Читать книгу Murder on the Inside - Catherine Fogarty - Страница 10

Bingo: prison slang for riot

Wednesday, April 14, 1971

On the night of April 14, Terry Decker was working the four-to-twelve shift. He hadn’t been scheduled to work, but he had agreed to switch shifts with a fellow officer who wanted the night off. After a three-year stint in the army, Decker had joined the Penitentiary Service and was making an annual salary of $4,200.

Now he lay winded on the floor from Knight’s sudden punch. He hadn’t seen it coming. And before he could get up, another inmate, Charles Saunders, pushed him back down and ripped the keys to the recreation hall out of his left hand, tearing the nerves in his fingers. Then two other inmates pulled him up and dragged him towards the dome.

While Decker was being attacked, four other inmates — Brian Dodge, Leo Barrieault, Allan Lafreniere and Robert Adams — ran towards the dome. It was critical they reach the dome barrier before the guards realized what was happening and locked it.Officer Babcock, who was still in the gymnasium, did not realize anything was wrong until he saw Decker’s cap lying on the floor next to the open gate.⁵⁰ Guards were never seen without their hats and could be disciplined for removing them. “Take the gate,” he yelled to his colleague Raymond Pattinson. “Don’t let anyone through.” Babcock ordered all of the inmates to line up against the wall in the gym. Confused, the prisoners complied.

Guarding another gate farther down the corridor, Officer Flynn didn’t see anything before inmate #6363, Brian Dodge, ran towards him and knocked him to the floor. “Finish him off and lock him up in F-block,” shouted Knight as he ran past the two men struggling on the ground.

At the same time, three unsuspecting guards were waiting for the prisoners in the dome area. Standing beside the dreaded brass bell was senior guard Ed Barrett. With him were Joseph Vallier and Douglas Dittrich. Without warning, inmate #3141, Allan Lafreniere, grabbed Barrett by the shirt and shoved him toward the north wall of the dome. As Barrett struggled, inmate Robert Adams grabbed a foam fire extinguisher and threatened to spray it into Barrett’s face if he didn’t back down. Barrett relented.

Then Brian Dodge grabbed Dittrich. Guard Joseph Vallier stood motionless. He wasn’t sure what to do. Knight approached him and told him he was outnumbered. Not knowing how many prisoners were involved in the riot, Vallier decided he wasn’t going to be a hero at that moment. He surrendered.

Two additional guards, Douglas Dale and Kerry Bushell, were stationed one level up on the rotunda, on range 2-H, in order to supervise the movement of inmates back to their cells. “Throw down your keys,” yelled an inmate from below. Realizing something was terribly wrong, Dale ran to lock the range, but before he could get to the gate, another inmate grabbed him. At the same time, inmate Leo Barrieault, who had climbed up the side of the tier, grabbed Bushell from behind. “Don’t try anything or I’ll break your neck,” yelled Barrieault. Bushell had been on the job only six months. He did not resist and threw the keys down to the dome floor.

Then Dale had to make a quick decision. He also had other keys in his possession, keys that could open the entire second tier locking device, freeing all the prisoners on that range. As the inmates pushed him down the stairs towards the dome, Dale threw the keys behind an inaccessible gate leading to the keeper’s hall. At least some of the inmates would stay locked up, thought Dale.

Six guards — Barrett, Vallier, Flynn, Dale, Bushell and Decker — were now locked inside the corridor of 1-F block, effectively cut off from the dome floor and the telephones. The inmates demanded their watches, rings, cigarettes and money. Night keeper Ed Barrett handed his wallet to an inmate. “Look after this,” Barrett said, “and don’t forget, I’ll remember who you are.”⁵¹

Billy Knight and his gang had just instigated a prison riot, and with the dome in control of the inmates, the prison was effectively immobilized. But this wasn’t the first time Canada’s most notorious prison had fallen into the hands of its dissatisfied residents.

