Law360 Canada (September 14, 2026, 1:14 PM EDT) -- When I first realized I was likely to be incarcerated, I started looking for information about prisons in Canada. It turned out to be surprisingly hard to find.

I first turned to the website of the Correctional Service Canada (CSC), which runs Canadian federal prisons. Its site had virtually no information about its institutions, either for potential prisoners or for family members. Even basic information such as how you would send goods or money to a prisoner, or how you would visit or communicate by phone or mail, was not available then.

In writing this column I checked again, and the situation is not all that much better. Information now on the CSC site for families of prisoners is limited to the most basic aspects and provides very little that would help loved ones cope with a pending incarceration.

Back then, knowing little about how CSC operated, I was taken aback that there would be so little effort to help inform highly stressed people about what they or their loved ones faced. Once I was in the system, I soon learned that even current prisoners are told little or nothing about how the system works, leaving them and their families to rely on second-hand information or rumours.

Eventually, before I was sentenced, I met a few men who had done time in federal prison; their experience was so helpful to me in preparing for my own imprisonment.

But my experience throughout my time was that despite the stated belief by CSC that maintaining family relationships for prisoners is important, in practice very little was done in that direction compared to a considerable amount of obstruction. Phone calls were absurdly expensive, there were many rules around mail, very few things could be sent in to prisoners, visits occurred only at limited times, visiting procedures were cumbersome, and so on.

To take some examples, people could phone many, many times to try to arrange a visit without the phone ever being answered — and could not leave messages. Searches of visitors were intrusive, and ion scanners frequently created false positive results that led to visits being refused. I wrote previously about PFVs (private family visits). Yes, there are security concerns around contact between prisoners and others, but especially in minimum security, where most people were going to be released within a year or two, the balance seemed completely wrong and worked against successful reintegration in the community.

Back when I started looking, instead of an official source of information, I came across an internet site called prisontalk.com (PTO), which sadly no longer exists. Created years earlier by a former prisoner, it was a discussion site for and around jails and prisons. Anyone could log on anonymously, post information or thoughts or ask questions about anything, and others on the site could respond. Though the site was run from the U.S. and mostly used by Americans, it was intended to be international and had a Canadian forum within it. I was able to find some useful information there from posts about visits, possessions and other logistical matters in Canadian prisons. But what was available depended on who happened to log on and post, so it did not provide answers to everything, and some of the information was out of date or even incorrect.

After I was paroled, with the permission of my parole officer, I went back to prisontalk.com, where I found I could be quite helpful in answering questions about how the Canadian prison system worked, things like visiting procedures, mail, phone calls, sending possessions or money to prisoners, and about what conditions were really like in federal prisons. These are things that matter a lot to people but that they could not find out from any official website or other source.

Families and friends are often worried about what could happen to someone in prison because all they have to go on is what they see on TV. On PTO I could often share some encouraging words about getting through the whole experience. Being in touch with someone who had been in prison seemed comforting, as the experiences of others had been to me. Each time I was able to provide some helpful information, I felt better about myself.

PTO was also interesting from a sociological and psychological perspective. There were endless sad stories about people with blighted lives being made even worse by the criminal justice system. Yet I also found a tremendous amount of resilience and hope as people struggled, often under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to make satisfying lives for themselves and those they love. There were many discussions by people — mainly women — who had partners in prison for decades and how they sustained their relationships over that time. There were stories about people dealing with a family member with an addiction or mental health problem, and the sorrows and challenges in those situations both before and while in prison. There was a lot of discussion of domestic violence and how to respond to it. The debates on these matters on the site were often very vigorous, even heated.

One section I found especially interesting was what was called “MWI” (met while incarcerated), which was for people who fell in love, and sometimes married, someone they had met initially through writing to them in prison, including what seemed like quite a few women from other countries who had developed romantic relationships with men in U.S. prisons, often, it seemed, with life sentences.

Unfortunately, for reasons I do not know, PTO shut down around 2020, perhaps related to COVID.

I find it sad, and quite counterproductive, that people facing a highly challenging experience, and the people who support them, have so little opportunity to learn about what lies ahead and how they can cope with it most effectively. It’s another example of how, in the prison system, security concerns, no matter how poorly justified, are taken to be more important than helping prisoners lead pro-social lives.

There is a Canadian organization — Canadian Families and Corrections Network — that does try to provide some support services, but it is poorly resourced and does not have an interactive forum.

It would be in the interests of provincial jails, CSC and society broadly to support such efforts. If people knew more about how the system operated, they could better support prisoners and maintain family ties — which we know are so important to effective rehabilitation and to the welfare of those remaining in the community while loved ones are locked up.
 
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.

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