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The Current Transcript for February 10, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

[Music: theme]

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: The image of ISIS is a bunch of teenagers kind of working out their video game fantasies of cutting off people's heads. There's much more to them than that, I hate to say it, but that is the reality.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She has spent years cultivating sources among organizations known for their brutality and their terror. ISIS, al- Qaeda, and its many branches in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Islamic Maghreb, enough time to get a clear and disturbing picture of their complexities. As our own government shifts tactics in the efforts against ISIS, as Western leaders and their security officials try to anticipate terror attacks, we turn to journalist Rukmini Callimachi for insights into the people behind the terrorist organizations. Hear her in just a moment. Also today:

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STEPHEN HARPER: A life sentence in Canada will henceforth mean exactly that, a sentence for life.

AMT: Stephen Harper's vow of life for life never became law but over a decade in power, the Conservatives legislated many other changes as part of their so-called Tough-on-Crime agenda. Now that is playing out behind prison walls, pointing up problems from aging prisoners to increasing numbers of incarcerated Aboriginal women. We track the ripple effects of those policies in an hour. And when people worry about concussions, they think about professional athletes and the revelations highlighted by Hollywood.

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[whooshing sound]

Repetitive head trauma chokes the brain.

AMT: A new Canadian study suggests the risks and effects of mild concussions are far greater than first thought and include higher risks of suicide. In half an hour we will meet two women whose so-called mild concussions have affected them for years and the doctor who is urging medical profession to reconsider the risks.

I'm Anna Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

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NYT reporter Rukmini Callimachi reveals the ethical challenges covering extremist groups

Guests: Rukmini Callimachi

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I really feel that we had a chance to get Kayla out because we were in communications with them, unlike the other families. But, how do you raise $6.2 million? That pretty much made it impossible, but we feel they really did want to release Kayla.

AMT: Kayla was Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who was kidnapped by ISIS and killed while being held by the jihadist group in Syria last year. The man you just heard is Kayla's father and this week there were criminal charges in that case when a 25-year-old woman known as Umm Sayyaf, the wife of a deceased ISIS leader, was charged with conspiracy in a US court in relation to Kayla's death. According to the woman's testimony, none other than Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, had held the 26-year-old aid worker captive before her death. Her testimony offers a disturbing glimpse into the real workings of ISIS, something my first guest today has studied carefully for years. Rukmini Callimachi is a Foreign Correspondent for The New York Times, covering extremism, including al-Qaeda and ISIS. She joins us to talk about covering extremism and extremists as part of our occasional series Eye On The Media. Rukmini Callimachi is in New York. Hello.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Nice to be here, Anna Maria.

AMT: How significant is it that a US Federal Court has laid charges against Umm Sayyaf for contributing to the death of Kayla Mueller?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I think the United States is looking for any means to hold the people who did this to Kayla accountable. Umm Sayyaf, this woman is, in my opinion, a little bit far from the target. She's a 25 year old woman who was the second or third wife of this ISIS leader. It's unclear to me that she herself had much of a role in the holding of Kayla. Of course, that will come out in the deposition and in the court proceedings that follow, but I think it comes from this desire to hold these people accountable for the horrific thing that they did to this young woman and to the other American and Western hostages who were held by them.

AMT: Now Kayla Mueller's father, we just heard him say, he feels they had a chance to get her out, but a $6.2 million ransom prevented that. Based on what you know about how ISIS works, what's your view on whether she could have been released?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I think that's true. I think what he says is correct. We know that pretty much all of the European hostages, except for the Brits who like the Americans, do not pay ransoms, all of the other Europeans got out for a price. And their governments, or else proxies for their governments, were willing to negotiate those ransoms and there is still a debate in our country, in America, regarding the wisdom of the US position. On the one hand, you don't want to pay ransoms because that would encourage the taking of future citizens but on the other hand, when you contemplate the absolute horror that Kayla Mueller experienced, she was a hostage, she was tortured in captivity, and then in the final months of her captivity, she actually became a slave of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a sex slave just like the Yazidi women who are being grabbed on the mountain of Sinjar. When you contemplate that, it puts it in perspective.

AMT: You know, that story and that charge puts names and faces to individuals involved in ISIS, and in your work you bring us into the worlds of those people. So, I want to hear more about that and how you cultivate sources and the people you talk to and what you learn and maybe we can start--You had a source in Mali at one point, can you tell us about him?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: His name was Oumar Ould Hamaha, and he was the first so-called terrorist that that I spoke to. He was unusual in that I actually spoke to him by phone. Pretty much every single person since then, with a few exceptions, I have spoken to only via social media, via e-mail and via encrypted chats like telegram. But, Oumar Ould Hamaha was one of the deputies of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, at a point in time in 2012 when that group took over the northern half of Mali. It was an immense territory the size of Afghanistan, and at a time when really the world was turned away and wasn't looking, they did in Northern Mali what we later saw ISIS do in Syria. Meaning, they took over the area. They imposed their Shari'a government. They began exacting taxes, forcing women to cover themselves, chopping off the hands of thieves, and for a while they say they began to feel comfortable there and they kind of let down their guard, and Oumar Ould Hamaha was named one of their spokesmen. He began talking to reporters, including me. It was this short window of time, I would say it lasted probably only six months or so, where we could actually speak to them physically. I could get on the phone, dial this man and have a conversation with him about his you know, bizarre and upside down world view. It was very instructive for me.

AMT: What was it like to have a conversation with him?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI:[laughs] At first he comes off as completely insane. You know, he would. He was always extremely agitated on the call and I'd have to ask him over and over again, Hamaha, please slow down. Slow down. I can't type that fast, just please slow down. And he'd be very excited but over time he got to know me to the point where he started asking other reporters about me. So, a friend of mine who was working for Voice of America used to also call him occasionally. I, at the time, worked for the Associated Press and I introduced myself as working for an American news agency and Voice of America has America in it so he wrongly assumed that we are working for the same organization and he kept on asking my friend, Ann, about me. You know, what do you know about Rukmini, is she nice, is she a good colleague, questions like that which suggested he was somewhat interested in me as a human being.