The first major uprising at Kingston Penitentiary happened on October 17, 1932. Canada was in the depths of the Great Depression, which left millions of Canadians unemployed and homeless. Desperation led many into a life of crime, and the country’s prisons overflowed. Kingston Pen, built to house 564 inmates, had over 900 men housed within its walls. “The prisons are seething volcanoes,” said writer and political activist D.M. LeBourdais in 1933. “They are now crammed to the roofs and unless something is done and done speedily, the tops will blow off every one of them.”⁵²

In the 1930s, prisoners were still subject to archaic means of punishment, including wearing a ball and chain while they worked or being dunked in a trough of ice and slush as a cure for mental deficiencies. Fed up with the way they were treated, Kingston’s prisoners finally decided to stage a peaceful demonstration to bring their complaints to the attention of the administration. Their demands included better food, increased recreation time, more family visits, and cigarette papers to go with their penitentiary-issued tobacco. The previous warden, John Ponsford, had banned cigarette papers when convicts were caught using them to record gambling bets.⁵³

Upon learning of the impending protest, acting warden Gilbert Smith locked the inmates inside their workshops. Prisoners in the mailbag shop climbed out the window and quickly unlocked the other workshops. The freed inmates then gathered in the dome area and addressed their complaints to Warden Smith. Smith ignored their request to contact Ottawa with their grievances and instead called in the military.

Late in the day, as high winds and rain swept across the penitentiary grounds, three batteries of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery arrived at Kingston Penitentiary under the command of Colonel J.C. Stewart. Stewart and his troops quickly surrounded the dome on all four sides. Then military trucks arrived with blankets and overcoats for the soldiers, suggesting they expected an all-night siege. The story made headlines across the country, with the Ottawa Citizen reporting, “Excitement runs high among the thousands of spectators huddled in the rain and cold as police and soldiers force the onlookers back from the prison gates.”

Once the inmates realized the army was on site, they panicked. They took officers hostage and retreated back to the mailbag shop. From there the situation quickly escalated. Shots were fired into the mailbag room and much of the equipment was destroyed. Several hours later Warden Smith met with a committee of inmates and finally agreed to take their complaints to Ottawa. The insurrection ended without injury and the warden believed he had quelled the riot. But a few days later, when the warden had not followed up on their requests, disgruntled inmates began destroying their cells.

Among the inmates at the time was famous activist Tim Buck, leader of the Communist Party of Canada. A mild-looking man with blue eyes and wispy hair, he had led the Communist Party since 1929. Buck, along with eight other known Communists, was serving a five-year prison sentence for sedition under section 98 of the Criminal Code.⁵⁴ Section 98 made it a crime to belong to any political party that advocated change by the use of “force, violence, or physical injury.” It was a time of great social unrest in the country and the government used the sedition law to silence any suspected agitators.

Warden Smith was fed up with the rioting prisoners. He called the army back to the penitentiary on October 20, and the prison guards on duty were issued shotguns. They were then ordered down the narrow duct-ways between the ranges, where they fired into the cells through peepholes. One inmate was hit and lay bleeding in his cell. Then eleven shots were fired into Tim Buck’s cell. Buck, who had a small physique, managed to dive under his bunk for cover. A fellow inmate who years later wrote about his life in Kingston Pen described the attack on Buck and called it a cold and deliberate attempt at murder. “When darkness fell, shot after shot of rifle fire was poured into the cell of the leader of the riot. Only by miracle was the intent defeated.”⁵⁵

Four days later, Warden Smith was unceremoniously relieved of his duties, and Tim Buck and his comrades were paroled one year later. Buck’s imprisonment ended up helping the Communist cause in Canada. Many citizens hit hardest by the Depression were sympathetic towards the party and indignant towards the treatment he had received. Buck’s first public appearance after his release from jail was held at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, where seventeen thousand people showed up to listen to his emotionally charged speech. From there he went on a cross-country speaking tour and attracted even greater numbers to the party.

In 1935, the new Liberal government repealed the section of the Criminal Code under which Buck had been imprisoned. The Communist Party of Canada was declared legal in 1937.

The 1932 riot resulted in immediate calls for prison reform. Agnes Macphail, the first woman elected to Canada’s House of Commons (in 1921) and a member of J.S. Woodsworth’s Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, was among those demanding change. In 1935 she went to Kingston Penitentiary to see the conditions for herself. At the gate, she was told no ladies were allowed inside. “I’m no lady, I’m an MP,” Macphail protested, and she became the first woman to tour the penitentiary. What she saw appalled her. She witnessed men strung up, blindfolded and beaten with thick leather paddles, and deplorable living conditions.

