Kingston’s Unspoken Dependence On Prisoners
Kingston has long been a staple in conversations about Canada’s history, from the colonial settlement along the St. Lawrence, its locale as the hometown of our genocidal first Prime Minister, and its brief time of the early capital. But of course, any discussion of Kingston’s legacy would be incomplete without mentioning one of the oldest prisons in Canada’s history, and by extension the surrounding institutions that followed. Pre-dating Confederation by 32 years, Kingston Penitentiary opened to house prisoners in 1835.
The allure of prisons in the Canadian media has naturally attracted numerous documentaries, articles, and even books by beloved Canadian authors to the site. The institution was closed in 2012, and after moving most of the prisoners to nearby Collins Bay Institution, the location was reopened in 2016, allowing visitors to receive tours of the grounds and cell blocks. Teaching ticket-holders about the inner-workings of the prison, its history, the riots, mentions of famous convicts; most tourists exiting the building are thrilled by their experience. On July 16th, 2020 the Kingstonist reported that over 300,000 tickets have been sold for Kingston Penitentiary Tours, making its combined total annual economic impact since 2016 an estimated $24.7 million for the region.
Acknowledging the economic, historical, and cultural impact of Kingston’s incarceration legacy is certainly important, but the framing of Kingston’s prisons in the modern day seems to escape the grasp of most discussions. Historically? Kingston Pen’s prisoners intrigue and amuse the citizenry. Today?
Well, not so much.
If you live in the Kingston area, you’re lucky enough to have access to a vehicle, and are up for a 20–30 minute drive, you’ll be able to visit the majority of Ontario’s Correctional Institutions. The Correctional Service Canada’s website itself says that “With the exception of Beaver Creek, Warkworth Institution and Grand Valley Institution for Women, all [Ontario Region Institutions] are located in the Kingston area.”
These institutions are: Millhaven Institution, Joyceville Institution, Collins Bay Institution, and Bath Institution, which houses the Ontario Regional Treatment Centre, now the Regional Intermediate Mental Health Unit. The stated capacity of these institutions is, collectively, 2,524 prisoners. In a country where the average prison population on any given day in 2015–2016 is 14,615, this capacity could mean housing up to 17.2% of Canada’s prison population.
“With the exception of Beaver Creek, Warkworth Institution and Grand Valley Institution for Women, all [Ontario Region Institutions] are located in the Kingston area.”
The John Howard Society, a non-profit organization that advocates for criminal and prison reform, released a brief summary of the annual performance monitoring report of the Parole Board of Canada in January of 2020
The summary reported that Canada’s incarceration rate is 114 per 100,000 population. That may seem low, especially compared to the numbers of our private-prison dystopia to the south, but compared to most western European Nations, we are tragically behind countries like Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Those who have looked into numbers of prisoners on racial lines in the past will also not be shocked to learn that these numbers also reflect a disturbingly high rate of Indigenous and Black prisoners compared to white prisoners.
An often heard anecdote in Kingston is that a third of the economy is based on Queen’s University, a third on Canadian Armed Forces, and a third on Correctional Services. After searching, I was unable to find hard numbers to frame this quip, but the broad number of people with full-time employment in Canadian Prisons was revealed to be 10,432 in a 2018 report to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Compiling the exact numbers of prisoners in these institutions is difficult, as no data is readily available on individual prisons, and the number of 2,524 is simply the rated capacity, not the number of prisoners housed. These numbers and statistics are regrettably lacking. That’s because, in researching this piece, it was clear from the sources that numbers on Canada’s prisons are notoriously sparse. Like most things in Canada’s history it seems, the soft façade of apathy hides its sinister and destructive results.
However, what we do know about prisoners today gives us a peak behind the curtain. Nancy Macdonald, writing for Maclean’s called them “Canada’s New Residential Schools”, noting that Canada’s Indigenous incarceration is 10 times higher than non-Indigenous prisoners, which is higher even than South Africa at the height of apartheid. This, curiously, was at the same time as a historic low in Canadian crime statistics.
In addition to this, mistreatment by guards at the Kingston Penitentiary in particular was rampant. In a 1989 report commissioned by the warden, KP was referred to as a “dumping ground for bad guards.” It took another 10 years for a new warden to investigate prison guard corruption, which resulted in 8 firings, though one was overturned.
To what extent, we do not know, but it is certain that the employment of citizens in Correctional Services contributes to the economic prosperity of Kingston. However, the benefits of Kingston-area prisons goes beyond the tourism of Kingston Pen and the employment of its guards, administrators, and healthcare workers.
“Canada’s Indigenous incarceration is 10 times higher than non-Indigenous prisoners, which is higher even than South Africa at the height of apartheid.”
In Canada, the highest pay a prisoner can receive for work is $6.90 a day. With most earning closer to $5.25. Or even $1.95, according to the Financial Post. But don’t cheer yet that, at best, prisoners still earn less than the $7.40 that’s needed to achieve basic nutrition and normal life expectancy, because up to 30% of food and accommodation fees still apply. Food and accommodation, you’ll note, are two things prisons are required to have to house prisoners.
