I had quite varied experiences with sleeping during my time being incarcerated, from very bad to not too bad.
My first couple of days in a provincial jail while waiting for a bail hearing, I was the third person in a cell meant for two. I slept on a very thin plastic-covered mattress on the floor, with my head near the toilet. The lights were on in the corridor outside the cell all night, and guards came through regularly. Noise from other cells was frequent, and jails are not made to cushion or reduce noise at all. In fact, they are places that create noise given the locks and bars, lots of metal, and lots of people very close together who don’t want to be there. Under these conditions — not to mention the stress of being arrested and hoping for bail — it was hard to sleep.
The second night after my arrest, I was awakened before 6 a.m. (with no food) to be transported to my bail hearing. The transport did not leave the jail until after 8 a.m. This is also typical of the way the system works. Nobody cares about making things hard for prisoners.
My next stint in jail was after my guilty plea, about two years later. Although my sentence required time in a federal prison (because it was more than two years), I was first sent to a provincial jail. Because my case was in the media quite a bit, I was immediately placed in a segregation cell. These were really terrible places for sleeping. I had a proper bed space this time, but the mattress was covered in plastic, and instead of a pillow there was a raised part of the mattress — very uncomfortable. I only had one light blanket. Also, the cells were very cold all the time, which in itself makes it hard to sleep. The light in the cell stayed on, though somewhat less bright, all night. I rigged up a towel to block some of the light from my face during the night. But between the mattress, the lack of a pillow, only one thin blanket in a cold room and 24 hours of light, I never slept more than a few hours at a time during my three weeks in that cell.
I was then transferred to a federal prison and placed in what they call an “assessment unit.” This was a very old prison, with small, decrepit cells that had metal bunk beds. The mattresses here were not plasticized, but they were very old and very thin. It felt as if I was sleeping directly on the metal bed frame. I woke up several times a night to change sides because the side I was sleeping on hurt.
Here, too, prisoners had only one thin blanket each. These facilities were not air-conditioned, either. Pillows were hit-and-miss; if you hung around for a while, you would eventually “find” a pillow, but new prisoners did not always get one.
As prisoners left the unit, which happened often, more senior prisoners would appropriate their mattresses, pillows and blankets; two mattresses felt almost like one normal one. However, guards would regularly come through the range and take all the extra blankets, pillows and towels.
Light was a problem in this setting as well. The lights in the cells went out at night, but there were no coverings on the windows, so when the sun came up — which happened around 5 a.m. when I got there in late June — the cells were flooded with light and sleeping became difficult. In the winter, I was told, cold was a big problem.
Noise was also an issue. Even at night, shouts or loud noises from any of the cells, or from the guards who went by a few times a night, could wake everyone up. On the other hand, we were locked in our cells so much of the day that having a nap was almost necessary to make the time pass. It was also very easy to get sleeping pills from the prison doctor; quite a few guys on that range slept 14 hours a day or more. I suppose it’s one way to make the days and months pass.
After nearly three months in the assessment unit, I was moved to a minimum-security prison. There we slept in bedrooms in houses — usually five to seven prisoners in a three- or four-bedroom house. Sleep here was a lot better. The beds all had reasonable mattresses, and I was issued a proper pillow and blanket on arrival. We slept in rooms where we could turn the lights out, and the windows had coverings — something that seems ordinary to most Canadians but is not the case for the vast majority of prisoners. Noise did not travel as easily in the houses as it did in the cell ranges in other settings. And here, too, while prisoners had to be at some kind of work or school in the morning, most of us also had so much extra time to fill that napping was possible. The better sleeping no doubt was one contributor to the much better state of mind of prisoners in minimum.
Only about 20 per cent of federal prisoners, and no provincial prisoners, are in settings like this minimum-security prison. For the vast majority of prisoners, sleep is a problem. But given all the other issues in prisons, why write about sleeping conditions?
My answer is that one purpose of this column has been to give readers a full sense of what the experience of being in the criminal justice system, including prison, is like. Most of us, insofar as we think about it at all, get our ideas from movies and TV, which focus, understandably, on the dramatic. But for those imprisoned, what matters most is the daily grind, the many small things, each of which makes life harder. Sleep is key to that because it shapes our mood and our ability to live well.
This month marks four full years of this column. I am grateful to Law360 Canada for providing a venue, and hope that readers have found what I write to be interesting and informative.
David Dorson is the pen name of someone who went through arrest, case disposition, imprisonment and parole in Ontario a few years ago. Law360 Canada has granted him anonymity because he offers a unique perspective on a subject that matters deeply to many readers, and revealing the author’s identity would make re-establishment in the community after serving his sentence much more difficult than it already is.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
Interested in writing for us? To learn more about how you can add your voice to Law360 Canada, contact Analysis Editor Peter Carter at peter.carter@lexisnexis.ca or call 647-776-6740.