Through personal stories, Garrison illuminates a criminal justice system that ignores poverty, racism, mental illness, and addiction and deals instead with society's problems with razor wire and harsh treatment. It is a system that degrades the individual and sees inmates as less than human.
Providing a counterbalance to fear-mongering about criminals, he argues that a dehumanizing system generates more crime, not less, and perpetuates another injustice, this time committed on behalf of all Canadians.
Through personal stories, Garrison illuminates a criminal justice system that ignores poverty, racism, mental illness, and addiction and deals instead with society's problems with razor wire and harsh treatment. It is a system that degrades the individual and sees inmates as less than human.
Providing a counterbalance to fear-mongering about criminals, he argues that a dehumanizing system generates more crime, not less, and perpetuates another injustice, this time committed on behalf of all Canadians.
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Overview
Through personal stories, Garrison illuminates a criminal justice system that ignores poverty, racism, mental illness, and addiction and deals instead with society's problems with razor wire and harsh treatment. It is a system that degrades the individual and sees inmates as less than human.
Providing a counterbalance to fear-mongering about criminals, he argues that a dehumanizing system generates more crime, not less, and perpetuates another injustice, this time committed on behalf of all Canadians.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780889773769 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Regina Press |
| Publication date: | 02/28/2015 |
| Pages: | 293 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Human on the Inside
Unlocking the Truth About Canada's Prisons
By Gary Garrison
University of Regina Press
Copyright © 2014 Gary GarrisonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-88977-376-9
CHAPTER 1
THE PRISON BREAK-IN
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
— William Blake, "London"
I lived with my family in a silo in Edmonton's Mill Woods subdivision from 1978 to 2002. Our home was a chocolate-brown, aluminum-sided, suburban bi-level, but it was still a silo. We attended St. Theresa's Roman Catholic Church, our kids attended Catholic schools, and we rarely crossed paths with non-Catholics whose kids attended public schools. We were separated from the rest of Edmonton by industrial and commercial districts and a freeway. Mill Woods was all middle class and working class people, very much like us. A silo within a silo within a silo.
I worked at the Alberta Legislature as editor of Hansard, the official report of the Assembly's debates. That was another silo. I worked under the Speaker, whose department was part of the public service but not part of "the government," which was run by the majority party in the House. Our department — the Legislative Assembly Office — served all the parties and had rules unique to us, like exclusion from the public service union, even though we were clearly public servants. The public service is a silo too. Public servants get benefits, pension plans, and job security unheard of in the private sector; they also work in a tightly controlled, hierarchical, political environment.
I call these things silos, but they were and are a lot like prisons. Even some of the language we used during my time in the public service was like prison lingo. People approaching retirement — even if it was ten years away — would talk about how many years, months, and days they had left to serve before they were free. When positions were cut and people were laid off, they usually got a generous payout, which was called "the golden handshake." People like me had well-paying jobs we'd been in a long time, but if we got tired of them or wanted to change careers, we had little hope of moving to another job with similar pay somewhere else. We called our situation "the golden handcuffs."
In June 2000, I burned out. For a while I couldn't even read a book or stand up for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch, and I napped all the time. When I regained some of my strength, I felt empty and didn't know what to do with my life. A counsellor suggested I try to meet people who were unlike me. He said that would open my eyes to a different world and help me see myself in a different light. So, in September 2001, I made my first trip to Edmonton Institution (the Max) and visited a man serving a life sentence for murder. I broke into the Max to get out of my own prisons.
In July 2002, I became the coordinator of the M2W2 prison visitation program I'd been volunteering for. My job was to pair prisoners with volunteers who came in to visit once a month. I talked to prisoners on their units and in the metalworking shop at the Max, where they could learn useful skills like powder coating and welding. I met them in the prison school, the Aboriginal cultural centre, the chapel, the gym, and even in the sweat lodge, where we all wore only gym shorts and towels. My job was to find prisoners who would volunteer to come on our visiting night and meet with a person from the outside.
