The lawyer for a man convicted of killing his roommate almost 20 years ago says that Correctional Service Canada (CSC) is not following protocol when transferring her client to another prison.Prior to transfers, CSC is obligated to do an assessment of what effects they would have on inmates, including the impact of moving them away from a home community, said Janan Jarrah, founder and lawyer of eLaw Alliance in Edmonton.Those assessments are inmate rights under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, she said.Jarrah represents Kevin MacKinnon, who was convicted in 1995 of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his roommate, Laine Berube. He is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison in Edmonton.MacKinnon is currently on a hunger strike that has stretched longer than 40 days to protest a series of involuntary transfers. The latest one relocated him from Bowden Institution, which is close to his family in Olds.Since these transfers are involuntary, Jarrah said they are violating MacKinnon's rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.“Because they're arbitrary, because they're done without any analysis to the effects it would have on him, it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment,” she said. “We're arguing that this is cruel and inhumane treatment when you arbitrarily and very consistently and repeatedly, transfer someone from institution to institution to institution.”“It's definitely something that chips away at someone's mental health,” she added.Due to the Privacy Act, CSC cannot provide specific details on an inmate's case, wrote Jean Collins, media relations and outreach advisor.Collins wrote, “all inmates transfers are made on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA). CSC performs risk assessments before transferring an offender to a facility that meets his or her security and programming needs.”She added that under the CCRA, the prison choice depends on “safety of the public, staff or other persons in the penitentiary and the inmate, the essential health care needs of the inmate, the availability of appropriate programs and services to meet the inmates (sic) correctional plan, and other factors.”During a recent visit, Jarrah said MacKinnon was thin, frail, moved slowly and experienced blackouts due to the lack of nutrients in his body.But despite her client's requests to be kept in a health unit so he'd be close to medical professionals, MacKinnon was kept in segregation, she added.According to section 31 of the CCRA, there are three grounds for putting an inmate into “administrative segregation.”The first is if the inmate has, attempted or intends to act in a way that compromises the security of the prison. Inmates can also be confined if allowing them to associate with other inmates would put the prison at risk.The second reason for administrative segregation is if allowing an inmate to associate with the others would interfere with an investigation.Lastly, inmates can be put in administrative segregation for their own safety.MacKinnon has maintained his innocence of the crime and the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted has been looking into his case.Despite spending about 20 years in prison, MacKinnon is not eligible for parole because an admission of guilt is required.He is trying to get a conviction review but Jarrah said the transfers are impeding the process because each time MacKinnon is moved, legal papers in his possession are lost.“You have to collect your evidence. You have to keep it. And every time he's transferred, some of that information gets lost,” she said. “Every transfer, he loses little bits of his legal information so that eventually, it's going to have a very severe effect on whether or not he can have his wrongful conviction (heard).”Inmates' personal property is handled according to a policy titled Commissioner's Directive 566-12, Personal Property of Offenders, Collins wrote.“Normally, the inmate's personal property will accompany him/her at the time of the transfer, with consideration given for essential items. For interregional and intraregional transfers, property accompanying the inmate may be restricted by size,” Collins wrote.“The receiving institution will normally issue personal items to the inmate within 10 working days after the effects have been received in the institution's Admission and Discharge Area.”Jarrah said she believes the transfers are intended to interfere with legal proceedings, adding that her efforts to stop them have gone ignored.“I filed a claim against the involuntary transfer in November 2013 and normally before you transfer you have to have it heard by the courts,” she said. “Corrections Canada does not give a hoot about that. (They had) already transferred him twice, essentially making my case for him moot.”Collins wrote that judicial decisions on legal motions filed by inmates are publicly available.Jarrah points to the Ashley Smith case as an example of the consequences of repeated involuntary transfers. In the Smith case, a 19-year-old federal inmate strangled herself to death while prison guards watched. The subsequent inquest ruled the death was a homicide.One of the recommendations that followed, Jarrah said, was that inmates be kept close to family members and if that is not possible, Correctional Service Canada must make accommodations, including providing email or Skype access.The case for prisoners' rights has nothing to do with the crimes committed but involves applying the Charter equally, Jarrah said.“In order for the Charter to have the significance that it does for everybody else, it has to be applied to the most vulnerable people, whose rights are already limited and those being prisoners,” she said.“If people are going to ignore or not pay attention just because these are prisoners … then it really chips away at everybody else's rights.”[email protected]
