Prisoners Justice Day at 50: Grassroots Abolition

This year marked the 50th annual Prison Justice Day (PJD, also Prisoners Justice Day) which is held every August 10. A day of solidarity among prisoners and between prisoners and people on the outside, PJD is both memorialization, a day to remember those who have died in prison, and resistance. Over the years it has been marked by work strikes, fasting, and noise demos, involving people on the inside (who drive it always) and the outside of prison walls.

PJD has its origins in Millhaven Maximum Penitentiary in Bath, Ontario, on August 10th, 1975, when prisoners took action in honor, and memory, of Edward Nalon, who had bled to death in administrative segregation on August 10th, 1974. On this first anniversary of Nalon’s death, prisoners at Millhaven refused to work, went on a one-day hunger strike and held a memorial service. They did so knowing that it would mean being put in solitary confinement themselves. Indeed, many of those identified by prison staff as leaders would still be in segregation a year later (lilley 2014).

In May 1976, another prisoner, Bobby Landers, died of a heart attack in the same unit. He had tried to get help, but the call buttons had not been repaired. The inquest into his death determined that he should have been in intensive care, not solitary confinement. Prisoners at Millhaven raised the call “for August 10th to be a national day of protest against an apathetic prison system that did not seem to care if people in prison lived or died” (PJD Committee 2005).

Over the years prisoners have faced various forms of repression for their efforts to honor PJD and organize their own resistance inside. Not only were prisoners subjected to stints in segregation for their participation, but they were also often transferred to a different institution after speaking up (lilley 2014).

Still, their organizing, and the organizing of allies outside, many of whom are anarchists, all of whom are abolitionist, continues. Such is the case in so-called Vancouver (the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations) where prisoner justice groups such as the Prisoners’ Justice Day Committee and Joint Effort continue to host events. I participated in the 50-year PJD event on August 10 (as I have in previous years). Each year, PJD organizing exemplifies a powerful abolitionist perspective and offers real world examples of work being done to address the harms of prisons and to think about alternatives to statist punitive approaches.

PJD 50 in Vancouver

Prisoners built this culture of resistance and uprising. PJD organizer Meenakshi Mannoe stressed that PJD is a day built from the ground up by prisoners and grassroots community allies, not by academics or non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Many professionalized advocacy groups are coopted by the state and/or depend on the government for funding and status. Programming is carried out within the logic of the prison, even on the outside. So some groups do not advocate strongly because of funding concerns.

Mannoe also emphasized that fifty years later we still have people dying in prison and dying shortly after release. Capitalist society still relies on prisons to address social problems, worsening them and deepening misery.

Speakers at the PJD event are primarily those who have served time in the genocidal institution of prisons. Those in attendance were reminded that Indigenous people have also served time in the genocidal institution that is Canada. The day is for all who have been stolen from our communities by the state.

In Canada, the prison system is an outcrop of the genocidal policies of the capitalist state, including colonialism. This continues as Indigenous women are over-classified in maximum security placements, solitary, etc. There is a necessary disruption to flows of capital in opposing prisons and the systems that require them. The prison system is also a continuation of colonization. There are at least four or five recorded deaths in prison of Indigenous women each year, which receive little public attention.

In the current context, connections were also made between prisoners in colonial Canada and prisoners of imperialism in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo. Notably the Canadian state and Canadian capital are involved in these imperialist atrocities.

Attendees were also reminded that under capitalism, the distinction between political and non-political prisoners is a false one. All prisoners are political prisoners in this capitalist system which predominantly captures and imprisons poor, racialized, and Indigenous people. Disproportionately, for survival strategies.

The first speakers were several women involved with Joint Effort (JE), co-organizing group for the event. Joint Effort, which grew from the BC Federation of Women, has been a force of continuity behind PJD. They are grassroots abolitionists and prisoner led. JE is made up of women organizing women inside and when they are outside. They emphasize the importance of having someone greet you upon release and support you after you have been released. In the Canadian context, people are released with nothing.

Right now, JE is focusing a lot of work on “pen packs” (penitentiary packs)—items for people entering federal prisons, including clothing so that women do not have to wear penitentiary clothes. This is an accessible way of providing material support that allies can readily contribute to. It shows a practical means of solidarity, support, and care with real world benefits.

One speaker who did 20 years inside, including two years of segregation over that time, told of women strapped to beds, women stripped because they may have been crying. Not only are people stripped literally, but they are also stripped of their identities when imprisoned.

Others spoke to the sexual abuse that women are subjected to by guards and maintenance workers. These are covered up. Complaints about these abuses are punished in write-ups by authorities.

JE members stress the need for humanizing people who have been dehumanized inside. One member spoke about how prisoners are programmed in prison, and all treated the same, regardless or personal circumstance or need. One member said JE helps to heal your roots.

A letter was read out from a current prisoner in a men’s institution who spoke of the lack of action and solidarity inside Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) institutions today. He wrote that too many have a sense that things cannot change. He also hinted at the isolation and individualism that persists inside. He identified the lack of accountability for prison staff and the lack of positive programs for prisoners. So-called rehabilitation is not on offer. There is also a lack of parole transparency—transparency about how and why parole decisions are made.

At the same time, he did say that some do still stand, and they know that the PJD Committee Vancouver would be standing too. His letter stressed the importance of grassroots solidarity from people outside.

Prison steals from people the ability to tell their own stories on their own terms. Those who identified as prisoners noted that the system does not want people to talk about the causes that led to your crime, your social history, abuse, violence, self-defense against abusers, etc. They only want to hear why you committed the crime as if it was simply some type of personal choice.

It is crucial for imprisoned people to have a space to speak. This is one of the things that imprisoned people do through PJD.

Grassroots Abolition

As it always does, the 50th PJD raised a strong abolitionist perspective and offered real world examples of work being done to address the harms of prisons and to think about alternatives to statist punitive approaches. The late Peter Collins, a key Prison Justice Day organizer as a prisoner, once stated: “There is no natural death in prison.” Prisons are themselves unnatural.

We must not be misled or confused. Prisons are not being misused. They are doing what they are designed and implemented to do. The fight for abolition of the penal system, of cops and prisons, is the fight for an alternative social world. There is no good prison. No feminist prison. No Liberal prison. No decolonized prison.

The system is built on the processing of poor, racialized, and Indigenous people (Ureta and Shantz). Everyone is being paid in these systems except for the arrested and imprisoned. The response to poverty, despair, and desperation, has been increases in the repressive apparatus: police, courts, prisons.

Mutual aid grows out of the interactions of poor people, drug users, sex workers. Those who are also most targeted for criminalization and punishment. Doing things that the state will not do. Keeping each other alive. Helping each other to thrive. What does care look like? We need to grow solidarity between those inside and those outside. It is important to emphasize that care also means looking out for those who have done harm, who have been shitty, who you do not like. Care is not only about looking out for the palatable or popular ones.

As one speaker put it, we are all that we have. We have to be all that we need. PJD raises important questions about what solidarity looks like and puts some of the answers into practice.

Further Reading

lilley, pj. 2014. “Prisoner’s Justice Day (a retrospective montage). Radical Criminology 4 https://press.radicalcriminology.xyz/gallery/68-465-3.pdf

PJD Committee. 2005. Out of Bounds 22(2) prisonjustice.ca

Ureta, Eva and Jeff Shantz. 2020. “Here’s why we can abolish most of the criminal justice system now without endangering public safety.” Rabble https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/heres-why-we-can-abolish-most-criminal-justice-system-now-without-endangering-public/