Читать книгу Murder on the Inside - Catherine Fogarty - Страница 9

They call this place just west of hell.You’ll make no friends, that’s just as well.A cold, sad and angry place, say the wrong thing and you’ll lose your face.That’s why they call this place just west of hell,You’ll make no friends, that’s just as well.

— Kingston Pen inmate

In its early years, Kingston Pen played a vital role in the growth of Kingston. The prison brought prosperity, and along with the other prisons being built in the area, it created an impressive local economy. The Pen was the ultimate symbol of “institutional Kingston,” a city that survived in large part on the government payroll. By the early 1970s Kingston had the largest concentration of correctional facilities in Canada and was dubbed “Penitentiary City” by locals. Apart from Kingston Penitentiary, there were nine additional federal and provincial institutions and minimum-security farm camps within a forty-kilometre radius of the city. Kingston was also the home of Canada’s only federal penitentiary for women, which opened in 1934.

In the spring of 1971 there were 641 inmates at Kingston Penitentiary.²⁹ It was where Canada’s most dangerous offenders went to serve out their life sentences. Well-known as the “decrepit home of diddlers and rats,” according to a former inmate, it provided a protective custody environment for inmates who wouldn’t survive in other institutions. KP was a prison filled with the lowest of the low and was looked down on by inmates in other prisons.

“As soon as you walked in, you had a sense that society has crushed and defeated you,” said Rob Tripp, a freelance journalist who wrote about KP for more than twenty years. “It was a human warehouse of death, decay and horror. Many inmates died of murder and suicide within its walls.”³⁰

Kingston Pen was considered the toughest ten acres in Canada and in many respects it was like a small, walled-off inner city. It had its own government, police force, hospital, school, churches and industries. Its citizens for the most part obeyed its rules and laws, but adherence to the inmate code was the only thing that counted and an inmate’s true standing was determined by his fellow prisoners, who would classify him as a wheel, a solid guy, a tough guy or, if they thought he was an informer, a rat. Basic tenets of the code were never trust or support a screw or the prison administration, never squeal on a fellow con, never steal from another inmate and never enter another man’s cell unless invited. “The inmate code was really a guidebook on how to succeed in prison by not really trying to reform,” wrote former inmate Roger Caron.³¹ “In order to gain acceptance, one must follow the code to a fine degree.” Basically, you were to mind your own business and do your time. Don’t be a fly on the wall, wise cons would advise. Instead, be the wall. Violate the code and your life became a living hell.³²

At the prison heart of the city was the dome, and in the centre of the dome was a hefty brass bell that had ruled over the prison population for decades. It was Warden Ponsford in the 1920s who believed he could simplify the management of the prison by using a bell, similar to keeping a school on schedule.³³ From the guards’ point of view, the bell kept the inmates in line, but for prisoners it was an abomination, a hated symbol of repression. The bell controlled the inmates’ every move. It rang to wake them up, to send them off to work, to announce every meal and to send them to bed. By the end of each prison day, the bell had rung over one hundred times. About the hated gong, Roger Caron wrote: “To the cons it was an object of repugnance and outrage, an unjustifiable punishment. A brass monster that we were convinced had been designed solely to shatter our nerves with its loud and strident ringing. For the prison staff it was the golden cow.”

The central dome was a simmering beehive of more than 640 cells stacked four storeys high, making up thirty-two ranges. The cells or “drums” were narrow, damp and cold. The only pieces of furniture in each cell were an iron bunk fastened to the wall by a short chain, a table, a folding chair, an open-mouthed toilet and a metal sink with cold running water. Below the sink was a small water bucket to collect hot water in the evenings. Attached to the bars at the front of each cell was a square box into which earphones could be plugged in order to listen to one of three radio channels provided, two in English and one in French.

Inmates also valued books, mostly for reading but also for stacking on top of their toilet lids to prevent rats from crawling out of the latrines in the night. The maze of sewers below the prison was also home to feral cats that fed off the bloated rodents.

