I Tried to Turn My Life Around in Prison But the Government Made It Hard to Do

For 15 months, my life was a cell. I had spent roughly half of my time in jail so far on lockdown. But the five-and-a-half hour long drive from Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ontario, to Fenbrook Institution in Gravenhurst—while handcuffed in a prison van—made me wish I was back in my cell. There were seven other inmates in the paddy wagon, and near the back there were two guys who weren’t handcuffed. I found out they were going to Frontenac Institution—the minimum-security side of Collins Bay.

While I was at the exercise yard at Millhaven’s Assessment Unit (MAU), a buddy of mine showed me a letter he got from someone who was placed at Collins Bay. He had nothing good to say about the Bay, except that they had good gym equipment. I also heard a story about how one inmate died, and how his body had been hidden in plain sight for four days. I didn’t know how true this story was, but that didn’t make it any less disturbing to me.

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So walking through the gate of my mother institution, Fenbrook, I was glad I didn’t get assigned to the Bay. At Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London (EMDC), I was on a cell block (or range, as we’d call it) of about 30 guys, and at MAU there were more than 60. In Collins Bay there were apparently almost 100 guys to a range, and only two phones.

Here there were just ten guys to a range. Instead of bare concrete, the walls were made of wooden frame and drywall. There were no toilets in our cells, and we had a kitchen where we cooked our own meals. For several months I learned how to cook three meals a day while living off $21 a week for groceries. For most of my time I cooked mainly pasta and chicken dinners. Once I got to know the guys on my range better we would all pitch in to make pizza, chili and holiday-themed meals.

On the weekends during the summer a bunch of inmates would get together and cook on the grills outside while watching another group of inmates play sports, mainly soccer or softball. During the holidays the inmates organized sports tournaments, with the winning team receiving almost $100 worth of chips and pop.

I was also allowed to have my own property. I had a package sent to me that contained a PS1 with games, an old CD player with some old rap albums, clothes, hair clippers, a watch, and shoes. Being able to listen to my own music was a big deal for me, because I was not a fan of anything on the radio. So it felt good to listen to Cypress Hill, Onyx, DMX, and Tupac again.

Every night I would cook, play video games, work out at the gym, and play cards with other guys, and all the while my CD player never left my side. The prison reminded me of a college campus, except all of the residents were male and had criminal records.

I also worked to earn pay. At first I cleaned my range in the mornings, then took time off for a couple of months to do a Correctional Services Canada-mandated program called NSAP, or National Substance Abuse Program. I had a pretty short criminal record, but CSC knew that I committed most of my crimes while drunk. So they enrolled me into a program to help avoid alcohol when I was released.

Afterwards I signed up to work for CORCAN, a Crown corporation that uses inmate labour to manufacture goods that are sold back to the government, like tents for the Canadian Forces or office items for the Canadian Border Services Agency. For seven months I earned about $1.50 an hour through CORCAN, on top of roughly $35.00 every two weeks for “institutional pay.”

But a portion of this money I needed to deposit onto a phone card so I could use the phone. I also had to pay into the Inmate Welfare Fund, a fund that the Inmate Committee (IC) uses. The IC is an elected group of inmates that pay the cable bill, maintain the gym equipment, and handle affairs between the administration and the inmates. They are also used as a “witness” for interactions between inmates and guards, as proof that the inmate wasn’t ratting.

Before I was arrested I was working two jobs, and it felt good to be earning the highest level of pay possible to an inmate. Wherever I could, I sent cash to my kids’ mother to pay for the bus rides out to come see me. At EMDC we could only have short visits that were separated with bulletproof glass, and now I could actually sit down, eat, and play with my kids for half the day. My first visit at Fenbrook I was elated, and my kids seemed just as excited as I was. It almost seemed unreal to me, like I was dreaming. Going back to my living unit after my first visit I was happy that I got to hold my kids for the first time in over a year, but I immediately began to feel lonely after, because I knew I wouldn’t see them again for at least another two months. It just cost too much time and money for my family to come visit me any more often. Either way, I looked forward to each and every visit.

All of the positive aspects of life in a Canadian federal prison seemed so surreal to me. It was almost like it was too good to be true. I didn’t feel like I was being thrown away into some pit as a punishment for my crimes. Instead, it felt more like I was getting a chance to start my life over in some kind of controlled simulation of modern society. I was confident that when I made parole I would be a different man. I would be more independent, I would have money. I actually felt that my life would be better than it was before I was first arrested.

