Experiences with Racism and Ableism in Prison
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Andy
Umm, well, well, well for me, my, my disability is in my left arm’s been amputated from the clavicle. So generally, umm, the problems start from the time of arrest. Like, I’ve been, like, I was stopped on the highway before. I was pulled over. And the police sometimes they don’t even really get to bottom of what’s going on. They just want to put you into custody before they even really know what’s going on.
So, I remember one time I was put into the back of a police car and then… I was just sitting in the back of the car and they were like ‘hey, where’s your arm?’. At this point the officer doesn’t know that I’m missing an arm and I think I had like 4, 5, 6, I don’t know how many, many officers, pull their weapons on me. And the passenger, that was in the car with me had to scream like, ‘Hey! He only has one arm!’ Like, I don’t know how badly that would’ve went. So at by the point of arrest like, like, my disability causes problems, like, how do you handcuff me, you know?
And then it becomes like some kind of joke to figure out the best way to handcuff me. Some people like to add those loops on my pants maybe, or… some, like, they, they just laugh, they don’t know how to do the process. Like, generally, I… I don’t have any, like, like, the only time like, I don’t have any non-compliance issues with the police when I’m arrested so like it’s not even really necessary to tell you the truth unless I’m already going to bail or to go to custody, whatever it comes down to, but it’s like, it’s over like you know like everything else. I don’t know, sometimes it just feels like a joke to them to try to teach other to find novel ways how to put, how to restrain me when it’s not even really necessary anyways.
Um at court, sometimes it’s…it’s shackles. If not, if anything, if it’s shackles that would be like the most common sense thing and then or other times they’ll handcuff me to another prisoner, you know, so yeah, those are like the main, the main things I see. But like it’s it’s just um, I don’t know, it’s it’s sometimes just like, the lack of professionalism when it comes to the people who are working for corrections, and for the courts, and the toronto police, that kind of makes you scratch your head. It’s just like, I’ve had my disability for like, 3, 4 days ago, was 20 years ago now since I’ve lost my arm and I’m kind of desensitized to…to like, I don’t know, the, for the lack of a better word, the childishness of people that can…. You don’t even let children like... treat people that have like disabilities and stuff like that, you reprimand them for that, you know. And how rampant it is in here, you’d be shocked like how they, how immature, or how the lack of diversity training worked or whatever it may be that’s missing in here like, on all levels, like I said, the courts, the police, and the correctional staff. Like they, like I guess, cause, the power dynamic, I’m a prisoner, they’re…they’re an authority figure, you know what I mean. I guess they have strong…. And at the end of the day it’s my word versus theirs so they’re never held accountable. And it got to the point that i don’t even complain about it or…or say anything because it’s like, or again, I face reprisals now for speaking out about, you know what I mean. They lack professionalism.
Jada
Umm, I think there’s a lack of understanding, about experiences, especially when I saw that you were looking at um, the disability piece. That really caught my interest because I, when I was going through my process, was uh, disabled, and interestingly enough, since my process, I’ve become more disabled. I got an additional diagnosis, which, my therapist has been explaining to me, is a result of trauma.
One of my disorders is um, borderline personality disorder and we… really have attachment issues. Even when they arrested me, all I was thinking about was him, right. And like, oh I need to talk to him, I need to whatever. We tried to go through mental health court, and very quickly I realized, well we learned, well me and my lawyer learned, they only really care about schizophrenia. So if your disorder…doesn’t make you lose touch with reality, they don’t consider it. Though I was, I was always, like, during my process, free.
Um, but yea, at at that point, after the year, I’m done, these people have won. You start to even think, like, I could have been done my jail sentence by now, right, ‘cause of how long I’ve been fighting. You know, I’m paying my lawyer, and every like, every fucking photocopy is a dollar, every call is a dollar, every time she goes to court… It got so expensive that I would start going to the set dates to just ask them to put the matter over ‘cause I’m like, I can’t keep paying you. So the days that I’d go to set dates by myself my lawyer would just give me a letter and ask the duty counsel to read it to the judge. Duty counsel then after a while notices me and she gets mad and she’s like I’m not helping nobody out that has a private lawyer because this is supposed to be a free service. She shames me in front of the court. Like she goes to the judge and she’s like ‘I’m not speaking for this girl. She has a paid lawyer.’ And so she puts me in the middle of the floor to speak for myself. And I have like, bad disability so I’m stut stuttering and stammering.
So I shared like, BPD as my main, my primary and my secondary would be depression and anxiety. Um so, like at the time, like, I can look back and see how BPD really showed up. I didn’t take my case serious because even when i was going through it, my whole focus was my boyfriend. So I, for example, we weren't supposed to be communicating, I broke that. Yeah! I I I would just, I would say, the um obsession, or the attachment, was like, really strong. Suicide ideation…I don’t know if that was the BPD or if that was just being broken down by the process. Like, I feel like people who don’t have a disorder can get suicidal going through court. It will do– that– to–- you um, so I was, I’m not going to lie, at one point, really suicidal. I think I had the most attempts and thoughts during that year. Like everything you could, every day was like, I’m gonna kill myself, I’m gonna kill myself, I’m gonna kill myself. That was also shared with the courts... I don’t think they cared. That I was like suicidal during the process, like, they knew that. Since then, I am still traumatized. So i was in Dollarama one day and a police officer just passed in the aisle and I wet myself. I’m still, like, I still feel like I’m psychologically there.
Peter
I got sick in prison. Like, like you know, I’ve always had, had these, these ail, ail ailments, if you will, in in my life. Um because there was no dialogue, because there was no discussion, because there was no talk about it, I really didn’t know what was, you know, wrong with me. And uh, how the physical affected the mental um, suffering from a, chronic, uh, digestive… disease, you know. Crohn’s disease. Um, the stress and the factor and the prison and the environment that really affected, you know. I became so sick, so sick, and so sick, you know, going to the washroom, shitting blood and then then poison inside of me, like 12 times a day.
I, uh, Once again, I felt like I was never heard. That I was just either being a whiner or I was being uh drug seeking–that’s one you heard a lot throughout the years, you know, I’m in so much pain, so much pain, and uh, you know, he just wants something. You know, they assume so much. The system assumes so much out of you. Uh, I remember, you know, screaming for help, over and over and then going to the healthcare several times. And and you know, until finally they did rush me to the hospital and the hospital came to my cell after taking bloodwork the previous evening or or afternoon and then right away they rushed me in. Now now because the medical healthcare said that this guy really is sick, these numbers are all out of wack, now, now let’s believe him and let’s bring him to Kingston General Hospital for for eight straight days shackled to a bed with with you know, handcuff on on on my wrist, and and to the bed, you know um uh yeah it’s about feeling so much lesser than, so so un un unworthy, unworthy, you know.