M2W2 is a program of the Mennonite Central Committee that began in Alberta over twenty-five years ago. Its main purpose is to provide personal contact for prisoners with somebody who's part of the larger community. The volunteers come into the prison on the second Friday of every month, listen to prisoners, and informally mentor them, one-on-one. Visitors model for them how to live a normal life, something many of them have never seen.
To recruit prisoners and maintain the program's visibility at the Max, I went there every Tuesday. I nearly always started my day off in the chapel by having lunch with one or both chaplains. One of those Tuesdays about two years into my doing this work is particularly memorable.
* * *
The Roman Catholic chaplain, Sr. Elizabeth Coulombe, invites me to share my life story with a group of prisoners at an evening chapel service. I agree to come, hoping I'll find more prisoners to join the program.
"Some of you know me," I tell the ten men sitting in a circle of orange, hard plastic chairs. "I coordinate the M2W2 prison visitation program. What you may not know about me is how I ended up here. By 'here' I don't only mean 'in this prison.' I mean in Canada, in Edmonton at the Max, as coordinator of M2W2."
"I just realized a funny thing about my being in here," I continue. My heart starts pounding so loudly I can hear it. Suddenly, I'm afraid that if I tell them about me, they'll think I'm a wimp. Once word gets around, I could lose the trust I've built with prisoners throughout the Max these last two years. If a new prisoner — a "fish" in prison lingo — came in with a history like mine, he'd be a target for fists, kicks, and even knives ("shivs"). In the sixties and seventies men like me were savaged in the U.S. media and shunned by the community. My own father said he was ashamed of me for leaving the United States and coming to Canada. I'd worked at a newspaper in Toronto where a pressman could scarcely contain his rage at my "cowardice." His face turned fire-engine red whenever we crossed paths. I marvel now that he didn't wind up and punch me in the nose.
But it's too late to back out now. I take a deep breath and forge ahead. "If I hadn't come to Canada in 1970," I say, "I would've gone to prison for dodging the draft. That was the height of the Vietnam War. I had just graduated from Saint Louis University. I grew up in Kansas City and Pueblo, Colorado, but I was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma."
"So you're an Okie from Muskogee, like in the song?" Somebody laughs.
"Yeah. That's me," I smile. "Unlike the Okie in the song, I did grow my hair long. I had a lot more then, and it was curly. People told me I had a pretty fair Afro for a white guy." More chuckles.
"The point I want to make is that I came to Canada because my own country threatened me with prison if I didn't join the army and kill people. And here I am at the Max visiting you guys." I look around at their faces. I know that a few of them are in on life sentences because they took another person's life. I see a few headshakes and grimaces, but most of them are as still as bronze statues. I ask them, "What would you think about being put in prison for not killing somebody?"
"Far out!" somebody says.
"I woulda gone," says another.
"Yeah, man. It woulda been fun. And the travel!"
"I didn't come here to talk politics," I say. "But politics are part of life wherever you go. Some of you probably think you're in here for political reasons, that you didn't get justice because you couldn't afford a good lawyer, because you're part of a racial minority, or you aren't as educated as the police, the lawyers, the judges, and the prison guards you have to deal with. There's a lot of truth in that."
"I came to talk about where I came from. I left behind all my friends and relatives in 1970 to protest the Vietnam War. I was alone except for the woman I married. We stood together against the killing. After we raised three children to adulthood, in 2002 we broke up. I realized she wasn't the person I thought I married. Maybe she had similar thoughts about me. By that time we couldn't even talk to each other. Now all three of my adult children are gone, and I'm the only one of the family left in Edmonton." Then I tell them how I found the strength to move forward and develop a new life for myself. After I've said my piece, we have an informal discussion over coffee and cookies, and then the guards come to escort the prisoners back to their units.
