An insight into prison life

I visit a prisoner occasionally and get furious when I see Facebook posts that boast they are living in a country club with golf, computers and gourmet meals.  This person has been in Surrey Pretrial, Alouette Institute for Women and is now in the Fraser Valley Institute for Women.

Surrey Pretrial is the scariest place I've ever visited!  The guards there are horrible to the visitors.  If you are one minute late, they won't let you visit.  They don't care if your bus was late, it's snowing or traffic is horrible, they just turn you away.  Luckily I live close and that never happened to me but I watched others be scorned when they came to visit someone incarcerated.   When you lock your belongings in a locker and clear the metal detectors you are taken to an area where there are booths with telephones.  You line up single file and go through many locked doors.  There is plexiglass between you and the inmate.  The phones are bad and you know they are listening to everything you say.  Not that I ever cared.  I also realize they house some nasty gang members awaiting trial.  Fortunately they needed more room for men and moved the women awaiting trial to Alouette in Maple Ridge.  It's a lot newer and the guards were a lot nicer.

Alouette again had the same plexiglass and a telephone system but their equipment was new and it was easy to hear.  The guards were pleasant here.  After your trial you are sent to another institution.  The inmate I visit was sent to Fraser Valley Institute for Women in Abbotsford.  She was put into maximum and then moved to medium.  Let me fill you in on prison life.

When you are travelling to Supreme Court in Vancouver you are put in a Sheriff's van.  There is a bench seat with no seat belts.  The drivers laugh when they brake hard or turn corners too fast and the prisoners are thrown around.   There are many different facilities that prisoners are kept so going to Supreme Court in Vancouver can take over three hours one way.

Food on the most part is acceptable, however, on a Sunday or holiday when they are short staffed your meals come at 10, 2 and 4.  That's it, no time to digest lunch before dinner arrives.  Milk is powdered at some of the prisons so don't think they get quality.

They earn money for working in the prison.  It's $3.25 a day.  The prison takes 30% off for "room, cable and food".  When you enter the prison you pay for your own body bag.  When you are released they return your body bag money.  Prisoners must purchase their own shampoo, toothpaste etc. from their earnings or whatever family and friends send.  They chose from a catalogue that is 30% over what the items cost at the local store.   Yes they get cable, however they don't get any publications to read a TV guide.  Shaw put a guide on one of the channels before, but with the new digital format they lost it so they channel surf.  Phone calls come out of their "bank" and are very expensive even if they are local and charged by the minute.  Computers with web access, not allowed.  Cell phones, not allowed and when I visit my cell is actually "blocked" so if you took one in there it wouldn't work anyway.  You cannot send an inmate anything.  We tried to send a book from a publisher but that was denied.

When I visit F.V.I.W. the visits are now without plexiglass.  They are in a room with a lot of light and tables and chairs.  There is a guard station and I'm sure microphones all around.  At least it's pleasant.  You need to apply to visit an inmate and go through a thorough security check.  Those checks are only good for two years and then you need to reapply.  You have to give them a passport photo each time you apply.  Again, you lock your belongings up in a locker, hang up your coat and they swab something on you to check for drugs.  You go through airport type security and two locked doors to get to the visitors area.  Prison life is full of fighting, power struggles and drugs.  It's interesting how the drugs get in there because visitors are searched and watched.

I must say the guards at F.V.I.W. are really nice.  They treat visitors with respect.  The inmate I visit had an immediate family death a few years ago and I called to see if I could visit.  It was Boxing Day and they said "yes".  I was the only one visiting at the time.  I think they bent the rules to let me visit her!

I could say a lot more but I think this is enough.  The next time you share a Facebook post saying how great prisoners have it, think about it first!