I read this anecdote somewhere about a decade or so ago (possibly here) and it stuck with me because to me it never made much sense.
Basically the idea was that there was a black woman in Michigan who had done several stints in prison for various small crimes, fraud, theft, drugs, etc and was always a troublemaker in prison. At some point she made her way into Canada and then got arrested there and thrown into prison for basically one of her usual crimes.
However the first day she was in Canadian prison she was heard loudly sobbing and one of the guards went to check on her to see if she was okay. The woman turned to the guard and through her heavy tears exclaimed “I’m crying because this is the first time I was ever treated like an actual person in prison.” And throughout her stint was basically a model prisoner and never complained at all.
Apparently the guard or an attendant was the person to report this story but to me this story just seems too sappy and contrived to be anything but somebody who doesn’t know anything about prison trying to make a point.
Sounds apocryphal. I lived a block away from P4W, the main women’s penitentiary in Canada where said individual would have done her time, and it was a hellish 19th century Benthamesque house of labour of that had been repeatedly condemned as unfit for dogs to live in almost since the day it opened. It was finally closed in 1999. If the prospect of spending two years plus in THAT shiathole made her cry with joy I shudder to think what conditions at home must have been like.
the OP’s anecdote may well be apocryphal, but I will note that in my 17+ year career I have had well over a dozen inmates tell me that they preferred my state’s prison system (WI) over other states, as they found it overall safer and more humane.
I also know that individual prisons and individual prison units may vary quite a bit too.
Sounds glurgish to me as well, but P4W wouldn’t come into it. The story says it’s on her first day in custody. That would mean she’s in a provincial holding faculty, likely in Ontario, given the reference to Michigan.
Thanks, yeah it was the usage of prison that got me because prisons are for those convicted of crimes with a 2+ year sentencen Canada. She would have been in a jail somewhere with those serving two years less a day or under. My comment stands, though. The average Ontario jail is worse than a federal prison and I dunno what it was about overcrowded concrete cells and garbage food that got to her, but she’ll have lots of time to enjoy it.
Even if somebody has been in jail during their arrest and trial, there’s still a first day in prison.
However, that first day in prison is hardly a typical one. It’s going to be filled with things like paperwork, interviews, medical examinations, and being issued clothing and supplies. Plus prisoners are going to be kept confined and isolated from general population until the intake process is completed. So no experienced prisoner would form an opinion about what a prison system is like based on their first day. They’d know they need to wait until they get out into general population and see what things are like for a week or two before deciding if this is a good prison or a bad one.
There’s also the central paradox of what prisoners want from a prison. Speaking as somebody with a lot of experience in this area, prisoners want two things:
They don’t want anyone telling them what to do.
They want somebody to keep all of the other prisoners in check.
No, prisons are under provincial authority (generally now called correctional centres) and are for those serving under two years.
Remand centres can be part of a correctional centre, or a stand-alone in big cities like Toronto or Vancouver. Still under provincial jurisdiction.
Penitentiaries, like P4W, are for those convicted of an offence and sentenced to more than two years. Penitentiaries are under federal jurisdiction.
You’re moving the goal posts. Your original comment was that P4W was bad. Now that it’s been pointed out that P4W has been closed down and a person just charged will be in a provincial remand, you’re saying that’s worse than P4W.
ETA: “Jail” is not used at all in the correctional system. It is certainly used colloquially, but “correctional centre” and “prison” are the two terms used now by the correctional system, in my experience.
What bugs me about this statement is essentially what I hear is “well, we’re doing our best, and we can’t do any better”. Assuming you mean a U.S. prison, versus the many examples of more humane facilities in Europe and Canada, this is likely untrue.
The *central *problem I think is that you cannot have both humane treatment and a substantial component of “punishment”. That is, if prisons had ample access to media and games, pets, decent food, and a video conferencing system to provide physical protection from other prisoners without the social isolation - most American voters would both complain about the expense and state that prisoners were not being punished adequately.
Note that since America has the most prisoners per capita, many serving long sentences, the “it’s too expensive” argument might in fact be true. Also, if in fact, punishing prisoners severely almost always caused them to “go straight” and not reoffend upon release, this would be a supporting factor for punitive conditions.
Even a perfect system (prison or otherwise) runs into the issue of having to balance the liberties of the individuals in the system. One person’s right to go anywhere they want interferes with another person’s right to decide who goes on their property. One person’s right to take anything they feel like interferes with another person’s right to maintain ownership of things. One person’s right to punch people they’re angry at interferes with another person’s right to remain unpunched. One person’s right to have sex with anyone they want interferes with another person’s right to refuse to have sex. You can’t have a society in which everyone has absolute liberty. Most people accept this and agree to have limits placed on their own liberty in exchange for those same limits being placed on the liberties of other people around them. They understand that what they would lose due to other people being able to do whatever they wanted would be more than what they would gain by being doing whatever they themselves want.
Criminals are the people who reject this social contract. They feel that they should be able to do things that society doesn’t want them to do. But they’re not anarchists; they feel that society should restrict the things other people can do to them. Their viewpoint is that it’s okay for them to take things that belong to other people but it’s not okay for other people to take things that belong to them.
So criminals are never going to be happy in prison. Because they want to commit crimes. If you designed a prison, for example, in which it was impossible for anyone to be assaulted, you’d have a lot of unhappy prisoners - because many of them want to assault people and wouldn’t like a system that prevented them from doing it.
Don’t blame prisons for this. Prison doesn’t create these criminals. Prison is where these criminals end up after they’re created outside. Blaming prisons for the existence of criminals is like blaming hospitals for the existence of sick people.