When I return to the Max the next Tuesday, Sister Elizabeth and I talk about the chapel service. She tells me that a day or two afterwards, many of the same men came back to the chapel. One of them opened up about his life. She says that telling his story helped him understand himself better, gave him hope for the future, and convinced him he has the power to determine his own destiny. Sister Elizabeth thanks me for leading the way. She plans to encourage more prisoners to tell their life stories too.
That gets me thinking. I've just read Studs Terkel's The Good War and Working, landmark oral histories about World War II and life in various workplaces, and I see in my twenty-two years' experience of editing Hansard at the Alberta Legislature a talent for translating oral speech into written text. "Maybe I could interview some prisoners," I say, "and we could make a book out of it."
When Sister Elizabeth and I first draft plans for the book, we decide on a simple, three-part formula for prisoner interviews: (1) Where do you come from? (family background, life before prison); (2) What is prison life like for you?; and (3) What are your hopes for the future, and what will you do to keep out of trouble when you get out? We agree that anonymity is essential, that I will include no prisoner's name in the book, that I'll edit out all place references. We want these to be real stories, and we want the prisoners to feel free to talk without fear of retribution or ridicule.
The prisoners' life stories would be just the start. The book would give prisoners a chance to tell their stories and to be heard; it also would shine a light inside the prison and let readers face their fears of crime, of prisoners, and of parts of themselves they don't want to acknowledge. Our proposal appeals to the higher- ups in the prison because they want to do what they can to help prisoners improve themselves and because they know that, ultimately, the community is safer when people on the outside have a better understanding of people on the inside. Our proposal fits into the system's interest in the restorative justice model, which refocuses the traditional emphasis on punishment and security as part of the effort to heal the damage crime does to individuals and the community.
So I get permission to come in with a tape recorder. I spend between sixty and ninety minutes with each prisoner who agrees to an interview. I invite thirty prisoners to participate, I get twelve prisoners' oral histories, and I transcribe and edit them all. I preserve each prisoner's speaking style, as I had so many MLAS' speeches in Hansard. I share the transcripts with my supervisor, with coworkers, with the prisoners involved. As editor of Hansard, I published about sixty large volumes comprised of many thousands of pages of MLAS' speeches; what I've got now is a text that's as full of repetition and posturing and as unengaging as Hansard ever was. Why would anybody publish it? Why would anybody read it? The journey from editor to author looks like a mile-high Grand Canyon wall in front of me. I'm afraid I'll never make it to the top. I'm low on energy, still recovering from my family breakup and from my burnout at the Legislature two years before that. So I set the project aside.
That was ten years ago. The book Sister Elizabeth and I had in mind is very different from the book you have in your hand now. I started this project thinking I would simply be the facilitator in a process of prisoners opening up about themselves, and then other prisoners who read those first stories would open up too. It was going to be a story avalanche, and the sound of my voice would trigger it. All I had to do was invite prisoners to speak and then get out of the way. I would be the catalyst. During the years the project was on hold, I learned how much the rules of my Hansard life were still part of me and how far I still had to go to break away from them.
In 2003, I'd already taken the first step, even though I didn't realize it. I'd started writing poetry. The next step involved music. I remember a conversation with Paul Vanderham, who was an M2W2 volunteer. He asks if there'd be interest in starting a music program for the prisoners. His guitar helped him survive his marriage breakdown, he says, and he's convinced music will help prisoners heal too. So Paul and I begin a monthly music jam session, singing and playing music with prisoners. After about a year, Ken From, the provincial manager of M2W2, asks us to provide music for an evening on restorative justice at the Inglewood Christian Reformed Church. We agree.
When we get together to pick songs, we start with "Folsom Prison Blues," "Cold, Cold Heart," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," "Bad Moon Rising," and "The Weight." The prisoners at the jam sessions love those songs. But we wonder: Isn't this event as much about the community as it is about the prisoners? Shouldn't we sing about the work we do, something educational or inspiring? Tom Brownlee, the coordinator of M2W2 at Bowden at the time, plans to sing Mary Gauthier's "Karla Faye" for a similar event in Calgary. It's about the life and execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted double murderer in Texas. We practice it a few times, but neither of us feels right about it. Even reports from Calgary that the audience loved Tom's performance of "Karla Faye" don't change that.
