“No woman can live in this hell for long without going mad,” writes Louise Henry in Deliver us from the Leclerc prison!. This ex-prisoner’s book could well have been titled, quite simply, deliver us from prison. Because as Lucie Lemonde, professor of legal sciences, points out in the introduction to this book which has just been published, “it is time to see prison for what it is, that is to say anything but a solution” .
The Leclerc prison was originally a penitentiary for men serving long sentences. Located in Laval, it was closed by the federal government due to obsolescence. However, the Quebec state has decided to use it to incarcerate women serving a short sentence. “The Conseil du trésor du Québec plans to save $7.6 million by transferring women from [la prison] Tanguay to Leclerc,” recalls Louise Henry.
In interview at To have to, she finds that a lot of money has been put into these places in recent years to no avail. The overall situation of women has hardly improved. “I want the government to move, to show humanity. The men were taken out of there. But would it be an acceptable place for women? Does it make sense to put in such places, designed for long sentences for men, women who have sentences of a few months, women who are not dangerous? Come on, it has to stop! »
Prison conditions
In 2012, the transfer of prisoners from the Tanguay prison to Leclerc was to be temporary, “the time to find a solution to house 150 to 200 women facing justice for minor crimes or, in 62% of cases, for non- compliance with conditions”. The women were moved there in 2016. Six years later, they are still there. “It’s temporary that is starting to take a long time! launches Louise Henry, recalling that “the federal government finds that the Leclerc establishment is not good enough for the men, but the provincial government judges it good enough for the women”.
Louise Henry does not deny having made mistakes. Accountant, she put her fingers in the candy dish… She wonders, however, how the incarceration that she and other women suffer is likely to help them become better.
Often, women who are behind bars “have psychological problems that go back to childhood”, she observed from behind the barbed wire. Many have “substance problems” that have “led them into prostitution and addiction.” Others experience major “family difficulties”. “Many are mothers in need. She evokes the case of a septuagenarian whose misfortunes only worsen in prison. And then there are indigenous women, overrepresented behind bars, searched more often than others because they are constantly moved and abused. Louise Henry evokes in this regard the case of an Aboriginal woman left in withdrawal accompanied by another prisoner with whom, obviously, there is “no possible compatibility”, with the bursts that we can guess.
Normal ?
At the National Assembly, following the reading in the chamber of a letter from Sister Marguerite Rivard, a very long-time volunteer with prisoners, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, affirmed that “it is normal for detention to be difficult”. Louise Henry couldn’t believe it. “Come and spend a weekend with us, Mr.me Guilbault! We’ll see if you find it ‘normal’ to wash your hair with fruit flies flying around your head”, with little white worms at your feet, to ‘be called ‘trash’ by the guards”, of living with rodents, of not having “drinking water within your reach”. The invitation launched by Louise Henry is valid for the summer, while “there are no mosquito nets on the windows and where the heat is terrible”, or even winter, while the “heating is deficient” . In this universe, says Louise Henry more than once, “the verbal abuse is maddening”, and even basic health care is not taken seriously by the staff.
Louise Henry, late 50s, talkative, energetic, was convicted of fraud and money laundering. She worked as an accountant. In Deliver us from the Leclerc prison!, she recounts the strip searches, the handcuffs, life behind barbed wire, the gates that open and close, the difficulty in obtaining the medicines that we need. “Women must get out of there and, in the meantime, they must at least be able to receive health care, that the medical system works,” she said in an interview.
A cell three by seven meters, with a toilet in one corner, to house a dozen inmates? Yes, there is, she said. Strip searches of these women are regular. “As the majority of them have suffered, during their lives, sexual, physical or psychological violence, these searches are often experienced as an additional aggression and humiliation”, specifies Lucie Lemonde in presentation. Repeated self-mutilation and suicide attempts are estimated at around thirty per year, in these places where often nothing filters, especially since telephone communications to the outside are restricted. And visits often suspended for lack of staff.
Total isolation, digging, is in principle prohibited? Yet it continues, argues Louise Henry. She recounts the case of an elegant woman handcuffed, hands and ankles, by no less than six guards, who dress her in addition to “a kind of neck warmer that goes up to the nose” to prevent her to spit in the face of his jailers.
One more trauma
Does society need to stoop so low, wonders Louise Henry, to protect itself from women convicted of minor faults? “There is no ‘Monica the grapeshot’ in this prison! More like prostitutes, drug addicts, drunks, drug dealers, petty thieves, women on their way back in age, seniors, crippled life who go to death more quickly than others because society puts them aside. “There is no help! “Thursday morning, she went to get Marie Soleil, a young girl who was leaving Leclerc. “She has no family. No one is there to help him. We let her go… What’s going to happen to her, do you think? Louise Henry decided to be there for Marie Soleil as for other ex-prisoners. She intends to devote the remaining years to campaigning to improve the living conditions of these women.
“Depriving us of our freedom is one thing. Making us psychologically experience such a descent into hell is quite another. I feel like a waste of society. Nobody deserves to be treated like that, no matter the crime committed. We are human beings, after all! »