AMT: So, when you would call, I guess he would begin to recognize your voice, like, oh it's you again. Is it Rukmini, kind of thing?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: He didn't just recognize my voice, he had me in his repertoire and his phone because he would always answer going bonjour, Rukmini, or he would call me, hello, the American, bonjour la Americain, hello Madame, the Americain. The thing that people don't understand about these groups is, you assume that they are going to be hateful towards you, that they'll be rude, that they would be difficult to talk to, and certainly some are, but what is surprising is when you're able to get past that veneer, some of them are quite respectful and are willing to actually engage with us if we are willing to engage with them. For example, it's very hard to quote a terrorist in a news article anywhere in the States, because the question becomes whatever they say it's—

AMT: How do you believe them?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Number one, how you believe them and number two, is it propaganda? Are we just giving them a mouthpiece for their propaganda? What I learned in that interaction with Hamaha is, I don't think he actually ever played me. You know, there were many things he told me that, at the time, I thought were interesting but I didn't dare report. An example is, this conversation was happening at roughly around the same time when the regime of Moammar Gadhafi and Libya had disintegrated and there were a lot of fears that Libya's arsenal, including its feared SA-7a and SA-7b surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of taking down a commercial airliner, that those would fall into the hands of al-Qaeda which was based at that point, just south of them in Mali. So, I asked Hamaha at one point, I said to him, you know people are talking about the fact that your group is trying to buy the surface-to-air missiles, do you have them? And he said, Madame Rukmini, Madame the American, we have the SA-7a and the SA-7b. And, let me back up, I didn't yet know the actual number of the surface-to-air missile that they were seeking. About six months later after that conversation, and of course I didn't report that because what you do with that? A terrorist spokesman says that they have this feared weapon, where you take that as a reporter?

AMT: Right. How do you prove it, what do you do?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: How do you prove it? It sounds, it's the kind of thing that sounds like hype, and it sounds like you could be exaggerating the threat of this group by putting that out. About six months later, the French intervened and they sent in ground troops to take back northern Mali, including the city of Timbuktu where Hamaha had mostly been based. I arrived there in the first wave of reporters that got there, and I began going house to house in Timbuktu, in the places where civilians were telling me that al-Qaeda had lived and had been holed up. And in these houses, I found over 5,000 pages of internal documents that they essentially left behind because they just up and ran when French came in. In one house, I found a stack of manuals with a picture of a surface-to-air missile with al-Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb logo at the top and at the bottom the words Manual for the Operation of the SA-7a and SA-7b, the exact models that he had talked to me about.

AMT: That’s fascinating. As you go on to cultivate this relationship with him, I'm wondering how you work with the juxtaposition, because you have to speak to them and you have that back and forth, but at the same time, you know what they do.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: You know, Anna Maria, to be able to talk to them, I have to sort of, I would say, shut off a part of my brain and of my humanity. You know, I pretty much burned a source and almost lost him for good. He was the then Media Liaison Officer of AQAP, al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula. I began speaking to him in November or December 2014. And I began speaking to him specifically because they were holding an American hostage, Luke Somers, and they were threatening to kill him. I lost my temper with him at the moment when they ended up killing him. There was a botched US raid to try to save him, there was a firefight. It's unclear whether it's the Americans that shot at him or whether the captors executed him on the spot, but this AQAP guy tried to tell me that this young man, whose roommate I actually know, that Mr. Somers was a spy, which I knew was wrong and I actually lost my temper because I thought that was just so despicable in the face of the fact that he's now dead. This innocent person has gone to Yemen, and it's quite personal because of course he's a journalist like me, so you can see yourself in that position. In the heated exchange, the AQAP guy blocked me, and we stopped talking. Months later, I basically went back to him and said, look I'm sorry, you know, I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I disagree with you but I'm here as a journalist to cover terrorism and your organization and I'd be grateful if you would speak to me again. We started talking and he became, I would say, over the next couple months before he was killed in a drone strike in April of last year, he became one of the most enlightening sources that I've had. He sent me documents from al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula. When the Charlie Hebdo attack happened on January 7th of last year, he was the first to tell me that immediately in the aftermath of that attack, people were trying to say that it was ISIS, and there was a lot of chatter online that it might be ISIS. I initially found myself drifting in that direction of thought, and it was very easy at that point in time to find an analyst who would say we believe it is ISIS. He's the one who put on the brakes, and he said ,Rukmini, wait. I'm talking to them. We have a statement, it's AQAP. And he was right. At that point in time we couldn't be sure, but the Charlie Hebdo investigation file has now come out and it's very clear that the shooters who went into the satirical magazine, at least one of them had traveled to Yemen and been trained by AQAP, and during the attack they claimed that in the name of AQAP. So, it's you know—

AMT: It gives you a lot of insights, not only [crosstalk] into the tentacles of these organizations, but also again, the many dimensions of the people because we tend to see them as people with horns because of what they do.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Right.

AMT: But, you actually have to kibitz with them once in a while. I mean, who was it that asked about your mom?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: All of them do. Maybe it's this thing and, I would say almost anywhere outside of America, where people ask about your family and anyway, so when they ask about my family you know, very quickly it comes out that I’m married and I love my husband very much and that I'm very close to my mom. With Hamaha, every conversation would start with the normal West African pleasantries which is how are you? How are you? How's your family? How's your family? How's the country, how's your life? It’s just kind of an exchange that happens in West Africa, but the AQAP guy did the same thing. Not to that extent, but he would always ask about my husband and my mom. One of the biggest challenges in talking to these people is convincing them that I'm not the US government [laughs]. They come from countries where there is no separation between the organs of the state and the organs of journalism. One thing that really helped help me with AQAP operative is the FBI got very upset about a quote I had from him in a story that we did. They complained in a written letter to The New York Times. Because it was the director of the FBI who complained, The New York Times did a story about his complaint and the public editor ended up doing a piece on under what conditions can we quote terrorists, and under what conditions is it legit for us to offer them anonymity. Of course, these people will only speak to you on the condition of anonymity. Hamaha was well known, but the guy in AQAP, even the people around him didn't know his real name. Anyway, that article went out and then I was able to kind of send that around, a sort of street cred for me to show that no, the US government doesn't at all like that I'm speaking to them, that in fact I'm taking heat from the side of the US government that they fear.

AMT: It's interesting, you have all sides pushing against you as you try to find and understand, and bring us some deeper understanding of what's happening right now in the world on this front.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Right. You know, Anna Maria, what's interesting about this group of people that are terrorists is, journalistically you know that the golden rule is that you always seek all sides of the story. So, for example, when I'm doing a story about a crazy person who has attacked an abortion clinic and killed doctors and nurses, my story would not be considered fair if I didn't go to the lawyer of the assailant and got whatever disclaimer they wanted to include. If I'm doing a story about a rapist of children, I would still again, go to their attorney or I would at least make an effort to find their side, right. This is the one category of people where journalists don't even try. They don't even try to reach out to them, and in fact, reaching out to them is very fraught and is painted with this brush that you might be doing something wrong. When I'm talking to them, I always feel a little bit nervous you know, am I going to get in trouble with my government for speaking to them? The material support to terrorism law is very broad in America. Material support to a terrorist, which is, the law that is being used to imprison all the people that have anything to do with ISIS, material support basically means giving anything to a terrorist group. So, me having an exchange with them, is that considered material support? Me asking them questions? I don't know but it's something that I worry about.