But that all started to change under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. While I was there, the federal government put an end to the barbecues on the weekends, saying that the public was concerned about us having “pizza parties and barbecue socials.” But one inmate committee in Ontario raised $5000-$20,000 a year from barbecues and “food drives”—where fast food is purchased by the committee, brought in by the staff, and sold back to the inmates at a premium price. A lot of the profits were being donated to charity groups like Doctors Without Borders or disaster relief funds.

The Conservatives also put an end to the $1.50/hr pay from CORCAN, saying they didn’t need to pay it to inmates anymore. Some parole officers at Fenbrook started telling inmates they needed to work for CORCAN for at least six months or they would not be supported for parole release. The government seemed to want to privatize as much of our prisons as possible and break labour rules, too.

I looked out my window toward one end of the prison where there used to be a nature walk, and it was now being replaced with a brand-new high-security wing. I remembered how there were new cell blocks being constructed at Millhaven, and then some guys who had transferred to Fenbrook from other prisons said there were more prison units being built everywhere else as well. I couldn’t see why they needed to expand all the prisons. The news (and Stats Can) reported that the crime rate was down, and for almost half of my sentence so far I had never seen a cell block that was at capacity. In two years inside, I spent almost half a year in total with no cellmate, which is extremely lucky for a short-timer like myself.

From where I stood, It just didn’t make any sense to me that they needed to build more cells when they couldn’t fill the ones they already had. Meanwhile, it seemed like nobody outside the walls knew or cared. After all, we’re in prison, and we’re here for a reason.

I was frustrated because none of this made sense to me. In the past they had banned tobacco, taken away financial support for university programs and early parole for nonviolent offenders. Now they were taking away our pay and trying to copy the American prison system that had failed, just to save the taxpayers’ money in the short term.

By the time my first parole hearing came around I just felt glad that soon I would be out and not have to worry about the politics around prison anymore. I had $500 saved for when I was going to be released. I also had a part-time job guaranteed for after I got out. I would stay at the halfway house for six months, work, and save up money. And then I would get my own apartment and start my life back over.

But then I was denied parole. They questioned me about the day I committed that home invasion, particularly about who was with me. But I was so drunk at the time I couldn’t remember any details. They also asked me about a homemade brew that had been found on my range nine months prior, and I explained that I never even knew it existed until the COs grabbed it. They asked if I found out who it belonged to would I tell anybody, and I immediately said no. I didn’t explain that virtually everybody on my range was a lifer, dangerous or violent offender—including myself—I just remembered the cardinal rule—don’t snitch.

In their decision, they cited these two examples as a reason to believe I had “ingrained criminal values” and questioned my “allegiance to the ‘con code.’” I couldn’t comprehend what that was supposed to mean, but I wanted to shout and curse at the members of the parole board. I had done everything I needed to do in preparation for this day, and it all meant nothing to them.

I immediately filed paperwork to appeal the decision—even though I presumed it would be denied anyway—and applied for transfer to Frontenac Institution in Kingston, Ontario. I may have been comfortable in my college-dorm-like environment, but I knew there was a better chance at making money from a prison in a city, now that they would no longer pay me extra for CORCAN.

According to CSC’s paperwork I was still supposed to be in medium security. But I finished my program, worked full-time, and had a lot of community support. Even the London Police Department did not oppose my release (it’s common for an arresting department to oppose release into the jurisdiction they serve). To the prison staff it didn’t matter that I was denied parole. So my parole officer approved my transfer to Frontenac Institution.

I was tired of living behind a damn fence or wall, but I still needed to think about my kids. So as I left Fenbrook, and awaited another long drive to another prison in another steel cage, I just focused on the money I could make in “camp,” or minimum security.

As I tried unsuccessfully to lay down in the prison van it all began to sink in, my attitude changed. I knew my next parole hearing wouldn’t be for another 15 months. And by law they had to release me on my Statutory Release Date in 16 months. Meanwhile, I watched other guys who had shittier prison records than myself get parole with no problem. So as I left Fenbrook I started to feel cynical; I had nothing left to prove to these people.

This is the second in a three-part series. You can read part one here.