The only opening in the cell was a barred gate, thirty inches wide, set in a concrete arch that was three feet thick. The cells could be locked or unlocked by spinning a windlass — two spoked wheels outside the locked barrier at the end of the range. Above the cells was a vertical locking bar with a protruding horizontal handle. Every morning and night an inmate tapper was assigned to race down the range raising each handle — tap, tap, tap, until all cells were opened. The tappers were also responsible for passing out hot water at night for the guys to shave.

Within his cell, a prisoner was only permitted to sleep, listen to the radio and read. Inmates could also write two authorized letters a week to relatives on the outside, but all incoming and outgoing mail was censored. Telephone calls were only allowed under exceptional circumstances and usually brought news of a family tragedy. Visitations were permitted twice a month. Approved family members would communicate across a counter divided by a glass panel with a small screen to speak through.

While serving his sentence, an inmate could engage in a hobby craft if he could financially afford it. A prisoner could buy tools and materials to do woodwork or leather work in his cell between supper and lights out. Inmates were also strictly limited in how they could decorate their cells. Any personal item such as a photo or memento, no matter how insignificant, for which an inmate did not have a prison-issued licence was considered contraband and subject to seizure.

When prisoners arrived at the penitentiary, they were issued two bath towels, two hand towels, a pocket comb, a metal mirror, one bar of soap, toilet paper, a toothbrush and tooth powder. They were given ten minutes to shower once a week in a giant horseshoe-shaped ring of showers otherwise known as the car wash. Inmates would deposit their dirty uniform into a slot in the wall, shuffle around the horseshoe, which contained sixteen shower nozzles, and then pick up a clean uniform on the way back to their cell. Two guards regulated the water and it was up to them whether the showers were hot or cold.

For inmates deemed troublemakers by the guards, there was the hole, an escape- proof cellblock located in a concrete bunker between the north and east wings. There were twenty metal doors, each with a peephole and a food slot. Behind each door an inmate was confined twenty-three and a half hours a day, with one half-hour of exercise in a small segregated yard. Each cell consisted of a concrete platform for a bed, one thin, spongy mattress and two army blankets. Sheets and pillows were not permitted. Inmates were fed a restricted diet of bread and water for breakfast and dinner and a regular meal for lunch, but there was no gravy, dessert or hot beverage. A single bright light encased inside a screened box on the ceiling illuminated the prisoner’s bleak surroundings: cinder-block walls covered in dried blood and angry carvings from former tenants. The light was never turned off.

Serving time at Kingston Pen was a life of despair and oppression, but time in the hole was a nightmare that few recovered from. Not surprisingly, many resorted to self-harm and suicide as a way out. “I am not sick nor crazy,” wrote Auréle Rozen on February 28, 1967. “I cannot bear to be locked up for twenty-three hours a day. My morale is low, and I am disgusted with life. Thank you and adieu.” Guards found his body in a segregation cell later that day. Rozen had hanged himself.

In his award-winning memoir on prison life, Go-Boy!, Roger Caron recounted his anguish while confined to the hole for over a year. “The cell pulsated with bad vibes from those who had suffered there before me and especially from those who could not go on and had hung themselves with a blanket. All sense of reality was lost and the will to go on was quickly extinguished in both the weak and the strong.”

For Caron, his only way out was going on a hunger strike. After twelve days with no food, he was transferred to the psychiatric ward, where many of the prison’s most dangerous inmates resided. In the loony bin, tranquilizers were apparently handed out like candy and patients such as Caron were forced to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. Refusing meant being sent back to the hole.

Life inside Kingston Pen was monotonous. Control came from the dreary and predictable fact that everything happened day after day in the exact same way. The prison population consisted of groups of inmates in separate, segregated ranges who were tightly contained and never brought together in one place. A Toronto Star Weekly reporter who was granted a rare look inside in 1960 wrote: “Old timers and first offenders, the vicious and the harmless, the illiterate and the genius, the notorious and the unknown, all are thrown together to make up this strange community inside the walls.”