AMT: Well, let me ask you—

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yeah, I never worry about reaching out to the lawyer of a paedophile, right? Or to all sorts of other classes of people who do awful things.

AMT: Right, but there is a concern that by covering ISIS you give them more of a platform and more legitimacy in visibility, and I'm sure you hear that even beyond the legal issues. How do you go forward knowing that that is often a suspicion when you're writing for an audience back home?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: One thing that the audience does not understand is the volume. So, right now in my phone in the various ISIS channels that I follow, there are probably three or four new ISIS videos that I will not write about. And, there will probably be three or four in the next couple of days or weeks to come, and have been for weeks to come. And, if you look at our coverage, the last ISIS video that I wrote anything about was the one regarding the Paris attacks because it showed, it fundamentally presented news in the sense that it showed that the attackers who carried out the November 13th carnage had been in Syria and had been training for that attack for months. I think that's a news story, right?

AMT: Right. Why will you get those videos and choose not to, what is it about them that you don't feel is worth writing about?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I mean, every day they're putting out these horrific videos showing them beheading people, and showing increasingly creative ways of killing people because what they're trying to do is, they're trying to bait us into covering it. There are a lot of news organizations that cover almost every iteration. The Daily Mail in England, which is a tabloid, covers I would say you know, 60 percent of them, 70 percent of them. Every time that they put out a video showing a man with a cord around his neck and an explosive in a bomb that's about to go off, they'll do a story. I disagree with that. I think that that really does fan the flames of the propaganda. It puts them out there as the purveyors of death in this sadistic fashion. And so, from my standpoint, it's important to be selective and it's important to choose what you write about for the purpose of news. Every single thing that we write about this group needs to be for the end; of illuminating something about them; illuminating something that we don't already know about them. That they behead people, we already know. I don't need to do another story about the umpteenth beheading video.

AMT: What about the argument that we need to know that they're doing a lot of it, that it's—

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I know. That's the counterweight. People always ask me why it is that I think that ISIS is a danger, and why it is that I disagree with people, that the debate in our country right now is to what extent is ISIS truly an existential threat for America. It's clearly not an existential threat. Existential means that it threatens our existence. It does not threaten our existence. However, the poison of their ideology has seeped into the groundwater in so many places and the reason I have this conception of the group is because I'm watching their propaganda in real time. I'm seeing how incredibly vicious they are, how robbed of humanity they are, how every, this has been said many times before, but how even al-Qaeda has some principles, some limits to their brutality that ISIS just seems to have stripped away.

AMT: You know, you talk about the propaganda and we've had discussions on this program about what to call ISIS, Daesh, Islamic State, IS. We’ve had discussions about the danger of giving them more legitimacy by calling them a state and how some governments don't want to do that. Based on what you see of them, are they in fact a state?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: They're not a very good state, but I think that we are lying to ourselves if we say that they are not. I mean, they're carrying out pretty much all of the functions of a state minus the diplomatic acknowledgement that comes with being your own country. They are exacting taxes on people, they are providing public services including electricity, including water, they are organizing taxes on agriculture, road fees, they are providing transportation, bus transport between Mosul and Raqqa, so I would call them a proto-state.

AMT: You know the threat from ISIS has been a focal point for many governments, the government of Canada included. How well would you say the global fight against ISIS, and extremism at large, is working?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Well, not very well. If we look at the fact that in the last two years, they've taken a territory that's the size of England in Syria and Iraq. They've now moved into Libya. They've now declared that they're moving into Bangladesh. In Afghanistan, they've taken over much of the Taliban's territory. I mean, it just seems that they are metastasizing. The problem that Western governments are facing is, post-Iraq, I think we all understand, once you put boots on the ground, you can flush these groups out relatively quickly. Then the question becomes do you stay? And nobody wants to stay.

AMT: I'm wondering how, what you think has changed over these years of covering them, and what you've seen, and you talk about these people who have kids and they are speaking for these organizations- you know what they do better than most of us because you watch all this. I'm just wondering how that has affected you as a person who is a reporter covering this beat so intensely.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I started covering this beat in a cursory way in 2007, which was my first full year in West Africa, and that was the year when a group that was then called the GSPC pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and became al-Qaeda’s North African branch. At that point, my impression of them, I mean, they were they were basically doing attacks on UN compounds, doing attacks against Algerian troops, kidnapping foreigners and my impression of them was that they were a bunch of guys with beards and a turban living in caves or in the holes in the desert, and that there wasn't much there. It felt like a rather, excuse me for saying, but a rather boring story. In fact, whenever there was a terrorist attack or an iteration to that story, I would [laughs] try to kind of not be put on that assignment. That changed for me in 2013, which was in January 2013, when the French went in and when I was able to go to Timbuktu and I recovered these thousands of pages of internal documents. I suddenly saw this fully fledged organization that on the one hand required its operatives to turn in monthly expense reports, there was a famous letter addressed to Belmokhtar, who was the kidnapper of Canadian Robert Fowler, where he is berated for being late turning in his monthly expense report, and for arrogantly negotiating Fowler's release himself, and as a result getting only 700,000 euros, which is described as a puny sum. You suddenly see this organization that has the trappings of a corporation [laughs] that essentially requires its operatives to be accountable financially. One of the rooms that I discovered in Timbuktu is where I think the accountant for AQIM sat. It was stock full of receipts written in Arabic, whereas in Northern Mali, everybody writes in French. It had receipts for things that were as small as a kilogram of tomatoes. They were detailing every single purchase and then writing up reports on monthly expenses. So, I suddenly saw something that was more nuanced, much more organized, and I hate to say it, but much more profound than I initially thought.

AMT: Maybe more threatening with that kind of—

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Absolutely. That's the way I think. I think we continue to underestimate them. I think the image of ISIS is a bunch of teenagers that you know, that are kind of working out their videogame fantasies of cutting off people's heads. There's much more to them than that. I hate to say it, but that is the reality. They have a complex ideology that they're following, that they're putting into action. That doesn't make them any better, but as a reporter, it's more interesting to cover.

AMT: Rukmini Callimachi, thank you for speaking with me today. Thank you for your work.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Thank you. Thank you, Anna Maria. It's a pleasure.

AMT: Rukmini Callimachi is the New York Times Foreign Correspondent covering ISIS, al-Qaeda and extremism, covering that beat full time. She joined us from New York City.

