Another Example Of Two Solitudes

In this case it extends to a two tier justice system.......one for indians and one for the rest of Canadians.

Prison report a real con job

By MICHAEL HARRIS

With people like Howard Sapers around, it's a wonder there are any correctional officers willing to work in Canada's federal prisons.

Sapers is the federal ombudsman for inmates, a man in other words whose job it is to champion the easily offended sensitivities of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers.

This week he accused the Correctional Service of Canada of "systematic discrimination" against Native inmates. I laughed so loudly I frightened the cat.

Remarkably, Sapers admits that prison officials are "very quick to act" when individual acts of deliberate harassment against Native inmates are substantiated. What is this dubious civil servant's point -- that the system doesn't act when such complaints are unfounded?

The truth is that there is no class of convict in Canada's federal prison system (with the possible exception of female offenders) which gets more special treatment than aboriginals. In fact, they have their own parallel prison system and are well on their way to having a parallel justice system as well.

Case in point: There are already a number of CSC facilities that are operated specifically for aboriginal inmates. These institutions do not look or run like Kingston, Warkworth or Millhaven.

Their staffs are aboriginal and their institutional principles are based on aboriginal ethics and values -- a philosophy, by the way, which is built right into the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Their partners in these ventures are the local aboriginal communities.

Canada's prison system has already turned the keys over to Natives themselves in some jurisdictions. Under Section 81 (1) of the CCRA, former Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay legally transferred correctional services to aboriginal communities in Alberta in 1999. Not only do these communities have full custody of federal inmates in places like Stan Daniels Healing Centre in Edmonton, they also have the right to supervise them when they are given conditional release. Normally the decision to release a federal prisoner is made by the National Parole Board and parolees are then supervised by CSC.

Far from being the disadvantaged group that Howard Sapers says they are, the CSC made it an objective to "significantly increase the number of aboriginals safely and successfully reintegrated" into society.

In practice what that meant was adopting a policy that actually endangered the public. The idea was to ignore technical violations of parole when it came to Native parolees so that they wouldn't be returned to prison for drinking, drug use, or associating with known criminals. In other words, the system set out to ignore violations that would cost other parolees their freedom.

The court system participated in helping CSC to treat Native offenders more leniently than anyone else in the federal prison system. In 1996, the Liberals passed a new provision to the Criminal Code requiring judges to consider "all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances."

Although that provision applied to all offenders, the judges were to pay "particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders." It is an example of the system bending over backwards to do something about a fact Howard Sapers says it is ignoring the so-called "overrepresentation" of Native offenders in our federal prisons. The Supreme Court of Canada eventually ruled that judges should sentence aboriginal offenders in different ways.

They did. When 19-year-old Jamie Gladue fatally stabbed her husband at a party, she was given three years for manslaughter.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the trial judge had not given due attention to the "Indianness" of Jamie Gladue. She was released from prison after serving just six months.

One of CSC's showcase "prisons," Okimaw Ohci, reveals exactly how the federal prison system caters to Native offenders. This healing lodge in Maple Creek, Sask., is situated on 160 breathtaking acres in the Nekaneet First Nation Reserve in Cypress Hills. There are no fences or barbed wire and inmates are free to roam the poplar forest. There is a library, a ceramics studio, and whirlpool to soothe away the stress of the sweat lodge.

The lodge also has a daycare centre for 10 children up to age four so they can be looked after while their mothers are occupied.

There is no warden and no guards and no one recruited from CSC. Each of the 30 "residents" of Okimaw Ohci costs the taxpayer more than $100,000 a year.

There may be discrimination in the system but it is against the men and women who guard federal prisoners, not Native inmates, who continue to offend violently at very high rates despite the emphasis on aboriginal culture and spirituality in their prison treatment.

Howard Sapers needs a new job and Stockwell Day should give it to him. How about CSC Liaison Officer with the victims of crime?