Every day involved the sequential manoeuvring of each range of inmates through the same routine.³⁴ The morning began at 6:45 a.m. with the ringing of the bell. After the first head count, inmates were released from their cells for “jug up.” They would proceed single file to the kitchen to obtain their iron breakfast trays, which were then taken back to their cells. Unlike prison scenes in Hollywood movies, there was no central dining hall; every meal was consumed in a cell. Breakfast might consist of dry toast, margarine, jam, porridge and a mug full of steaming chicory coffee.

The food service was a constant source of complaints and dissatisfaction but working in the kitchen was one of the most sought-after jobs in the prison. It meant you were trusted and given more freedom. And you were allowed to wear kitchen whites instead of the standard-issue prison uniform.³⁵ For some it also offered the chance to smuggle out food and ingredients to make homebrew. Nutmeg, mouse poison, gasoline, shoe polish and aftershave lotion were all in high demand as ingredients for the mind-altering concoctions that were prepared in secret.³⁶

After each meal, another prison count would be done before inmates were allowed to proceed to their assigned workshops. Inmates were paid a wage for their work that averaged twenty-five cents to fifty-five cents per day depending on their pay grade. Inmates would return to their cells at 11 a.m. to begin the lunchtime rotation, and again at 3:45 p.m. to begin dinner. Beef was served more than pork and chicken, and turkey was served at least once a month. “A great many inmates were never so well fed in their private lives as they are during their incarceration,” an internal memo to the Solicitor General once noted.

The supper service was completed by 4:45 p.m., after which the inmates would stay in their cells until they were called for “gym up,” indoor or outdoor recreation depending on the weather. The desolate outdoor yard was situated in the southeast corner of the prison. Under the watchful gaze of the guards in the gun towers, groups of prisoners paced up and down or found a place to sit in the shade and smoke. After recreation, inmates would return to their cells. Every day was the same and every night ended with the same thought, as prisoners lay awake in their bunks wishing they were anywhere but inside Kingston Penitentiary.

Life inside Kingston Pen hadn’t always been so dreary. In the postwar period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, penal reform focused on education and training for inmates so they could improve their skills and increase their hopes of gainful employment upon release. By 1957, there were over 257 educational and training programs available to inmates, including typing courses, plumbing and heating, barber training and bookkeeping.³⁷ The inmates also organized and participated in a wide variety of sports, including boxing, floor hockey, basketball and soccer.

In the mid-1950s, Kingston Pen even had its own baseball league. There were six prison league teams and an all-star team, the Saints, that played in the Kingston area league. Local teams would be invited to play at the penitentiary diamond as hundreds of inmate fans cheered on their team. The Sunday afternoon games were broadcast on the local radio station with the sounds of screaming convicts shouting, “Murder the bums!”³⁸ Large sums of money were wagered every weekend with the prison bookies, and from time to time inmate and staff games were also scheduled.

The penitentiary also ran an annual or biannual sports day, which was planned and organized by an inmate committee. It was regarded as one of the highlights of the year and greatly improved the morale of the whole prison. The warden at the time, Richard Allan, felt that recreation and sports released tensions in men who would otherwise have brooded about real or imagined injustices.

There were musical groups too. Kingston Penitentiary Is On the Air was a half-hour variety show that was broadcast throughout Ontario on Saturday nights in the summer months, featuring musicians like the Solitaires, an eight-piece inmate orchestra. There was a large choir that would practise twice a week in the Protestant chapel, and a correspondence course in music was available in which inmates could learn musical theory and technique.

For those who weren’t musically inclined, there were chess and bridge clubs.

In the fall of each year, inmates would set up a Santa’s workshop. Bicycles, cars, dolls and many other toys would be repaired and distributed to needy Kingston families at Christmastime.

Prisoners also produced a monthly penal magazine called the KP Telescope, which was Canada’s first prison publication beginning in 1948.³⁹ Each volume included a prison update from the warden and several other columns of interest. Prisoners could submit creative writing and poems for publication, and sports updates were always included. Subscribers across Canada paid a dollar a year to receive it, and Coca-Cola advertised on the back cover.

