HV 9504 H5h [History of the Canadian Penitentiary Service]

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This document is archival in nature and is intended Le présent document a une valeur archivistique et for those who wish to consult archival documents fait partie des documents d’archives rendus made available from the collection of Public Safety disponibles par Sécurité publique Canada à ceux Canada. qui souhaitent consulter ces documents issus de sa collection. Some of these documents are available in only one official language. Translation, to be provided Certains de ces documents ne sont disponibles by Public Safety Canada, is available upon que dans une langue officielle. Sécurité publique request. Canada fournira une traduction sur demande. }e_ÂAA- SOUCiTORMIaleif«ài / T.( (- / é 5tIc eb 1998 CHAPTER 1 s mane .GENERAL CAIWOA mum% pale "HOW WE GOT HERE" OP8 • The penitentiary system in Canada had its beginning on June 1, 1835, when the Penitentiary "near the town of Kingston" opened its doors to receive six convicts, five of them from Toronto. Prior to that date, convicts were kept in makeshift jails under the most primitive conditions. Kingston was considered a great step forward. An official report of that time aptly sums up the pioneer days: "from the thin and scattered state of the population of the Home District, as well as the comparative absence of crime and infrequent detention of prisoners in custody on civil process for debt, the safekeeping of criminals and others was perhaps a secondary considera- tion". There were alternatives to imprisonment. The pillory was used in Lower Canada as late as 1829, when a man stood in the Montreal pillory for passing bad French crowns. The pillory consisted of a wooden frame with holes through which were thrust the head and hands of the offender. Set up in the market-place, it was mounted on a pivot which forced the victim to face a populace which often pelted him with rotten eggs and other rubbish. In Upper Canada the stocks replaced the pillory. They consisted of a wooden contraption with holes for arms and legs and offenders were often placed in them in pairs. They were located in the market place and the occupants were a subject of derision. William-"Lyon Mackenzie, first mayor of Toronto and later a political fugitive him- self, in 1834 sentenced a man convicted of larceny "to stand one hour ...2 -2- tomorrow and one hour tomorrow week, in the common stocks, and to be banished from the Home District for twelve months". Another sentence was branding. The Chief Justice of Upper Canada in 1798 had criminals branded in open court. The practise was abolished in that province in 1802 "save for the crime of manslaughter", but in Lower Canada brandings continued until at least 1826 when two men were branded for murder. Soldiers who were convicted under the Mutiny Act or who were deserters were branded until the end of the 1840s. Banishment came into law in 1802 in Upper Canada and was also imposed as a sentence in Lower Canada. Sometimes the sentence was for a fixed period; other times it was for life. Convicted persons were simply put on a departing boat to fend for themselves at the other end of the voyage. The tightening of immigration laws led to the aboli- tion of this practise in 1902. Transportion as a sentence was frequently levied as well, usually to the Bermudas, New South Wales and Tasmania. Following the 1837 rebellion 58 political prisoners from Lower Canada were sentenced to transportation to New South Wales and 92 from Upper Canada were shipped to Tasmania. Transportation came to an end in 1853. These alternatives may perhaps explain why the need for a penitentiary system was not felt earlier in Canada although the first penitentiary houses" were established in Britain by law in 1779 and the innovation spread rapidly to the United States. While the chief purpose of punishment then, as now, was to pro- tect society from its criminals and wrong-doers, the methods underwent change in accord with the changes in society itself. When branding, . 3 Copyright of this document does not belong to the Crown. Proper authorization must be obtained from the author for any intended use. Les droits d'auteur du présent document n'appartiennent pas à l'État. Toute utilisation du contenu du présent -3- the pillory, the stocks, banishment and transportation gave way to the penitentiary system, custody became the chief method of punishing crime. The horse and buggy era gave way to the railway period, and crime spread with the new method of transportation. The large penitentiary became the obvious answer to the problem of serious crime. Upon Confederation, Kingston and two other provincial penitentiaries, at Halifax and Saint John, came under Federal jurisdiction, but in 1880, with the construction of a new penitentiary at Dorchester, N.B., the Halifax and Saint John prisons were returned to provincial jurisdiction. Meanwhile a series of other penitentiaries had been built across the country: St. Vincent de Paul in 1873, Manitoba in 1876, British Columbia in 1878. In 1906 a penitentiary was built in Alberta and in 1911, another in Saskatchewan. The Alberta penitentiary was closed in 1920, and the Saskatchewan penitentiary served both areas. Kingston Penitentiary was considered a model of the period in which •t was built. It was patterned upon the plans and lines of Auburn, New York, prison and Charles Dickens praised the place warmly when he visited it in 1840. While penology was an unknown discipline when the rules and regulations of Kingston Penitentiary were established, and while custody and punishment were the chief purposes of the sentences, those rules and regulations did not lose complete sight of the prisoner's welfare. Rule No. 11 for the Warden stated: "The Warden shall take care that the Prisoners are treated with mild- ness and humanity, and that no unnecessary severity is practised by the inferior officers....". And Rule No. 12 stated specifically: ...4 -4- "In executing the duties of his office, the Warden shall never lose sight of the reformation of the prisoners in his charge, and shall carefully guard against personal and passionate resentment on his own part, as well as on that of his subordinate officers." It was just nine years after the visit of Charles Dickens and fourteen years after the prison opened that the first outside report, that of the Brown Commission,appeared. Its 84 double pages were filled with charges of graft, corruption, cruelty and sinister politics. Peter Charbonneau, committed to Kingston Penitentiary on May 4, 1845, for seven years, was just ten year of age: "The Table shows that Charbonneau's offences were of the most trifling description - such as were to be expected from a child of 10 or 11, (like staring, winking, and laughing); and for these he was stripped to the shirt, and public- ly lashed 57 times in eight and a half months." Antoine Beauche, committed on the 7th November, 1845, for three years, aged eight: "The Table shows that this eight year old child received the lash within a week of his arrival and that he had no fewer than 47 corporal punishments in nine months, and all for offences of the most childish character." Alex Lafleur, aged 11 years, on Christmas Eve, 1844, was given 12 strokes of the rawhide for talking French. Sarah O'Connor, 14, was flogged five times in three months. Elizabeth Green, 12, was lashed on six occasions. James Brown, "an insane prisoner" was given 1182 lashes during his confinement. The Report brought about the dismissal of the warden and many of his sadistic subordinates and the first Penitentiary Annual Report after the Commission's findings, in March, 1850, proudly recorded a drop in . .5 -5- punishments over the year from 6,000 to 3,535. There were 410 in- mates, 24 of them females. The 1856 Annual Report showed that of the 668 convicts then con- fined, 373 were laborers, 49 seamstresses. The punishment chart showed 1,600 deprivations of bed and concurrent bread and water diet, 735 confinements in the dark cell, 111 convicts punished by water shower, and numerous lashings including that of one convict who was given 84 strokes of the lash in the month of March, 1856. The warden stated: "The treatment of the prisoners I consider to be humane." In the 19th century the warden's job was not an enviable one. The rules which he had to enforce were strict and, by modern standards, inhuman. Convicts were expected to preserve unbroken silence except when their work required them to address a guard. They were not per- mitted either to speak, look or make a gesture to each other. They were to be kept constantly employed at hard labor. Wilful violation of any of the numerous rules was to be instantly followed by corporal punishment. The record shows that this was no idle threat. The keepers and guards were poorly paid and often illiterate.

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