Death of a vagrant

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In Quebec, longterm non-payment of fines eventually results in a prison sentence, enforced automatically if you are stopped by the police--unless you can pay up on the spot. Now critics who have called the practice extreme have a new case with which to argue their point.

Sylvain Gravel, a 35-year-old man from Repentigny, killed himself in north-end Bordeaux prison on May 6, only a few hours after he was placed in his cell. He had been incarcerated for non-payment of a $1,500 fine for vagrancy, plus accumulated court costs.

Gravel had been released the day before from a prison in St-Jérome, where he was serving a sentence for assault and mischief. After being released on probation, he ended up passing out drunk and was picked up by police, who told his family that unless the old fine was paid, Gravel would go back to jail. The family declined to pay, and Gravel was sent to Bordeaux. Several hours later, he was dead, apparently by suicide.

Official explanations of his death have discrepancies, and he may have been dead for hours before he was discovered. His family claims that he was too drunk to hang himself.

Was his suicide triggered by his abrupt reincarceration? "We don't know that. But there is an investigation going on now of the whole affair," says Jacques Dutil, spokesman for the province's correctional services department. :

--John Edmonds

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