Agnes Macphail realized the penal system was not designed to reform prisoners but to punish and socially isolate those convicted of a crime. To change this, she introduced a resolution calling for a meaningful program of prison labour. She argued this would save the government thousands of dollars a year and give prisoners a chance to learn trades and feel useful while serving their time. Her office soon became a centre for ex-prisoners who had nowhere else to bring their grievances, as well as a meeting place for reformers. She distilled their thoughts into recommendations that she brought before the House.

Macphail pushed for reduced use of corporal punishment, mandatory education for illiterate inmates, and an increase in inmates’ exercise and outdoor time. But her most challenging proposal for reform was to end military and political appointments to senior penitentiary positions. She wanted to appoint wardens and superintendents with penology training and medical doctors with psychological training, and to implement a system of training for guards and officials in the prisons.

Macphail was met with a great deal of resistance to her recommendations. As the first and only female Member of Parliament, her male colleagues expected her to be quiet and ladylike, and to only discuss issues related to the home and family values. Instead, Macphail irritated the other Honorable Members by stepping outside her sphere and raising the debate on prison reform, a topic considered utterly unsuitable for a woman. Press reports at the time labelled her a “hysterical sob sister” and “sentimentalist.”

On April 5, 1935, the Ottawa Journal reported that Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s minister of justice, Hugh Guthrie, was not prepared to take recommendations from Miss Macphail after her visit to Kingston Penitentiary. Guthrie stated in the House of Commons, “Miss Macphail’s judgment would be more respected on the woman’s prison, but on issues related to Kingston Penitentiary I am inclined to place more weight on the word of a man.” Guthrie also tried to discredit her by claiming her information about prison conditions came from a notorious sex offender in Kingston Pen.

Prime Minister Bennett’s Conservatives were defeated in 1935, and a year later the new Liberal government under William Lyon Mackenzie King announced the creation of a Royal Commission to investigate the penal system of Canada. Mr. Justice Joseph Archambault was appointed to head the new inquiry on penal reform, and the commission’s 1938 report was a landmark in Canadian corrections. The committee noted that while there had been ongoing criticism of prison practices in the hundred years since the opening of Kingston Penitentiary, most recommendations and inquiries had remained largely ignored. Violence and punishment were still the main hallmarks of the prison experience.

Archambault firmly believed that if prisoners were provided with the opportunity for rehabilitation, the rate of recidivism would decline substantially. Under the system in place at the time, Archambault did not feel prisoners were provided with an opportunity to reform their behaviour while incarcerated. Among the commission’s recommendations was the complete revision of penitentiary regulations to provide “strict but humane discipline and the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners.” The primary objective of the reforms was to focus on treatment within prison walls through more educational and vocational training. The report also noted that a guard working in a Canadian penitentiary in 1938 earned a lower wage than a Toronto street cleaner.⁵⁶ As a result, the job attracted men with little education and minimal skills. The report recommended that a training school be built for the Penitentiary Service, where new recruits could be trained, and ongoing education would be offered throughout a correctional officer’s career. The Correctional Staff College would not be realized until twenty-six years later, opening in October 1964.

But by far the most important and far-reaching of the Archambault proposals was for a prison commission that would have full authority over the management of penitentiaries and act as an independent federal parole board.

Macphail was finally vindicated. Justice Archambault sent her a copy of the 418-page report with the inscription: “To Miss Agnes Macphail, M.P., courageous pioneer and untiring worker on behalf of prison reform in Canada.”

While acknowledging the work of Miss Macphail, the Archambault Report reflected an increasingly widely held preference for rehabilitation over retribution. But when Canada declared war on Germany in September 1939, the priorities of a nation at war superseded penal reform, and many of the Archambault Report’s recommendations were put on indefinite hold.

When the war ended in 1945, the push to change Canada’s prisons resumed. The country’s first Prison Commissioner, Major General R.B. Gibson, was committed to prison reform. He implemented more than a hundred of the Archambault Report’s recommendations. New penitentiaries were built, including separate facilities for young adult male offenders. Rules and regulations were softened and there was new hope for rehabilitative treatment. It seemed that attitudes were shifting and new approaches to corrections might finally be put into action.

But by the early 1950s, prisons throughout North America were once again filled to capacity, and violent disturbances were becoming more frequent. Although more recreational and rehabilitative programs were introduced after the Second World War, rising crime rates resulted in massive overcrowding. Kingston Penitentiary was teeming with more than a thousand inmates living under the weight of oppression and routine. Eventually, tensions boiled over.