate into administrative segregation. In fact, sometimes we even have health care professionals recommend segregation time for inmates. In terms of the mental illness piece, part of the problem is even the United Nations can't specifically define what mental illness is. I mean, a lot of our cases sometimes are behavioural. And sometimes, when we're trying to move inmates to facilities, as an example we're trying to move them to outside prevention facilities. Those prevention facilities reject them immediately and say look we can't manage this offender here. In fact, we had a recent example in the Brockville psychiatric hospital where the same situation occurred. So, first of all again setting the record straight on solitary confinement. That doesn't exist in Canadian institutions. I think it's very misleading to the Canadian public when we use that term. At the same time, there's a tremendous amount of interaction. And program delivery continues in administrative segregation. So, I think that we have to put it in perspective, and realize that corrections is doing a good job of managing these offenders. And the complete abolishment of these units would completely put our institutions in chaos.

DEBRA PARKES: It's important though to look at the actual conditions that people are under. I don't think the Canadian public cares so much what we call it in legal terms, in policy terms, in in that language. What the reality is that we know from research, from the United Nations report, from various other documents from the last 20 to 30 years, that we're talking about is people serving 22 to 23 hours locked in their cell, with little to no human contact, other than with correctional officers. Usually through a slot in the door. A very short period of time out for a shower and exercise. But the point is we have to look at these actual conditions. That's what matters. And we are at a turning point in Canada right now, I think. There's rising awareness about this. Canadians when they hear about this, they actually are concerned. We have court challenges going ahead because we've had decades of attempts to change things at the policy level. We've had fluctuations in the use, and different names for the kinds of practices that are going on. And the reality is that we actually have to have some oversight. And I think it's important that that we're going to have these legal challenges going forward, to put some limits on these practices.

LL: Debra, I just want to jump in here. Because you have someone with you on the panel who is one of the people who is on the frontlines of this, and Jason is speaking from that perspective. When you talk about not having solitary confinement, administrative segregation, whatever term you want to use. What do you say then to the people who are working, the correctional officers, who have to deal with the fallout of something like that?

DEBRA PARKES: Right. Absolutely. And I am very sympathetic to the people who do that work. It's a really difficult and challenging work. And I don't want to be heard as saying anything else. But if you can look at other jurisdictions where they have either radically reduced or virtually eliminated their use of solitary confinement, and you can see that it comes with very different kinds of training, and Jason talked about that need for greater training, in terms of human interactions and defusing situations.

LL: Can you can you give actually a really specific example of that, so we understand?

DEBRA PARKES: An example would be Norway. And Norway is, I mean, before it gets sort of dismissed as Scandinavian utopia, it's a jurisdiction that had a couple of decades ago very serious problems in terms of prisons riots, unsafe institutions. And what they have done over the years, is radically change the way that they operate their prisons, such that they are entirely different from what you would see in Canada or the US, in terms of being much more focused on diffusing situations. And you could go into for example, their high security institution where there's about 250 male prisoners who are considered the most dangerous violent people who committed those offenses, and you will have probably one, possibly two people in solitary confinement, in a segregated cell. And probably only for a few hours or a day. And that's because they have utilized other mechanisms to address the behaviours.

LL: What does that mean though diffusing and mechanisms? I don't understand.

DEBRA PARKES: It’s training around deescalating situations, increasing human interaction rather than decreasing it when someone is acting out. But the other thing that I think is very important to keep in mind with this whole debate is that to a certain extent, the way that we utilize imprisonment in this country is creating its own perverse logic for the need for these more extreme punishments. So when you pack people who have high needs, who have done harm, into very close quarters with little to do, under the absolute control of others, this creates problems. Some people can't cope. Some people are vulnerable. Institutions need to keep a lid on things, I understand that. But we need to actually take a step back, and understand that we're creating our own logic through the use of imprisonment.

LL: Howard Sapers, I want to get you in on this.

