A cheerful post

[sabotabby]

Yesterday, zingerella drew my attention to the story of Carol Ikkusek, a Labrador woman who was held naked in a cell for two days. zingerella was, understandably, quite horrified. Unfortunately, the only thing that surprised me about the story was that the RCMP later apologized.

There are many reasons why I'm not shocked by these stories. The most obvious is that the woman in question is, judging by her name, indigenous, and First Nations people have long known that they can't take for granted the sorts of rights, privileges, and protection that settlers enjoy. But beyond that, abuse of people within the criminal justice system is inevitable. We, after all, belong to a culture that by and large considers cutting off a thief's hand to be barbaric but is quite at ease with rape as a punishment for, say, non-violent drug offenses.

(Pause. What did she just say?)

There would, understandably, be some outcry if a judge handed down a sentence of "six months in prison, plus sodomy" in for a drug trafficking offense. But we know that prison rape is widespread. (And if we don't know that, we have pop culture to remind us.) So, just as the Canadian government is responsible for torturing suspects whom it deports to Syria, the criminal justice system is responsible for the rape that is pretty much inevitable in prison. In the business world, they call it outsourcing.

So we know that most people in jail aren't there for violent crimes* and we think that approximately one in five male prisoners is the victim of some form of sexual assault. (The frequency for women is difficult to pin down, and seems to be more common at the hands of guards than at the hands of other inmates.) We're okay with this, by and large, because we know at some level that prisons have to be utterly horrific places (i.e., worse than homeless shelters, sleeping under bridges, and working dangerous, low-paying jobs) in order to perform their social function, and because we're conditioned to think of all criminals as violent. And also, I suppose, because most of us don't think of prisons very much.

Something to keep in mind when we claim that our country is better than other countries because it acknowledges human rights and doesn't torture people. Not that many people make that claim anymore.

* American stats. If anyone can dig up Canadian stats, I'd be interested.

P.S. I need my paid account back so that I can use an Oz icon for this post. Oy. You guys, that wasn't a hint! But all three of you—you know who you are, and I at least know who two of your are—rock my world.