Some of the work that prisoners do, benefits the governments of Canada more directly than cheap labour, such as CORCAN, the program that produces goods and services for the Canadian Government and certain private clients. CORCAN’s website says that the program “provides on-the-job training, apprenticeship hours, vocational certifications and soft skills training to CSC offenders during their incarceration and while under community supervision, as well as services to support their search for community employment.” Though the John Howard Society has summarized a report from Canada’s Correctional Investigator that states: “the majority of offenders who were interviewed for this investigation working in CORCAN, were learning very few skills that would benefit them in obtaining a job in the community.”
Inefficacy and poor training are only one side of CORCAN’s issues. Not only did the program remove incentives to apply for it in 2013, including bonuses, but in one particular federal court case, the hearings have had numerous clients contest that they were pressured into joining the program. One of those clients, Claude Joy, told a court that after refusing to work in the CORCAN program when they were told it was understaffed, they were then thrown in solitary confinement. The Government’s affidavit in the case denied that Joy was pressured.
“[T]he majority of offenders who were interviewed for this investigation working in CORCAN, were learning very few skills that would benefit them in obtaining a job in the community.”
Lest you think Kingston is exempt, there are multiple similar reports from its prisoners. In that 2017 Financial Post article mentioned earlier, Jarrod Shook, a former inmate at Collins Bay Institution and Criminology Student at University of Ottawa was quoted as saying “People end up becoming essentially slaves, or exploited,”. Michael Flannigan, an inmate at Collins Bay wrote “I was quietly ‘warned’ by a high-ranking manager here at Collins Bay Medium that the warden would consider any decision to quit work because of pay cuts as going against my Correctional Plan and that charges may be levied against me”
“People end up becoming essentially slaves, or exploited,”- Jarrod Shook, former Collins Bay Institution Inmate and University of Ottawa Criminology student
These products and labour may materially benefit the government, but at the same time, the program woefully under-performs in terms of return in both financials and rehabilitation. In the same Financial Post article quoting Shook, it showed that CORCAN workers were just as likely to re-offend, and that the program cost $32–51 million dollars a year. Notably “more than the CSC spends on inmate education ($21.2 million planned in 2015–16), violence prevention ($10 million) and substance abuse programs ($8.3 million).”
But hey, at least you can get a snazzy coat from their website
As if the stark contrast of treatment of prisoners in Canada were not apparent enough, last month, it was reported that Canadian inmates have made over 820,000 masks to help Canadians brave the COVID-19 pandemic. This report was released two days after Joyceville Institution had an outbreak that infected 80 inmates. Though we cannot confirm that Joyceville inmates were part of the prisoners making the masks.
It’s quite telling that even though these prisoners are in notoriously high-risk environments for spread, conservative politicians were especially unkind to them. Federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole took a break from suggesting Justin Trudeau was rigging the election and tweeting about his dog, to say “Not one criminal should be vaccinated ahead of any vulnerable Canadian or front-line health worker”, obliviously unconcerned that being a criminal does not exclude one from being a vulnerable Canadian.
Of course Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford had to top the arrogant ignorance by asking “The most dangerous criminals in the entire country…how do you put them ahead of long term care patients?” Doug Ford’s answer to this predicament would, presumably, be to listen to warnings about the virus’ effects in long term care homes and do nothing for three months.
Even the “lighter” fare of Kingston Pen Tours is not as clear a gain as it may seem. Justin Piché, an associate professor of criminology at University of Ottawa called the tours “sensationalism”, and when they were opened a “PR exercise to quell concerns about the closure, and the anger around it”. Piché even said “If they don’t want to address history in its wholesome complexity and its darkness, then yeah, knock down the buildings and give the land back.” In agreement with the professor was Ricky Atkinson, a former prisoner at Kingston Penitentiary with similar feelings towards the tourist hot spot, “I would leave a part of it somewhere as a reminder to the iconic past that it had, but you don’t need the whole facility to dramatize the pain and punishment that the government acted on people for 178 years.”
All this makes it clear that Kingston must reckon with its inhumane treatment of the prison community that benefits them directly. In researching people-oriented solutions, Angela Davis’ seminal work “Are Prisons Obsolete?” addressed alternatives to the prison system in the United States of America, which included a multi-tiered approach from different angles. These included but are not limited to: decriminalization of drugs, the defense of immigrant rights, ease of access to drug-rehabilitation facilities, stronger mental health care services, and decriminalizing sex work. Similar approaches should be discussed and addressed in the Canadian context. Doing so will undeniably need to be done in concert with Indigenous rights and the ever-present white supremacist racial context in which Canada was founded and currently operates.
But even reducing the prison population in this country would not exclude measures needed to improve quality of life for current prisoners. Unionizing would be the first step, but predictably, the Crown is hostile towards these actions. In some cases, siding with guards who were denying prisoners the opportunity to distribute union cards.
Kingston is willing to benefit from the labour of its prisons, the employment of Correctional workers, the coercion of prisoners to produce cheap labour and continuous products for our federal Government, and at the same time, allows politicians to denigrate its incarcerated population, while actively glossing over the cruel reality in its most famous prison’s attraction for profit. It should then be no surprise that, when the federal government raised the Kingston Pen rental fee from $1 per year for its first four years as a museum to the new three-year/$1.124 million lease, City Council jumped at the chance.
If only the prisoners who made the site worth visiting were given the same appreciation.
Scott Martin is a writer for The Beaverton, and runs the YouTube channel Pinko Punko. He can be found on Twitter.
