Main entrance to Dorchester Penitentiary’s medium security building which opened in 1880. It is the second oldest continuously operating federal prison in Canada

“This institution is like a little city,” Warden Chris Lam said as he welcomed visitors to the medium-security wing of Dorchester Penitentiary last week.

“We have trades people, doctors and teachers and real teamwork,” he added.

“It’s all about public safety and the re-integration of our offenders into society.”

Lam was speaking to 19 people taking part in a day-long visit organized by the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), an independent group of eight local volunteers that organizes an annual Awareness Day tour of the penitentiary.

The CAC also meets regularly with prison staff, inmates and management officials to discuss issues from a community perspective and to offer advice.

This year’s tour began in a brightly lit hallway where visitors watched as a Labrador retriever showed off its skills sniffing out illicit drugs, cellphones and even guns before they can be smuggled into the prison.

One of the three dog handlers explained that energetic canines are only one line of defence and that prisons everywhere are now trying to cope with high-flying drones that drop packages of drugs and other contraband items in outdoor courtyards or near windows where inmates can retrieve them by cutting through wire-mesh screens.

“Drones are a big issue here,” Jeremy Noel, the assistant warden in charge of prison security told the visitors.

“It’s clearly a challenge with the drones and drugs coming in,” he said, adding it’s sometimes necessary to lock prisoners in their cells for days on end while officers search for contraband packages.

(Last summer, Warden Lam sent a letter asking residents who live near the penitentiary to be on the lookout for drones and to report any sightings or suspicious activities to prison officials or the RCMP.)

Rampant drug use

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), which runs Canadian penitentiaries including Dorchester, has a zero tolerance policy for drugs, alcohol and tobacco in federal prisons and offers programs to offenders to help them with substance abuse.

But experts agree the use of illicit substances is widespread in federal prisons.

A 2004 report from a federal agency called the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addictions says that at least 70% of offenders had problems with alcohol and drug abuse before entering prison and that about half continue to suffer from addictions inside.

“Prisons house the highest per-capita proportion of persons with substance abuse problems in society,” the report adds.

“Studies examining rates of substance use indicate that the per capita use of drugs in Canada’s prisons is substantially higher than on the street. In addition, drug trade is also much more violent in prison than it is on the street.”

This graph appears in the Office of the Correctional Investigator Annual Report 2021-2022

In his annual report for 2021-2022, Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger writes that CSC’s zero-tolerance approach leaves little room for measures based on “treatment, harm reduction and prevention principles.”

Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger. Photo: Government of Canada

Zinger, whose office carries out independent monitoring and oversight of federal prisons, writes that CSC drug policies are outdated and do not comply with the government’s own “comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate and evidence-based approach to drug policy.”

He adds that it’s hard to know where to start in trying to restore a more balanced and relevant approach.

“What seems certain is that it is both unhelpful and harmful to continue to rely on a series of humiliating and degrading search and seizure measures that target, punish and discipline people for their substance use and addictions, issues that were often contributing factors to their incarceration in the first place,” his report concludes.

Addictions and mental health

Marie-Eve Sylvestre, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, is also critical of the use of “repression and punishment” rather than “prevention, treatment and service.”

In a video that appears on the federal justice department website, Sylvestre links addictions with other social ills.

“If you were to show up in a courtroom at the nearest courthouse on any given Monday morning,” she says, “you’d see a whole faction of essentially poor individuals, many of them in situations of homelessness, many of them not working, or at least with no education, with drug or alcohol use issues and, in some cases, mental health issues, coming to plead guilty to a litany of extremely minor infractions, oftentimes non-violent acts.”

Law Professor Marie-Eve Sylvestre. Photo: Government of Canada video

Sylvestre argues that Canada’s judicial system is stuck in a vicious cycle trying to use prisons to solve social problems.

“The justice system is the system that, by default, needs to take on social issues we don’t want to see, or the issues we don’t invest enough in as a society,” she says.

I think it’s costly, counterproductive, and it often infringes on the rights of individuals,” she adds.

“Incarceration, detention, is very traumatizing and stigmatizing, and I think it only makes the situation worse rather than supporting those who are suffering.”

This is the first in a series of reports after visits to Dorchester Penitentiary this year and last.