REGINA — Advocates for prisoners’ rights were at the legislature on Monday, marking Prisoners’ Justice Day in Canada.
They were outside at the statue of Queen Elizabeth II, where they lined the fence with posters, photographs and ribbons commemorating those who died while serving time within the criminal justice system. The posters included pictures of those who died while in custody and those who have advocated for changes while incarcerated.
Placed there were green ribbons to represent the deaths that happened inside provincial jails, red ribbons for federal jails, red and blue ribbons for those who died in RCMP custody, green and blue ribbons for those who died in city police custody, and white ribbons for those whose locations were unknown.
The remembrances took place in the wake of a tragic accident in Alberta days earlier that had claimed the life of Kiara Mooswa, a member of Poundmaker First Nation, as well as two correctional officers. They were killed when their correctional service van was involved in a collision in eastern Alberta while Mooswa was being transported from Edmonton Institution for Women to another facility.
Sherri Gordon was the organizer of the display outside the legislature. She said they were honouring upward of 186 individuals who had died in custody since 2000.
Among the posters put up was one that included a lengthy list of demands for Correctional Service Canada regarding changes that need to be made. In the wake of the most recent incident, among those demands was a greater focus on transportation.
“One of the biggest demands I’ve heard, especially from the women’s institution, is that they want safer transportation,” Sherri said. “Those vehicles don’t have seatbelts inside them … And, you know, the correctional investigators have said for years those vehicles are unsafe; they need seatbelts.”
Other demands posted at the rally included changing CSC’s use of a national catalogue for property sales, which forces inmates to buy electronics through the catalogue at significantly marked-up prices; addressing concerns about access to lawyers and calls for the institution to provide these services within the fastest possible timelines; providing more cultural supports; ensuring access to adequate physical and mental health care; meaningfully recognizing progress made by prisoners who complete their correctional plans by giving them the ability to receive a lower security classification; providing better protection and support for incarcerated women, particularly Indigenous women; ending systemic racism and discrimination; and providing greater support for people returning to the community.
Sherri said she commends CSC for the changes it has made. “I’ve talked to other ‘lifers,’ and they do say, yes, they’ve made changes. But every year we’re getting more and more deaths inside provincial and federal institutions and, you know, these inquests happen, but nothing’s followed.”
As for what is causing the deaths, she pointed to a lot of self-harm situations, as well as overdoses.
“And sometimes it’s: Do we need to have, you know, guards checking on the cells more often than the one-hour walk, especially in the nighttime? I think programming would help,” Sherri said.
She also believes there are a lot of “undiagnosed mental health issues” that need to be addressed, saying the “biggest complaints I often get are the lack of health care and lack of mental health care.”
Sherri’s husband is Bronson Gordon, who is currently serving a 25-year life sentence for first-degree murder. He spoke to reporters in Regina by phone from the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon about what the day meant.
“As a lifer, it means everything,” he said. “We’re currently, like, losing a lot of privileges that a lot of people went to bat for, like, lost their lives for.”
Bronson pointed to his own personal struggles with having to advocate for himself while trying to be admitted to programming within his institution.
“You’re not allowed to do your programs until the end of your sentence, when you’re about to head out the door. But I was, like, that makes no sense,” he said.
“So, I’m going to sit here for 15, 10 years doing nothing and possibly pick up another murder charge, pick up another violence charge or whatever? . . . I want to do programs. I want to better my life now, you know. So, I had to, like, really advocate for myself and push for that.”
He said there is one area where there has been a change for the better.
“Lifers are all doing their programs now, right when they want to do them. So, that’s a really big change.”
Sherri believes more programming has made a difference in terms of people checking in on Bronson more often.
“Like my husband said, you know, he was a self-harmer, and once he started getting programs, I did see a difference in him as well.”
Another longtime inmate and advocate in the criminal justice system, Ricky Leslie, also spoke to reporters to acknowledge the significance of the day.
“This day is to honour the fallen inmates who fought for our rights and the people who committed suicide in their cells because they were being tormented by guards.”
Leslie noted the day was in commemoration of an incident in which an inmate at Millhaven Institution, Edward Nolan, committed suicide in 1974.
“He was being tormented by the guards,” he said. “That’s why this day actually came into effect, right? And it’s a really good day for people like me and my buddy and everybody else here because, I mean, we’ve got TVs now, we’ve got stereos, we’ve got clothes. We’ve got all that stuff. And it was all because of people advocating for us.”
As for what he would advocate for as the greatest need right now, he pointed to mental health and addictions and making it easier for those who need treatment to receive it in a timely manner. He pointed to a situation in which he had OD’d on fentanyl back in 2018 and advocated for shorter waiting times to get Suboxone.
“I had to wait 18 months to get back onto Suboxone, and at that time I could’ve OD’d, right? So I fought for that. I fought for a lot of things, actually.”
As for the changes Sherri Gordon particularly wanted to see, she said what she hears from those inside is that there is a need for more mental health support.
“A lot of the Indigenous women want staff to be more culturally appropriate and trauma-informed,” she said. “There’s a lot of, you know, lack of access to elders. . . . What they’re saying is they have no elders. They want to see their nation come inside. My husband, like he said, he’s fortunate to have that. A lot of nations don’t do that.”
“And I always say, too, you know, I was a First Nations representative in one of my previous positions, working with children in care and advocating for them. And I had somebody ask me one time, ‘Why is it that the nations don’t come out to us? Why do they not care about us — you know, trying to bring us back to the land?’ And it was a good point. I do think that if CSC is going to open the doors to nations, a lot of them should start going in there and seeing their people a little bit more because there are some horrific things that go on inside. That’s a big thing I would like to see.”