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'Mild' concussion could triple risk of suicide, study suggests

Guests: Alana Hurov, Ann Zuccardy, Dr. Michael Fralick

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[crowd cheering; football player collisions]

AMT: Well if you just happen to be one of the nearly ten million Canadians who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, the excitement of watching football's biggest spectacle may have been mixed with a sense of unease over the players’ risk of concussion. Football and brain injuries are increasingly linked in people's minds right now. That's thanks to new studies, testimonials from former players, and of course the new Will Smith movie, Concussion. But what some new research is revealing is that even so-called mild concussions, the kind every day adults might suffer far from a football field, may be a bigger deal than we have previously thought. What new research from the University of Toronto shows is that over the long term, adults who suffer mild concussions are three times more likely to die by taking their own lives. We'll get to that research in a moment, but first I'm joined by two guests who are all too familiar with the reality of living with traumatic brain injury. Alana Hurov is a TV producer and yoga instructor, she suffered a concussion in 2009; she is in Toronto. Ann Zuccardy is an advocate for people with traumatic brain injuries; she received her concussion in 2001. She's in Colchester, Vermont. Hello, both of you.

ANN ZUCCARDY: Good morning.

ALANA HUROV: Good morning.

AMT: Alana I want to start with you, how did you get your concussion?

ALANA HUROV: In 2009 I was in my condo in downtown Toronto closing the blinds and as I was closing the blinds a balance, which was about six feet in length and about five pounds max, ended up falling almost from the ceiling down in between my eyes. So it struck me right in my face. Pretty instantly, I knew I suffered a concussion. I was dizzy and confused, and I broke my nose as well so I was in quite a bit of pain as well.

AMT: And how long did the doctor say it would take for the symptoms of that concussion to go away?

ALANA HUROV: I went to the emergency room and they basically said, this will be better in about a week so you should be fine. But in actual reality it took about a year for me to get back to work, at the time I was actually working at CBC and I had to kind of gradually return to work after that period of time and I still have some symptoms today, several years later.

AMT: I want to talk about those in a moment. Let's bring Ann into this conversation. What about you, Ann, how were you injured?

ANN ZUCCARDY: I was injured in 2011, I was in Germany and I was getting into a shower, I was going to get on a plane to come home the next morning and I was getting into the shower and as I stepped in one of my legs slipped and I went head first into the tile wall in the shower. What I suffered is called a coup contrecoup head injury, it's when the skull hits and the brain impacts in two areas because the brain kind of bounces within the skull. I wasn't unconscious; I didn't initially think anything was wrong. But over the course of the weekend, after I got home, things got progressively worse with me. I wasn't diagnosed until a few days later. I was also told that a few weeks of brain rest would probably cure me and I never went back to my job after that, a few weeks of brain rest only made things worse. I had to reorganize my entire life around this concussion and I still have effects today too.

AMT: Well I want to hear more about that from each of you then. Alana, when did you know that things were much more serious with your concussion?

AM: I would say after the first week when things weren’t improving, I was progressively tired, getting severe migraines, and I didn't feel like myself. I think many people don't understand that getting a concussion makes you isolated, the things that I used to enjoy like going out for lunches, going out with friends, I could no longer do. So at the point where I felt like I wasn't myself I knew I was in trouble. I was unable to drive, I remember there was a moment where I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to be driving and I almost got into a really bad car accident because I was so distracted by the fact that there was a woman walking on the street in a polka dot jacket and I actually forgot that I was driving. So I think moments when you can't participate in your own life, that's when it was very alarming to me.

AMT: Ann, what were some of the long term symptoms that you were going through?

ANN ZUCCARDY: I had a lot of those forgetful, distracted moments as well, but I also had some visual disturbances. I had problems with depth perception or anything that required me to look in several directions quickly. For a living, I worked in corporate communications so reading, writing, and speaking are a huge part of my job and I had trouble with reading. I had always been a very fast reader and I just couldn't process words the same way. I also struggled with occasional aphasia, which means I could see a word in my head but I couldn't figure out how to get it out of my mouth.

AMT: And you no longer do that work, Ann?

ANN ZUCCARDY: I no longer do that work; I've changed my whole career because of this injury.

AMT: What do you do now?

ANN ZUCCARDY: I am a speaker. I speak about the nature of intelligence, what I thought had made me smart before the concussion versus what I've learned since then and what I've learned about neural plasticity and how it applies to all of us not just the aging baby boomers.

AMT: Alana, you were a TV producer here at CBC and you couldn't come back to that job either?

ALANA HUROV: Well actually I did come back to the job, and I think I was back for about two years but I just felt different. The things that I used to enjoy, the stress, the competitiveness, the noise, I just didn't enjoy it anymore and I felt like I needed to pursue a different path. I ended up starting my own health and fitness company because I started realizing that without your health you have nothing. I've returned back into television though but it definitely changed my life in a massive way.

AMT: How did that change, and all of these things that were happening to you, how did that affect your mental health? Alana.

ALANA HUROV: It definitely impacted me; I fell into a deep depression especially when I was on long term disability. There were moments that I remember sitting in the bathtub thinking, this is pretty awful and you know I can't leave my house, I could barely walk and I remember looking at the razor in my in my bathroom and thinking like, wow, I don't have to be here anymore. At that point I knew that I needed to speak to a doctor and go on medication because I had been resisting it for so long. Luckily I had the wit about me to actually go in and take that measure otherwise you know, who knows.

AMT: Ann, does that sound at all familiar?

ANN ZUCCARDY: That sounds very familiar. I also experienced major depression, but I was in denial, I thought it was just anxiety. It took a friend pointing it out to me that perhaps I might be depressed and I was very resistant to seeking out help and to taking medication but it has improved vastly since then.

AMT: And so how are you doing now, Ann?

ANN ZUCCARDY: I still have long term effects, as I said earlier, my visual abilities aren’t as good as they used to be, I still have trouble with speaking sometimes. I just have to go slow and I cannot multitask. We all think we can multitask, and science has shown that the human brain just isn't designed for that. For me it's really true, I have to take one thing at a time and I have to go much slower than I used to go. That's a good thing I think.

AMT: What about you, Alana?

ALANA HUROV: I would say long term effects would be hearing. I have problems going into loud places. Generally I will hear the loudest sound and it’s very hard to differentiate when people are speaking to me. So my life of going out to parties and being really social in that respect has definitely changed. Visually, I feel like at times if something's moving too quickly I have to actually turn away from it and I can't look. Even facial recognition, I've had moments where I’ll be sitting across from someone and they’ll be like, hey, how’s it going, and I actually have no idea who that person is. Whereas that was one of my greatest strengths and I could instantly remember a person, their name, and different details about their lives. It's greatly impacted for sure.

