As of yesterday, 58 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces in pointed attacks on civilians. The Medicins Sans Frontiers clinic was bombed. The Associated Press/Al-Jazeera offices destroyed. Yet, justifying ticketing participants in Saturday’s Free Palestine car rally, Halifax Regional Police Chief Dan Kinsella called the rally an “illegal gathering, and the […]
COVID-19 underscores the many failures of imprisonment
Today, February 15, is a relatively new statutory holiday, called Family Day in half of the provinces and Heritage Day in Nova Scotia, although of course here too those of us who can do so are home with our families. For the most part, the people in prison in Canada have now gone 11 months […]
Bad medicine
Health care providers who participate in the ill treatment of prisoners are abdicating their professional responsibilities.
Martha Paynter is a Registered Nurse, a PhD Candidate in the Dalhousie University School of Nursing, and the Chair of Women’s Wellness Within. It is outrageous enough that Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back. In recovery he was handcuffed to his hospital bed, adding to the violence inflicted on him. In the […]
We need to stop incarcerating pregnant people
How many infant deaths, stillbirths and untreated miscarriages will incarcerated people have to experience before we recognize prison is an unacceptable place for pregnant people and end the practice entirely? Yesterday, the BBC reported a baby was born and died at Bronzefield, Europe’s largest prison for women, located in Ashford, England. Exactly a month ago […]
Sexual assault in prison: vulnerable women prisoners have few protections and face reprisal for reporting attacks
On May 22, three women incarcerated at the Nova Institution for Women federal prison filed civil suits against the Attorney General of Canada, alleging they were each sexually assaulted by correctional officer Brian Wilson over the course of the past five years. The allegations included in the lawsuits are harrowing: when the first of the […]
Nova Scotia needs a JAIL hotline
Martha Paynter is a nurse, nursing PhD student, and director of Women’s Wellness Within. For one month, prisoners at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC) have had access to a phone hotline a few hours a day to report concerns and receive support from volunteers. This is the jail where Julie Bilotta was forced to […]
Our lunch with Angela
by Martha Paynter, El Jones, and Emma Halpern We sat down with Angela Davis for one hour over lunch when she was in town this week to receive an honourary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie University and deliver the inaugural lecture in the Viola Desmond series. She asked us about prison abolition, sexual violence, racism, […]
Nurse: We should support prisoners’ demands for better health care
"There have been claims that health care is better at Burnside than outside. This is simply not true."
Martha Paynter is a nurse, nursing PhD student, and director of Women’s Wellness Within. On August 21, the prisoners at the Burnside provincial jail launched a peaceful protest, in solidarity with a large prisoner strike in the United States, to call for basic improvements in health care, rehabilitation, exercise, visits, clothing, food, air quality and […]