But by the mid-1960s the character of the inmate population began to change. The civil rights movement gave rise to more outspoken, politically active inmates who began demanding more rights. In addition, the number of drug convictions in Canada exploded, and this led to serious overcrowding. And once incarcerated, drug dealers and gang members often continued their enterprises.

In a memo written to the Solicitor General in 1966, the Commissioner of Penitentiaries, A.J. MacLeod, stated there was a significant change in the types of inmates being sentenced to imprisonment for two years or more. “They are younger, more vicious, more aggressive, more hostile, more irresponsible, and therefore more dangerous than ever before.”⁴⁰ According to the Commissioner, this new “type of inmate” caused a higher number of serious incidents in federal prisons, including escapes, assaults, hostage takings and murder.

As a result, Kingston Penitentiary became more repressive and security oriented. Recreational programs were curtailed, family visits were electronically monitored for fear of drug smuggling, and prison lockdowns occurred on a regular basis. The last edition of the prison magazine was published in 1969, and by 1971 most recreational programs had been cancelled altogether. For those seeking to better themselves through education, classroom instruction was limited to reading, writing and math, but only up to grade eight.⁴¹ Inmates could only attend school for two half days per week. Correspondence courses through Queen’s University were available, but inmates were responsible for purchasing their own textbooks.

With fewer education and rehabilitation programs and limited contact with the outside world, inmates spent sixteen hours a day locked in their dark, poorly ventilated cells, just as they had been in 1938. The claustrophobic confinement wore on the emotions of many men. “Men literally became grunting, growling creatures in cages,” said Dr. Scott, the prison psychiatrist, in 1971. “Inmates whether mentally well or sick, intellectually capable or moronically stupid, all pass through the same prison gates to the same prison cells, the same jobs and the same rehabilitative training.” Scott estimated that 20 percent of Kingston’s inmates suffered from “a definable degree of mental illness.” But due to a shortage of psychiatrists willing to work in a prison, few inmates had access to any mental health services.

Arthur Jarvis was the seventeenth warden of Kingston Penitentiary, a position he had held since 1967. He was a handsome man in his mid-fifties, with a boxer’s physique and sharp, chiselled features. He had a taste for well-tailored suits, red ties and solid, thick-soled shoes. Originally from Collingwood, Ontario, he had joined the Penitentiary Service in 1938.⁴² His first job had been as a scout, which required him to spend long hours on horseback patrolling the Collins Bay penitentiary grounds. He was a well-liked warden who had a reputation for firmness and fairness, but he had dealt with his fair share of problems. He often found himself frustrated by the politics and bureaucracy of the prison service and recently had been struggling to hire a new deputy warden for KP, a position that had been left vacant for months.

As 1971 began, Warden Jarvis knew there was trouble brewing at Kingston Penitentiary. There had already been one serious incident. Two violent offenders stoned on homebrew and armed with homemade knives had attacked three staff members in the carpenters’ shop and held them hostage.⁴³ They then demanded asylum to Cuba.⁴⁴ The hostage taking ended twenty-four hours later, with the guards overpowering one of their captors.

After the kidnapping, Jarvis detailed his concerns in a letter to the Commissioner of Penitentiaries and the Regional Director of Ontario.⁴⁵ In his three-page letter, dated January 18, 1971, he stated, “There is a high degree of tension at Kingston Penitentiary at this time. In fact it appears to be almost at the point of explosion.” Jarvis blamed the volatile atmosphere on staff shortages, serious overcrowding, and widespread anxiety over the transfer of inmates to a newly built maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Kingston. Mature and experienced staff were also being transferred to Millhaven, leaving Jarvis with new, inexperienced guards incapable of managing an overloaded prison. He also noted that the penitentiary’s psychiatric facilities were insufficient, resulting in inmates with mental conditions being released before they were ready. At the same time, the segregation and dissociation cells were at full capacity. Jarvis knew something had to give.

This population at Kingston Penitentiary exceeds by far the number of the type of desperate inmates that we should have in a maximum-security institution. We have almost seven hundred of the most difficult inmates in the country to deal with. God knows what will happen if one of us breaks down under the pressure. I don’t. Unless some immediate action is taken, I expect many serious incidents to occur in the very near future.