AMT: It's really interesting, you've both been so affected and it sounds like you discovered how this affected you only when it did. There was really no one to say, hey, you can expect this or that.

ANN ZUCCARDY: Yes.

AMT: Yeah.

ALANA HUROV: Absolutely. Even going to my family doctor, I was probably going to see him at least once a week, but it wasn't until I actually found out about places like Toronto Rehab that have teams of people that can help you. In a lot of different cities, you wouldn’t have access to services with people who are trained in this. But it really took my own doing, to actually find those resources.

AMT: Well I've got a doctor who's been looking at this closely, waiting in the wings, so thank you both for telling us your stories and for sharing all of this with us.

ALANA HUROV: Thank you so much.

ANN ZUCCARDY: Thank you.

AMT: That's Alana Hurov, she's a television producer and yoga instructor, her concussion happened in 2009, she's in Toronto. Ann Zuccardy is an advocate for people with traumatic brain injuries. She had a concussion in 2011; she joined us from Colchester, Vermont. As I mentioned, a new study does show that adults with concussions are three times more likely to take their own lives than the general population, so what can we learn from this research? Dr. Michael Fralick is a chief medical resident in internal medicine at the University of Toronto. He's a researcher for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; he worked on that study, he's in our Toronto studio. Hello, welcome.

MICHAEL FRALICK: Hi. Thanks for having me.

AMT: So before we get into your research, what were you thinking as you were listening to Alana and Ann?

MICHAEL FRALICK: Certainly hearing they’re stories, there are features that we hear quite commonly about individuals who have symptoms of concussions. When both Alana and Ann we're mentioning about the head trauma, and how neither of them lost consciousness, there's this misconception that, I didn't have a concussion unless I lost consciousness which is certainly not the case. The less common feature, for both of them, is certainly how long their symptoms lasted thereafter. Typically symptoms resolve within one week but some individuals can have protracted symptoms. And interestingly one of the risk factors for protracted symptoms we know is, women for example have protracted symptoms, as well as people who've had previous concussions. Their discussion about experiencing depression thereafter occurs but isn't the norm. It's a more so a subset of patients who experience depression thereafter.

AMT: How did their stories illustrate the findings from the study you coauthored?

MICHAEL FRALICK: Sure. Our study was a 20 year study that captured data from everyone who sustained a concussion within the province of Ontario. So if you sought your family doctor or you went to the emergency room, as long as you sought care we captured that data, with the exclusion of very severe injuries. We followed those individuals forward on average for about 10 years to determine their risk of suicide and suicide attempt.

AMT: And what did you find?

MICHAEL FRALICK: The main finding was that the risk of suicide attempt was about threefold the population norm. The risk of committing suicide as well was approximately three times the population norm for Ontario.

AMT: That sounds pretty frightening for anyone who's got a loved one who's had a concussion. Tell me more.

MICHAEL FRALICK: For sure. So it's important to articulate that this is an increased relative risk. So I agree that seeing a headline that says threefold increase risk of concussion can be quite alarming. But it's important to mention that we included 235,000 people who sustained a concussion; 99.8 or so per cent did not commit suicide. It is far and away the minority, a small, small minority of individuals that go on to commit suicide after their concussion. That doesn't mean it's not important, but I hope it's reassuring for the listeners that it's a very, very small subset.

AMT: But it does signal to medical professionals that they have to be on the lookout for this does it not?

MICHAEL FRALICK: Yeah, and I think our study helps to provide some data in terms of who are the individuals at an even higher risk. For example some of the things we found in our study, people who sustained multiple concussions were more likely to commit suicide, people with a past history of depression, predating the concussion, for example individuals with a past suicide attempt, and men. As well as individuals with low socioeconomic status or people with a substance use disorder.

AMT: It's interesting because a great deal of research has focused on professional athletes and children. But this area of the day to day concussions of adults, why were you interested in that?

MICHAEL FRALICK: Partially for the reason that you're alluding to. I remember sort of looking at newspapers and it almost seemed to be presumed that because there were some very sad and unfortunate stories about isolated NFL players or NHL players who had concussions and went on to commit suicide thereafter. I wondered if it's truly just restricted to that group or if more individuals might be affected and that's what we found. This was not a study of 235,000 professional athletes. This was 235,000, for the most part, your average individual living in Ontario.

AMT: And our last two guests, I mean really freak accidents, right? Just something that anybody could do. A freak accident in the sense that something happens and then it has all of these domino effects, but also that one is closing the blinds and the valance falls on her, the other one steps into the shower, it's something all of us do all the time.

MICHAEL FRALICK: Yeah, and certainly unfortunate events for both Ann and Alana. The majority of concussions that occur are usually related to a workplace injury, or an injury sustained during a recreational activity, or an injury during a motor vehicle collision for example. So it's less common, but certainly can happen.

AMT: So based on your study, what should adults who have suffered concussions be on the lookout for in terms of their mental health?

MICHAEL FRALICK: It's a very good question. So I think remembering that for the majority of individuals, within a week or two, your symptoms really should resolve. People who are having lingering symptoms thereafter, they need to seek medical attention, speak to their family doctors to determine whether or not there might be something else going on or whether or not they might be developing symptoms of anxiety or depression. So a big part is really going to see your family doctor, another part is sort of the secondary prevention. After you've sustained a concussion, that's probably the highest risk time period for another concussion to occur. So after the event has occurred that's a time to rest, that isn't the time to be exerting yourself vigorously.

AMT: Another one can occur because you're just more vulnerable because of what's going on?

MICHAEL FRALICK: More vulnerable and also it suggests that the repeated trauma over such a short time period can have potentially further deleterious effects than just an individual concussion.

AMT: It's interesting, even 10 years ago people weren't wearing helmets routinely but now we wear them skiing, snowboarding, and biking. I guess that's important.

MICHAEL FRALICK: Exactly and I think that gets at what can we do for primary prevention, what can we do to prevent these from occurring in the first place? Things like wearing a helmet, wearing a mouth guard for sports like rugby, hockey, and football, and the importance of using seat belts. Like I mentioned, a lot of concussions actually occur after a motor vehicle collision. So that's one piece of it, that’s something the individual can do. But there are things the system can do and the system has done, for example raising the age at which contact sports are allowed and also changing rules about head injuries in sport.

AMT: It's important to hear what you've been working on, thank you for coming in.

MICHAEL FRALICK: Oh thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

AMT: Dr. Michael Fralick, chief medical resident in internal medicine at the University of Toronto, a researcher at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, he's in our Toronto studio. Let us know how this resonates with you, if you've had an experience with concussions. Go to www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, click on the contact link. You can also tweet us @thecurrentCBC or find us on Facebook.