At one of our practices I say to Paul, "'Karla Faye' would work if this was the United States, but we haven't had capital punishment in Canada for 40 years. Wouldn't it be way better if we sang a song about prison visitation?"
"Yeah," he says. "But there isn't one."
Two weeks before the event, we have another practice. We try "Karla Faye" again, but it doesn't go well. I tell Paul I've written a chorus for a song about prison visitation. He reads it and says, "You may have something here, but it's only a chorus. And there's no music. We have to go with what we've got."
Paul leaves and I go to sleep. I'm back in the visiting room at the Max. A visitor and a prisoner chat one-on-one at each table as they sip coffee and share jelly donuts. Then I'm lying on a lumpy mattress in a cell. My brain clenches. My gut knots. I breathe in quick, short pants. Then I'm inside a coffin buried under six feet of dirt. I claw at the wooden lid until my fingers bleed in a desperate attempt to get out into the open air. Then I'm back in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1989. It's the middle of the night. I gasp, wheeze, choke. It's a major asthma attack. I'm gonna die. My breaths get shorter and shorter. I wake up. I bolt up out of bed at 3 a.m. My pajamas are drenched in sweat. My heart is racing.
Later that morning, I sit down and rough out three verses. I fine-tune it over the next few days, but I still have no music and no title. I show it to Suzanne Gross. She's a visitor at the women's prison at the time and a personal friend. She has a PhD in music, teaches piano, and writes musical arrangements for her choir at the First Mennonite Church. She sets it to music in a week. Two days before the Inglewood event, we sing it for Ken From and two other prison visit coordinators: Elly Klumpenhouwer, who has been involved for nearly twenty years and runs the visiting program at the women's prison, and Gord Hutchinson, who runs M2W2 at the Drumheller prison. Everybody loves it. When we go to the event, I sing the verses solo, and Elly, Paul, and Suzanne join in the chorus. The audience gives us a long round of applause.
The song is called "Human Too," the last words of the last verse. It's the essence of the twelve prisoner interviews I did: seventy thousand words of transcribed text and twenty hours of interviewing condensed to 258 words, all performed in under four minutes. It's about what happens for prisoners when an ordinary person comes into prison and brings in the fresh air and sunlight, the freedom and empathy the prisoners crave. It reflects how prisoners tell me they feel when somebody they don't know comes out of nowhere and takes an interest in them before they even meet. Takes enough interest to drive for an hour or more through fog, snow, ice, darkness, and minus forty degree temperatures to talk about weather, sports, politics, a walk in a park.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Human on the Inside by Gary Garrison. Copyright © 2014 Gary Garrison. Excerpted by permission of University of Regina Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Prison Break-In 5
Chapter 2 A Visit to the Max 16
Chapter 3 Early Intimations of Hell 26
Chapter 4 In Canada We Have Life after Death 30
Chapter 5 Victim Impact: Cracking the Shell 48
Chapter 6 How to Love a Dead Murderer 57
Chapter 7 The Role Play's the Thing to Out My Inner Thung 74
Chapter 8 Forty-Six Years on Death Row, Married to a Corpse 89
Chapter 9 Prisons, Matrimony, and other Institutions 101
Chapter 10 Drugs and Scanners and Kangaroo Courts 117
Chapter 11 Doin' Time 135
Chapter 12 The People in the Tory Blue Uniforms 152
Chapter 13 From Crackhead-Murderer to Chef 168
Chapter 14 But, Judge, I Didn't Do It 182
Chapter 15 The Pariah Factor: Sex Offenders Inside and Out 195
Chapter 16 A Sex Addict's Daily Battles 212
Conclusion: What "Human" Really Mean? 231
Bibliography 239