Jeff Shantz and Eva Ureta, April 29, 2020
The COVID-19 crisis has made situations inside Canada’s carceral institutions even more unhealthy than they already are. As of one week ago, there were at least 352 COVID-19 cases in Canadian carceral sites. It was only on April 26 that it was announced that a nurse would be present fulltime at Mission Institution, where more than 100 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and one prisoner has already died. Many prisons in Canada have been on extended lockdown, confining prisoners in their cells all day, except for around 20 minutes. This has severe impacts of prisoners’ mental and physical health. These lockdown conditions have recently been called out by the Canadian state’s own prison ombudsperson, who called them “extreme.”. These conditions are all unacceptable.
On April 26, #freethemall noise demos took place at Fraser Regional Correctional Centre and Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, both in Maple Ridge, so-called British Columbia. These actions followed on previous actions at Mission on April 17 and at the Surrey Immigration Detention Centre on April 4 and April 19. These actions were part of a cross-Canada day of caravans, with other events taking place at Burnside Jail in Halifax, Joliette Institution for Women, Rivière-des-Prairies provincial jail, Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, Toronto South Detention Centre.
Participants in the noise demonstrations have demanded release of prisoners, proper and decent release planning to ensure the health of those released, real community supports, such as housing, and liveable income supports and funding. Those released deserve proper health and safety provisions.
It needs to be mentioned that at the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre a guard drove his car into one of the noise demo participants, throwing them into a ditch. The guard then brushed his car up against others. All while fellow guards who were surveilling the actions stood idly by and them assisted their colleague in getting into the FRCC parking lot. This is not surprising given that these are sites of extreme state violence and guards are used to regularly carrying out acts of violence and getting away with it.
The carceral apparatus in Canada is one of racialized, colonial, class violence, Criminal justice systems in the country disproportionately surveill, target, imprison, and inflict violence on Indigenous people, Black people, people of colour, people experiencing mental health crises, and poor and homeless people. Free Them All organizers raise solidarity for all prisoners, including detained migrants, and call for release of all and status for all.
