Prisoners’ Rights

Starting in the 1930’s, damning reports on the Canadian correctional system made the authorities aware that the repressive system based on the Auburn prison (U.S.) model – total isolation and silence, and brutal repression of the slightest lapse – failed to produce the expected results. After the Second World War, prisons slowly took on a more human dimension. It was not until the 1960’s-1970’s that physical punishments, such as flogging, were abolished. It was also at that time that prisoners’ rights were recognized.

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Offences and Punishments

Until 1932, in federal penitentiaries, prisoners were forced to keep silent. Anyone who dared to speak or laugh could, like at the Kingston penitentiary, be sentenced to 6 lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails whip. Reports denounced certain abuses, especially toward children who, in the first half of the 19th century, were incarcerated with adults.

Prison rules were strict and punishments severe. No transgression was tolerated: the authorities cracked down hard on smuggling, especially in drugs, escape attempts and homemade weapons. The ultimate penalty was segregation in an isolated, dark cell called “the hole".

When Violence Breaks Out

Without rights, without a voice to speak out when abusive situations occurred in often overcrowded prisons, prisoners sometimes used extreme means of protest: riots and mutinies.

As early as the 1930’s, reformers wanted to give a voice to victims of prison abuse: an independent body to consider their complaints. It would take some thirty years for prisoners’ rights to be recognized. At the federal level, it was in 1973 that the Office of the Correctional Investigator started to hear prisoners’ complaints. Riots did not completely disappear, but inmates were at least given the opportunity to submit their requests through official channels.