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Conservative tough-on-crime policy collides with shifting prison demographics

Guests: Judy Thomson, Kate Johnson, Kim Pate, Howard Sapers

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

STEPHEN HARPER: Keeping dangerous criminals behind bars and out of neighbourhoods. [water dripping] Ending automatic release… Repeat dangerous offenders… [water rushing] Put an end to conditional sentences…

VOICE: Ripple Effect [voice echoes]

STEPHEN HARPER: Change the laws regarding deemed not criminally responsible… Got rid of the Faint Hope Clause… Serve multiple sentences, not at the same time but one after another. God forbid we should ever find ourselves saying that we should have no one better then to release such a criminal.

AMT: Well, during its almost decade in power Stephen Harper's Conservative government introduced one tough-on-crime bill after another. According to one estimate, the Conservatives brought in one new law and order bill for every month and a half in power. Many of those bills became law despite objections at the time. Today, the ripple effect of all of that legislation is on vivid display in Canada's prison system and the inmates who make up that prison population. The shifting demographics inside our country's jails have consequences for policymakers, prisoners, and society. We're exploring that shift today as part of our project Ripple Effect. In certain parts of the country, notably Ontario and Quebec, one of the starkest shifts in the prison population is that it is getting older. Judy Thomson knows this well. Judy Thomson is in her 60s and was released just last year after 40 years of incarceration in penitentiaries across the country serving time for several convictions, including murder. Judy was jailed as a man. She began her gender transition after her release. Judy Thomson is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

JUDY THOMSON: Hello. How are you?

AMT: Well, I'm fine and I'm curious to know your story. You went into prison in your 20s? You came out in your 60s?

JUDY THOMSON: Yeah, I had a couple of short releases but they didn't last too long and that sort of stuff. I wasn't ready to accept the rules and regulations of the community that I was living in, or any community, I guess. And it takes a while for some of us to grow up.

AMT: How does the prison experience change as you go from being a young person to essentially a senior citizen?

JUDY THOMSON: Well, it's hard because if you allow yourself to get soft and warm and cuddly, you get ate up by the younger population, that sort of stuff.

AMT: You get you get eaten up by them? What do you mean? What happens?

JUDY THOMSON: When we were younger, and that sort of stuff, we sort of controlled the drug flow and everything else that happens in that world in there. And as you get older, unless you want to curl up in a ball and lay in your bed and watch TV, then you have to stay in shape and stay on top of things or else a lot of people end up dead.

AMT: A lot of older people?

JUDY THOMSON: Yes.

AMT: Because of prison fights? Or people actually- other prisoners targeting them?

JUDY THOMSON: You’re targeted in some aspects, if you're in the drug system and, yeah, in the drug system inside on a daily basis. And some people get through. I was lucky to get through and that sort of stuff. And other people weren't as lucky.

AMT: So, as you age in prison what are the other challenges do you face?

JUDY THOMSON: Well…

AMT: That's a pretty big one, by the way, just the idea that you become more vulnerable to people who might want to get rid of you. But what other kinds of things?

JUDY THOMSON: The bottom line is I believe that most of us when we start our crime life we don't think that we’re going to live to see 25 or 30 or any old age. And then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and you're 60-some years old and it's a weird feeling. It's... God, how do you explain it. It's scary. Being old to me is more scary than being young in jail because in reality we had our sports, we had our food, we had our TVs, we had the clothes, eventually, that we wanted to buy and wear. And in some cases, we had our sex. The only thing they could take away from us is having children, raising children and that sort of stuff.

AMT: What about the medications for illnesses as you get older?

JUDY THOMSON: Oh, god. I had my knee replaced twice. I’ve had my hip replaced. I fell last year just the month before I get out and broke my femur, and that sort of stuff. My blood pressure was high and they had me and eight or ten pills and eventually through most of them in the garbage went with two or three. And it's a pill popper’s dream in there, if you like pills, and you can pretty well Coax and cajole and get something to take you away from the everyday humdrum life of prison.

AMT: Now, I mentioned your transition since your release. Did you start transitioning in prison? How did the system treat you?

JUDY THOMSON: Well, I was, let’s see, I was grabbed the 29th of October, 2014 and I sat in my cell that night, here at the Ottawa [indecipherable], and I made up my mind, I was not going to go back and become the animal that I had been to stay alive. And so I talked to the psychologist at the Ottawa Dentention Centre, started to come out there. Well, I've always been bi, more bi than straight and I couldn't really pursue, in the first 40 years, the idea of transgendering and because you get ate up pretty quick, you get used and abused and set aside if you wanted to go through that. And if you didn't want to be used and abused, then you would have a lot of problems sort of thing.

AMT: You say you were grabbed?

JUDY THOMSON: Well, I was arrested by the ROPE squad and sent back by my PO at that point.

AMT: Oh, you had been on parole?

JUDY THOMSON: Yes, I was. A bit of time but because I hadn’t told her about different things- there was no criminal charges, no charges at all except I wasn’t being transparent and both my sexuality about people I was talking to and that sort of stuff, who didn't even, as far as I know, didn't have criminal records. I'm not mister personality at the best of times.

AMT: I was going to ask you—You know, there would be some people listening to you and think, well, you know, you were incarcerated for many things, including murder.

JUDY THOMSON: Yes.

AMT: Why should I do the Canadian public be concerned about you growing older in prison. How do you answer them?

JUDY THOMSON: I really don't know how to answer that. I don't think very many people in the world, including my family, would lose any sleep if I did the rest of my life in jail and whatnot. The only thing I can prove is-- The only thing I can attest to is the system sets down rules and regulations and how we're supposed to live to get ahead in that system. And May 9th this year I'll be drug-free, heroin, speed, and booze and everything since 1996. My record inside the last 20 years has been pretty clean and what not. But as far as how I can sell myself to the public, I am just dealing with different people here in Ottawa, like Sarah Cross and the Salon Bliss girls and Dave Mancini, who runs the Independent Store underneath the halfway house I'm in. And the girls, oh god—

AMT: You’re getting help from a lot of people, is what you’re saying?

JUDY THOMSON: From a lot of people. Like, I’ve got 30- I did a tally the other day- 30 friends that are non-criminal.

AMT: That's a big deal. That’s a very big deal, Judy Thomson.

JUDY THOMSON: It is. Yeah.

AMT: We have to stop here, but thank you for sharing your story with us. It's important hear your voice.

JUDY THOMSON: Well, I've heard your voice a lot. I used to listen to you and [indecipherable] in those places. You were-- you're an awesome lady.

AMT: Well, thank you for talking to me today.

JUDY THOMSON: Okay. Thank you.

AMT: Bye bye.

JUDY THOMSON: Bye bye.