HOWARD SAPERS: You know, there are a number of things I think that might be helpful in terms of this discussion. Number one, the already law requires that segregation be a last resort. It's the alternative to general population. It's supposed to be used minimally, it's only supposed to be used when absolutely necessary for these legal purposes, and the goal is always to research to return somebody to general population. So that's the legal framework. The reality is that instead of it being segregation by exception, we're seeing segregation by default. Too many people are being segregated for frankly the wrong reasons or even no reasons. It's become a population management tool. So I think it's important to understand at that there's some discord between the legal framework of the law, and practice. The other thing is that I like to put a little pain to the argument that we don't have a good appreciation of the the population inside federal corrections. I think the Correctional Service of Canada does a better job now than ever, of understanding and assessing who its clients are and when it comes to mental health, we know the prevalence of significant mental disorders were well screened. And the sad truth is that there is a tremendous over representation of people with known diagnosed mental health issues inside segregation cells. And these are very challenging individuals. And Jason is absolutely right. Correctional officers do thousands of medically focused interventions. That should be instructive to us. Correctional officer are not health practitioners, they often struggle with making decisions about the nature of their intervention. They don't often have the training or the health back up. And they often do heroic work, but really in circumstances that are very very very difficult. And so these individuals need to be managed in a different way

LL: And I think Deborah presented us with a possible alternative, which was the Norwegian model of doing things. And I'm wondering Jason, you heard what she had to say. Does that seem realistic to you?

JASON GODIN: Well, it's already occurring in our system right now. And this is the part that frustrates frontline correctional officers and the organization as a whole. Is simply put, I mean, I've actually toured across the country this week, and noticed the segregation numbers are way lower than we've had in the past. Sometimes that's not a good thing, because that's creating other pressures in other institutions. I think that the administrative segregations policies that we have in place are a very good check and balance for how to manage these offenders. But I do want to point out like Mr. Sapers had mentioned, is that one of the biggest challenges we have is that for a correctional officer on the front lines, we're faced with having to ensure the care and custody and safety of inmates and staff, and at 4:00 and obviously on the weekends, we don't have any health care professionals around. So, in terms of a toolbox for us, administrative segregation is an absolute must for some cases. Because we have nowhere else to manage these offenders. So obviously we're completely opposed to the abolishment of segregation, but at the same time I believe that certainly from the department’s perspective, we're doing a pretty good job of managing the cases that we're having to deal with. I mean the funding piece around having health care professionals on 24 hours a day, again the union has been calling for this since our creation way back when they started to cut the health care professionals. And at 4:00 in the afternoon or 5:00 in the afternoon on a weeknight, or certainly on the weekends, aside from our treatment centres across Canada — which by the way offer all the same services as a psychiatric facility does in the province — aside from from those 24 hour health care operations and regional health care operations, we don't have any health care professionals accessible to us when we're dealing with these higher risk cases.

LL: Go ahead Debra.

DEBRA PARKES: Well, yes. And Jason mentioned women, and talks about calling for a high risk unit for women. The reality is that for women, women are the fastest growing prison population in Canada. And what we have is women more likely to actually be in segregation than men. So, according to the most recent report from from Howard's office, you saw 46 per cent of women in the last year had been placed in segregation compared to 26 per cent of men. And so segregation is very significantly overused for women. And this is actually the population that is empirically speaking, and evidentiary speaking, less dangerous. Now there obviously are violent incidents that occur, and I'm not denying that. But the reality is that most of these women have significant mental health issues, they've experienced trauma in their lives, and segregation is the absolute worst place for them.

LL: And you hear Jason begging for some more help to try to get some mental health resources towards them.

DEBRA PARKES: More help is exactly what is needed. It's not more bars. It’s not more cells.

JASON GODIN: But I think we have to realize that on any given day correctional officers we also don't want to have our segregations full. But at the same time, our obligation is public safety and security. And we can't have inmates who are disrupting other inmates in the population. So this is why it's an essential tool for us. And that's why we continue to maintain that we must have this as a tool for us.

LL: I want to try doing what Howard Sapers was suggesting, which is try to push this forward to looking to what can be done about it. Last November, Justin Trudeau indicated he wanted to ban long term solitary confinement or administrative segregation, I'm being careful with my words because I know they mean a lot. [laughing]

JASON GODIN: [laughing] They do.

LL: The director general of security of Corrections Canada confirmed with us that Corrections Canada is reviewing its policy on segregation, with a view to updating legislation. So I'm wondering, are you optimistic about what the review is going to bring?