This was the second such letter Jarvis had sent to the Commissioner of Penitentiaries. In a letter dated November 24, 1970, he had outlined his concerns about the position of deputy warden, which had been vacant for some time. As a result, the assistant deputy warden had been filling in, and his workload had doubled.

I know that the amount of work is more than enough for two men and in a short time his health will break down owing to the strain. There is no doubt in my mind that Kingston Penitentiary will continue to operate for the next four years and the inmate population will not deplete to less than 350 from our present count of 680.

With the inmate population steadily increasing, the maximum-security institution required a full complement of senior staff.

Warden Jarvis’s letters were never answered. In the next two months, there were three prisoner suicides and thirty-five attempts.⁴⁶

For years, Kingston Penitentiary had been considered an obsolete institution in both its design and its function. Along with five other federal prisons across the country, it had operated as a multi-classification facility, accommodating all inmates from the best to the very worst; but with the introduction of minimum- and medium-security institutions in 1959, the archaic limestone fortress now functioned as a purely maximum-security facility. The physical infrastructure at KP was outdated and inadequate for such a large and volatile group.

In 1956, the Fauteux Committee investigated Canada’s correctional system and reported that overcrowding in federal penitentiaries was a matter of grave concern. The committee made special mention of the situation at Kingston Penitentiary and recalled that Collins Bay Institution had been built in 1930 to relieve the population pressure on Kingston at that time. The committee recommended that no penal facility in Canada should contain more than 600 inmates. In 1956, the year of the Fauteux Report, Kingston Pen housed 959 prisoners.

Finally, in the early 1960s, the Canadian Penitentiary Service initiated a ten-year construction plan to build six new maximum-security institutions to replace Canada’s aging prisons. A new facility called Millhaven would replace Kingston Penitentiary. The maximum-security facility would cost $11 million to build and would house 1,350 prisoners, including 450 maximum-security cells. One of the main design criteria for all the new correctional facilities was to provide an environment that would, as far as possible, eliminate increasing hostility between inmates and staff. This meant creating physical barriers between prisoners and guards.

But before construction began on any of the new institutions, the government was bombarded with vociferous condemnation over the new designs. Critics called the new plans obsolete, oppressive and out of step with modern penology. Instead of building more old-style fortress-like prisons that maintained punitive measures by separating inmates from staff, opponents of the government’s plans felt the new penitentiary designs should place more emphasis on rehabilitation and support. New prisons didn’t need more clanging bars and barriers, they needed fewer. In a telegram to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson dated April 28, 1967, J. Mooney, the president of the John Howard Society, said the decision to build Millhaven was illogical and unreasonable.⁴⁷ Its physical structure would result in professional staff being too far away from inmates and its rigid design would be completely out of step with modern penology.

As a result of the fervent criticisms, a special Senate–Commons committee on penitentiaries was set up to investigate concerns over the new designs, and the start of construction was delayed. The resulting seventeen-page report criticized the rigid and repressive nature of the proposed design for Millhaven but said it should be built as planned because prison space was so urgently needed. It would take too much time to produce new designs. Millhaven received the green light in October 1968, almost three years behind schedule.

On the morning of April 14, 1971, the first twelve inmates from Kingston Penitentiary were transferred to Millhaven. Additional transfers of forty inmates per month were to begin even though the prison was still under construction and not fully staffed. The new multi-million-dollar super-maximum-security institute — “the Haven,” as it came to be known — was located eighteen miles west of Kingston. The state-of-the-art prison was constructed in the form of an octopus, low to the ground with tentacles forming a network of escape-proof cells. The four security control centres were accessible through a 225-foot tunnel from outside the prison, making them virtually impenetrable. Eight gun towers were located outside the barbed wire perimeter, from which powerful telescopic military rifles were pointed at the exercise yard. Two twenty-foot chain-link fences topped with rolls of razor wire encircled the entire complex. Specially trained attack dogs and their handlers patrolled between the fences.