AMT: Well, my next guest is listening and she spent a lot of time on the inside counselling inmates and witnessing the effects of aging on the incarcerated. Kate Johnson spent five years as the chaplain at the Joyceville Minimum Security Institution in Kingston, Ontario. She left that position three years ago. She’s now the chaplain at Queen's University in Kingston. And Kate Johnson joins us from there. Hello. Good morning.

KATE JOHNSON: Good morning.

AMT: Well, what-- As you listen to my last guest about growing old in prison, what sticks out for you?

KATE JOHNSON: A couple of things really stick out for me. One is that actually we have a growing number of people coming into prison aged as well as people who are a long time in on a life sentence, as Judy was before her day parole. And that, well, I understand the argument that, you know, they've done bad things, in some cases the worst things we can imagine, why should we care? Putting their own humanity aside, which is an issue for me, there are issues in terms of the humanity of their families. If they have families and the expense to taxpayers of providing very expensive care for people who are low risk and really could be safely managed in the community.

AMT: And, well, tell us about Joyceville Minimum Security. You left there. I guess they privatized the chaplaincy, did they not? You were working as a chaplain before the privatisation system came in.

KATE JOHNSON: That's right and I worked for my church and felt that I could do the job with integrity under my church's auspices, but wasn't sure how things would be once the system was privatized and so I chose to leave before the privatisation started. And so Pittsburgh at one time held 250 inmates and there were four houses that had disability access. So people were often brought to Pittsburgh if they had more complicated medical needs and mobility issues because we could house them there. The nursing staff did the best they could to care for those people. The correction staff did the best they could. And then often inmates were employed to clean those houses and to be the cooks for those houses for guys who otherwise wouldn't be able to.

AMT: I just want to understand- you said Pittsburgh.

KATE JOHNSON: Sorry.

AMT: Joyceville. Okay.

KATE JOHNSON: Joyceville Minimum was called Pittsburgh Institution.

AMT: Okay.

KATE JOHNSON: I’ll try to remember to call it Joyceville.

AMT: Okay, well, let me cut to the chase here. So you have a lot of elderly inmates there. What was--Why were they going there?

KATE JOHNSON: Well, for two reasons. One, because historically the programming that was available for low risk sex offenders was at Pittsburgh and often people who start their sentences late in life are low risk recidivism sex offenders and then the other reason was that Pittsburgh- sorry- Joyceville Minimum is designed to move people back into the community. It's a reintegration facility. And so lifers who are later in their sentence would also go there which would create a critical mass of senior citizens.

AMT: Okay. And low risk sex offenders we're going there at an older age because? They were getting incarcerated later because people had finally, like, the law had finally caught up with them?

KATE JOHNSON: Exactly. Their victims had finally found the courage to charge them and then by the time it works its way through the system they're often at an advanced age.

AMT: Okay. So what did you see in terms of the incarceration of older prisoners that we need to think about?

KATE JOHNSON: Well, certainly, they were prey to the younger men in the facility to some degree. To my mind, the issue of the expense of trafficking them back and forth to town for medical care is a significant issue, the pressure on security staff who have minimal medical training to be caring for people who are really palliative is a significant issue, and then for the families, who choose to stay in contact with their loved ones, those are really the people that we’re punishing the most when a person in an advanced stage of disease.

AMT: Okay. When you say advanced stage of disease, who old are we talking here?

KATE JOHNSON: The oldest guy to start a sentence at Pittsburgh- at Joyceville- when I worked there was 88 years old.

AMT: Okay. And so, essentially, the medical issues that come for older people are sort of, what, they’re increased, I guess, in situations.

KATE JOHNSON: Right. Exactly. And the stress of going through the court process would often advance disease. So I buried six people while I worked there. We sent several other bodies home to be buried by family and many people had disease progress quickly as they were in the court system and then come to us really quite disabled- ALS, Parkinson's, cancer, diabetes, and so on.

AMT: Okay. Well, Kate Johnson we have to leave it there, but thank you for giving us a little glimpse into that.

KATE JOHNSON: Thank you.

AMT: Kate Johnson, five years as the chaplain of Joyceville Minimum Institution in Kingston, Ontario. She left that position three years ago. Well, if we continue to look at shifting demographics inside Canadian prisons, women make up only a small percentage of the federal prisoner population but there has been a huge spike in part of the female population. Between 2002 and 2012 the number of indigenous women in Canada's prison system grew by 97 percent. In fact, today, more than one in three women in federal institutions is an indigenous woman. For more on what that means I'm joined by Kim Pate. She is the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Kim Pate is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

KIM PATE: Hello.

AMT: Why are there so many more women? Why that 97 percent increase in the number of Aboriginal women?

KIM PATE: Well, I think there are a number of issues and we’re in the midst of those discussions right now. It's very much linked to issues like missing and murdered indigenous women, like the work that Cindy Blackstock and others have been doing, trying to improve conditions on reserves particularly for young people. And it's very much linked to the fact that many indigenous peoples are documented from birth to death but they're under-protected and over-policed in terms of the manner in which they're dealt with by every system and so we're more likely to see them more marginalized, more vulnerable, more victimized. And when there are inadequate resources in the community, as there are increasingly, more likely to end up criminalized and imprisoned. In some cases, we actually, in some cases, see people being picked up and jailed because there's no other place for them. And for women in particular, in my experience, even more so in some ways than when I worked with young people, we tend to see them jailed for matters that we might not see men and young people jailed.

AMT: Such us?

KIM PATE: Well, things like if they're on the street and they’re are involved in the drug trade or they're involved in relationships that are seen as problematic. I mean, unlike the situation that Judy described, of being picked up and released, where they're increasingly likely to be jailed whether they're being picked up and related to somebody else who is involved in a drug scene or a drug offense or because, if they’re own parole, that they're involved in a relationship with someone who may be seen as a problematic.

AMT: So if we're talking about the ripple effects of the tough-on-crime agenda what changes to the justice system have led to this, to women being incarcerated?

KIM PATE: So sorry to interrupt. So we're seeing things like longer sentences, more mandatory minimum sentences, fewer conditional sentences, fewer opportunities to be released on parole. It's long been the issue that Aboriginal women in particular are more likely to be classified as higher security and there have been some cases just in the in the last few months that have really challenged the security classification scheme and we've been challenging it for a couple of decades now. They’re more likely to be classified as higher security because they come in with more issues and needs. The needs get translated essentially into risk factors. Then they’re more likely to be held in higher security and less likely to be released on conditional release. Then when they are released on conditional release, they are returned to a community that may be lacking many of the resources we know are lacking in all kinds of communities, particularly for those who are poorest and who are most struggling and so they’re also more likely to be returned to prison on parole violations. And then they’re also more likely to accumulate charges inside which, again, many of the public became aware of during the inquest into Ashley Smith's death—

AMT: I was just going to ask you about this.

