Ethnic prison blues

>> Programs for rehabilitating minority criminals are woefully lacking, says academic

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If anybody has an idea why ethnic minorities have been filling Quebec prisons at an alarming rate over the last few years it could well be Emerson Douyon. After a three-decade teaching career, the retired academic has set up a dozen-member committee to study minority incarceration in Quebec-based federal prisons. The former U of M criminology professor is troubled by the fast-increasing over-representation of minorities in the populations at Donnaconna, Cowansville, Ste-Anne-des-Plaines and other Quebec-based federal penitentiaries.

"We've been pointing out this trend for a long time and it hasn't changed. It's even getting worse. The number of young ethnics in prison keeps on rising," says Douyon. "The number of Haitians in prison, for example, is going up and the street-gang problems that have seen many sent inside are far from being resolved."

Although cash has been directed to experts to research the phenomenon, Douyon says that there's been no breakthrough. "It looks like the rising number of minorities in the prison system is a chronic problem that will preoccupy us for a long time."

Three and a half years ago, the Haitian Consulate put out a troubling report on delinquency, and the number of Haitians in prison is believed to have risen since then. Lionel Laviolette, the Montreal-based Consul General of Haiti, says "young Haitians are being imprisoned far beyond their numerical proportions. The first Haitians who moved here were professionals, but the second wave seems to have had difficulties with cultural integration." He also cites low-paying jobs as a factor: "An immigrant parent often has to work two, three shifts at a job--they don't have time to follow their kids."

Lawless youth

"Our knowledge is still very thin on ethnicity and criminality," says Sylvie Hamel, one of the researchers working on a U of M grant project to try to decipher why certain young people veer toward lawlessness. "We've got very factual literature talking about which ethnic gang has what tendency to go into what type of crime, but we have little information on why these individuals go into the delinquency. I don't see that as a cultural thing so much as a product of social conditions. In fact, what we see in gangs lately is that they're becoming less ethnically homogeneous."

Commander Michel Roussy of the MUC Police says that about 20 local street gangs provide needs for their 500 members. "Community organizations sometimes aren't able to satisfy a young person's psychological needs, and a gang can provide the attention and affection he's not getting elsewhere," says Roussy. "These are often people from a poor background, single mothers, little education. There's an absence of parental control and no frame of reference--some of these kids join street gangs as young as 12 or 13." Last year local police cracked down on street gangs, arresting over 170 suspects for activities related to the gangs in a two-month period.

The grab for rehab

Once inside the prison system, resources are devoted to rehabilitate criminals, but Douyon says that programs have been woefully lacking. Although massive amounts of money are spent on the effort, Douyon says the programs aren't cutting it. "They've not given extraordinary results. The programs weren't thought out for minority cultures and are ill-adapted for Haitians, Jews, Pakistanis or Sikhs."

For example, inmates in the rehabilitation programs will often be eager to sign up for certain courses that are more culturally relative to them, only to find they're not offered in his institution. "It's a handicap if you don't take the courses, because at the end of the line the parole board is going to scold inmates for not having done enough to change, even though they wanted to take courses that weren't made available."

Another problem for incarcerated minorities is that they're underrepresented on inmates' committees, which has meant less say in their own causes. Only recently, for example, have prison authorities started a program allowing ethnic and religious groups, who frequently have their own dietary needs, to cook their own food.

And although the social structures of the prison system virtually force ethnic minorities to band together, such behaviours are dimly viewed when it comes time to apply for a conditional early release. "It's normal that the people who speak the same languages, same traditions, same cultures and interests find each other's company," says Douyon. "But when they do, they're reproached for reconstituting the same gangs they had outside of prison inside the prison milieu. It's viewed badly at their probation hearing. It's a vicious circle that stops them from changing and progressing."