HOWARD SAPERS: Well, I am frankly. I think that it's clear that we're on a path towards some legislative change, and that will force some operational change. Let's also be mindful of something very important that Jason said. The actual number of admissions are down this year. That decrease came without policy change. That decrease came without legislative guidance. That decreases further evidence that segregation was being, in my opinion, overused. There has been more attention paid, more focus, more accountability on reducing the use of segregation. That's a good thing. We want to sustain that. And I think the way to do that is through legislative guidance, and some policy initiatives. But we also have to look at some of the impacts on segregation, and make sure that these changes affect other forms of practice as well. Today there are seven women in segregation cells across the country, that doesn’t seem very high. Five of the seven are Indigenous women. We know that about a third of all the men in segregation are of Indigenous heritage. That's a very high rate compared to their proportion of the population in prisons. So there are some differential outcomes, and we have to address that as well.

LL: We have a sort of on time left. But Deborah and Jason, I want you both to address that same question of whether you're optimistic that things are going to change.

DEBRA PARKES: Well, I'm not optimistic about legislative and policy change. I mean, I'd like to see hard limits placed, I'd like to see the government commit to abolishing this practice, and finding alternatives. But I actually think we’re at a point where we need the law to intervene here. We have a situation where 20 years ago, Justice Louise Arbour recommended hard limits on the use of solitary confinement. She made all kinds of recommendations in relation to the abuse of that practice at the prison for women. Just a couple of months ago, she spoke on the anniversary of her report and said she would now be calling for the abolition of that practice, because legislative policy change has not worked. This is a cruel and inhumane practice that now we know that's the case. We need to put the onus on corrections to prove that it's somehow justified, when we know how harmful and counterproductive it is.

LL: Jason, last words.

JASON GODIN: Well, I think the toolbox is already there. I mean the policies are there, and even as Mr. Sapers and I sort of both agree, which is a bit unusual. The tools are there. And we're doing the job we need to do. I mean, in terms of high risk women units, those are important to us, because once again it would allow us to deal more with the disciplinary cases that we must have. The part that we're very worried about is that there's talk about putting an absolute cap on oh you can no longer go beyond this. We have to realize that some inmates don't want to come out of segregation. Some inmates who come out of segregation for a short period of time end up returning right back in there again. So at the end of the day, we can't we can't have a cap that absolutely says that they can only spend a maximum of time. We believe—

DEBRA PARKES: I would say those people want safe and secure environments, not necessarily a solitary confinement cell.

JASON GODIN: No, and for them sometimes administrative segregation is a safe, secure environment. So we have to keep that in mind—

HOWARD SAPERS: Well, then that means you got problems in running general population.

JASON GODIN: No, but you have to realize that it's still a tool that is the only one disposable to us in those cases to keep the rest of the institution under control. Again, we have to realize that like I mentioned earlier, there are some health care professionals that actually recommend time away for inmates. So for us the abolishment is completely off the table, and the fact that there are just strictly some cases that you're going to have to manage in segregation regardless. That’s just the reality of frontline work in corrections.

LL: It is evident to me that we could go on talking for a lot longer about all of this. It's a really complicated and often troubling subject. So, I really appreciate all three of you coming in to talk about it.

MANY VOICES: Thank you very much. Thank you.

LL: Deborah Parks is a law professor at the University of British Columbia. She joined us from Winnipeg. Howard Sapers is the Correctional Investigator of Canada, he was in Halifax. And Jason Godin is the National President of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, he was in Montreal. Well, that is today's edition of The Current. But, even though it's still summer, I want to tell you about something coming up in September. Each season at The Current, we take on a theme. And this fall, we're calling our new project The Disrupters. From entrepreneurs, to social movements, politicians to philanthropists, we'll look at how people and their beliefs are upsetting the orthodoxy — sometimes for better sometimes for worse. All season long, we will tell stories of disruption looking at the consequences of upending tradition. And we're also looking for your stories, in a new series we are going to call Moments of Disruption. We want to hear about your personal experiences. So you send us an e-mail through our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Follow the Contact Us link, and make sure to put Personal Disruption in the subject line. I am Laura Lynch, thank you for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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July 29, 2016 full episode transcript

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