Prisoners would be housed in individual, rubber-carpeted cells, each with its own toilet, desk and steel cot. Each cell had an iron door with a look-through window, controlled by a guard who sat in a bulletproof booth. The cells were L-shaped, ten feet deep and seven feet wide.

For Kingston Pen inmates, the prospect of transferring to Millhaven was terrifying. Everything connected to its imminent opening was shrouded in mystery, sending the prison rumours flying. Prisoners were hearing about an extensive electronic bugging system that would monitor and record every conversation, and cameras in every cell that would eliminate the little privacy they currently had.⁴⁸ Kingston Pen may have been a hellhole, but it was one they knew well. They feared Millhaven would be much worse.

But the inmates at KP were not leaving without a fight. There had been talk in the cellblocks for weeks, whispers and rumours of riots and breakouts, every scheme more salacious than the last. There was even chatter about grabbing hostages, but most of the prison population ignored such rumblings. For some of the cons, particularly those with only a little time left on their sentences, any kind of prison upheaval would damage their chances for parole. Action by a few could mean punishment for all. They knew any attack on the institution would tighten security measures even further, and retribution from the guards would be severe. Still, no one informed the staff of any potential rebellion.

For the staff at Kingston Pen, April 14 was an ordinary day, nothing out of the normal routine. It was still too cold to head outside to the recreation yard, so the evening would be spent in the gym. The first group of seventy-eight inmates were in the rec hall between the hours of 6 and 8 p.m. The second group of seventy-eight from range two arrived in the gym at 8:30 p.m. The next evening, the two other ranges would have their turns in the recreation hall. This routine ensured that no more than a quarter of the prison population was ever in the same place at the same time. The only exception to this was on weekends, when half the inmates were allowed into the exercise yard.

At precisely 10:30 p.m., senior guard Ed Barrett rang the bell. The maddening sound signalled a return to the cells. Billy Knight, like every other inmate, hated the ringing instrument. In his prison manifesto, he wrote: “It has no heart, it has no feelings; disobey its brassy orders or curse it for its pain inflicting callousness and it will drag you to the dungeon for a lesson in respect.”

In the gym, the televisions were turned off and the folding chairs and tables restacked. Knight held back a little and watched as the inmates fell in line. As the guards began to corral the inmates out of the gym, down a long corridor past the hobby shops and towards the dome, Knight motioned for his gang to take their well-rehearsed places in the lineup. Inmates Charles Saunders and Brian Dodge quickly moved to the front of the group of cons, while Robert Adams, Allan Lafreniere and Leo Barrieault held back.

The officer in charge, Donald Flynn, was standing in the corridor between the dome and the gym. He unlocked the gate to the main cellblock passageway and passed the key to 27-year-old Terry Decker. Decker walked up the hallway towards the gym, where he waved to William Babcock in the recreation hall. Babcock blew his whistle and the men from range 2-H lined up to start their march back to the cells. No more than twenty inmates would be sent through at a time. Guards Douglas Dale and Joseph Vallier waited on the range, where Dale, with the spin of a large iron wheel, opened the cell doors. Vallier was preparing to lead the men down the cell corridor, where he would spin the wheel again, moving the travelling bar almost two hundred feet in length so each lock fell into place at the same time.

As the uniformed inmates from 2-H shuffled past guard Terry Decker, he failed to notice that something wasn’t right.⁴⁹ There were six imposters in the line. Knight’s men had traded places with other inmates. But Decker did notice an exposed shirttail on one of the prisoners. The institution’s dress code was to be adhered to at all times. Pointing his finger directly at Knight, the cocky young guard yelled, “Tuck that shirt in!”

Knight froze. This was not part of his plan. There were twenty male convicts moving through a narrow steel-encased corridor. He could feel their eyes on him. This was the moment, the point of no return. He swung his body around and, with all his might, punched Decker in the stomach. As the unsuspecting guard crumpled to the floor, Knight shouted, “That’s the last fucking order you’re going to give!” The Kingston Penitentiary riot had begun.