KIM PATE: Yeah, a lot of people accumulate charges while they're inside, as well, in a way that didn't happen more than 30 years ago when I first started doing this work.

AMT: Well, and of course, a lot of the problems around Ashley Smith relate to segregation. Have things improved for female prisoners since all of the things we've learned about her story?

KIM PATE: I would say no. I think that while we may see fewer people in what is actually termed a segregation unit, increasing areas of the prisons for women are segregation areas and so the entire maximum security area is increasingly more segregated, less access to programs and services. We know that, particularly in the prisons for women but also in many of the prisons for men and young people, those with mental health issues, again, another huge category where women, in particular indigenous women, are overrepresented and end up housed in the most secure settings, in large part, because it's the easiest place for staff to watch them. But once they're there, their security concerns trump their therapeutic concerns, we end up seeing the situations that we saw unfolding with Ashley.

AMT: Just before I let you go, what about-- A lot of them are mothers. What happens to their kids when they're in there?

KIM PATE: Well, the estimates are- we don't have good research in Canada but certainly in the States- one of the things we know is consistent is that, you know, if you compare men and women, the majority of women who go to prison are moms before they go to prison and many of them were sole supports of their children beforehand. About 90 percent of the children of women in prison end up in the care of the state versus about ten percent of the children of men. And so we're looking at huge human and social cost in addition to financial costs that Judy talked about. And, you know, one little known fact that perhaps we can leave many people and many of your listeners to think about is the fact that one of the things Nelson Mandela did when he became president that very few people know about is that he freed all the mothers in prison who had children under the age of 12 because he recognized that to jail a woman was to actually relegate generations to come to the same subjugation those women were facing and he also recognized that many in the did not pose a risk to public safety and that’s certainly the issue that we see.

AMT: Okay. Well, I'm going to pick that up with our next guest. Kim Pate, thank you for your time.

KIM PATE: Thank you, Anna Maria.

AMT: Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. She's in Ottawa. And Howard Sapers is joining us now. He's the Correctional Investigator of Canada. It is his job to report on the things that are not working in the corrections system. The government depends on his findings to inform its policy decisions. Howard Sapers is in Ottawa. Hello.

HOWARD SAPERS: Good morning.

AMT: Well, we're hearing all sorts of problems here. Aging in prison, lack of services, perhaps a need for reform in how we incarcerate certain segments of the population. Where do we start? What's on your mind?

HOWARD SAPERS: Well, there's a number of things and the impacts of the demographic change in our federal penitentiaries can't be underestimated. And it's all operations in corrections. We've been talking about older offenders. We've made a recommendation that the correctional service of Canada has to have a much more strategic approach to dealing with these demographic changes. So for older offenders, that kind of an approach would include planning geriatric services, retrofitting cells for assistive aids. I mean, prisons weren't designed for walkers and wheelchairs and hospital beds, but, increasingly, that's what we're seeing inside. The programs have to change, rules around access to telephones and cell effects have to change. Palliative care and end of life care are becoming operational challenges inside prisons, so there's a number of recommendations that we've made. And even going back half a dozen years to 2010, we asked the correctional service of Canada to ensure that their health status admission assessments properly addressed those that were aged over 50. We wanted to make sure those assessments were completed and that the information was used. That audit still hasn't been completed, so.

AMT: Can I just jump in here for a second? Is this because the population itself is aging and so we see that reflected in our prisons or is this because we're keeping people in there longer?

HOWARD SAPERS: Well, it's a combination of things. Population demographics are certainly a driver. General society, we're aging and that's reflected in our prison population. But more dramatically have been the impacts of policy changes. So the restriction on the use of parole, the abolition of what was called accelerated parole release, the increase in mandatory minimum penalties, more prosecution of white collar offenders, and sex offenders also are adding to this population of aged over 50. And one thing to remember that this is a population, generally speaking, that’s much more ill and their health is much more compromised anyway.

AMT: They've lived a harder life.

HOWARD SAPERS: Right. So the estimates are that if you're in prison, you’re ten or 15 years old or physiologically than you are chronologically, so a 55-year-old in prison has the health needs of a 70-year-old. So we're seeing things like onset of dementia and Alzheimer's, etc., as well as all of the physical vulnerabilities and challenges.

AMT: Now, you were kind of warning about this, were you not, over the last several years? That there are going to be a sort of domino ripple effects to this.

HOWARD SAPERS: Yeah, we tried many times in our reports to point out areas that required a more coordinated and strategic approach, rather than an ad hoc approach. There were so many changes and so many reforms. It was very hard for the correctional service of Canada to keep up with them and nobody took the time to stand back and look at the cumulative impact of all of this change. So the correctional service, to their credit, has been successfully treading water, but they haven't really been able to get ahead of some of these demographic curves.

AMT: And so how is the new government confronting this?

HOWARD SAPERS: Well, I guess we're still going to wait and see. I know that there are discussions underway. I’m very encouraged to see the content of the mandate letters that addressed some of these issues, not just in public safety but also in justice and indigenous affairs and in health. I'm waiting to have my most recent annual report tabled in Parliament. That'll be coming soon. And we've made some recommendations about the demographics, particularly older offenders, and so we'll get their response to those recommendations, I'm hoping, within the next month.

AMT: Okay. I know that you have to wait for that report to be tabled, but can you give us just some ideas of the how-- Are there any things that can be handled rather quickly in dealing with some of this? Briefly.

HOWARD SAPERS: Yeah, I think that there are some operational changes the correctional service of Canada can make, as they say, a renewed emphasis on coordinating their response to these demographic changes. This doesn't require legislation or even new funding. There may be some legislative changes coming down the pipeline. Things like rethinking access to conditional release and parole and what the role of halfway houses in the community can be. Also engaging in a discussion between the Correctional Service and others when it comes to end of life care and moving low risk offenders, who are terminally ill, out of very expensive penitentiaries and into settings where they'll be able to die, perhaps, closer to home.

AMT: Well, there's a lot to ask about then, Howard Sapers. We look forward to your report being tabled as well so we can get more information, but thank you for what you've said today.

HOWARD SAPERS: My pleasure. Good morning.

AMT: Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator for Canada. He’s in Ottawa. Now, we did request an interview with the Public Safety Minister, Ralph Goodale, the commissioner of Corrections Canada, Don Head, the Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould, and the Minister of indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn Bennett. None was available to speak to us today. We will stay on this story however. That is our program for today. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Feb. 10, 2016 Episode Transcript

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