Martha Paynter: “For the most part, the people in prison in Canada have now gone 11 months without a visit from family. Visits in most federal prisons are currently banned. The organization I volunteer with has not been inside a correctional facility to facilitate programming since March 2020.”
J-T: “I would like you to witness a day in the life of an inmate during COVID-19. In the beginning nobody took it seriously. It wasn’t a big deal until numbers began to rise quickly. We panicked. We were going to break out, we’d plan it all out, work as a team, and I’m talking about the majority of us. We weren’t going to just sit here and die”
News release: On Monday, November 16th a coalition of groups invested in prisoner justice are launching a 15-day spotlight on the ongoing practice of solitary confinement in Canada.
On Wednesday March 13 Yusuf Faqiri will be in Halifax to talk about the death of his brother Soleiman, who lived with schizophrenia and was killed by guards while in solitary confinement in Ontario. Yusuf will speak about deaths in custody, the journey to justice for his brother, and the treatment of mental illness in Canada. Schulich School of Law, room 104, 7 PM.
At least eleven men and women have died prematurely in Nova Scotia prisons and jails since July 2011. We talk with prison activist Martha Paynter to understand these shocking numbers.
NDP Justice critic Claudia Chender on solitary confinement and other prison-related issues. “Our provincial jails are a black box. We have very little idea of what goes on behind those walls at all. It’s time for some transparency in our correctional system. It’s time for an independent review of the practice of solitary confinement. It’s time for the government to start listening.”
Judy Haiven on the Burnside Jail prisoners strike, and why it matters.
he provincial Auditor General has taken a closer look at the management practices in Nova Scotia prisons, and a new report suggests all is not well.
An interview with Senator Kim Pate’s about the predicament of the young Nova Scotia man kept in solitary confinement for a year and the reluctance of staff at the Waterville Youth Facility to have him returned.
The return of a potentially violent young man to the NS Youth Facility in Waterville after he spent a year in solitary confinement in an adult prison has prison workers worried, the Chronicle Herald reported yesterday. But there is much the Herald left out, and much that the government has to answer for.