Rik McWhinney spent thirty-four years and four months in Canada's federal penitentiaries--sixteen of those in solitary confinement. His incarceration began in the 1970s, as a system-wide war was raging over the implementation of penal reforms. Though he was physically confrontational during the early years of his imprisonment, resulting in his segregation and medical torture, McWhinney eventually turned to writing to combat the conditions of his confinement. The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney collects his poetry, essays, grievance forms, letters, and interviews to provide readers with insight into the everyday life of incarcerated individuals, amplifying the lives and voices of a demographic that society would rather ignore. McWhinney relays the horrors of solitary confinement and provides a vivid account of the violence and psychological turmoil that he endured while incarcerated. Ultimately, McWhinney's words are an indictment of the prison system, a system that institutionalizes individuals, subjecting them to an environment that manufactures post-traumatic stress rather than fulfilling its mission of rehabilitation and reform.
Reviews with the most likes.
Heartbreaking, haunting. For all that this account may be perceived as less raw and intimate due to its collection and mediation by an editor, the experiences McWhinney relates are no less harrowing and enraging.
The editor's introductions to the book and each section within provide context for the interviews, correspondence and poems by McWhinney, and overall give more cohesion to the selection presented here.
What stood out in particular:
-How sickening it was to discover how often solitary confinement is ruled illegal and then given a cosmetic name change: same conditions inflicted on prisoners once again, loopholes about judicial review and independent oversight...WTF?
-The tragedy of adapting to survive deprivation, to survive prison society, it's rules, it's threats, making a person that much less rehabilitated, or prepared for reintegration into society.
Demers and McWhinney draw on existing studies, reports, rulings as well as anecdotal evidence in their discussions and writing. There are a handful of poems, but it's the conversational interviews between Demers and McWhinney, and copies of McWhinney's formal correspondence that are the most powerful in providing a picture of the intolerable conditions.
On the plus side?
I appreciate the point made that programming would be of more benefit if designed and delivered by prisoners.
The idea of programs being useful even if they're not just vocational, but nonetheless helping prisoners. Reading about the Cat Club warmed my heart. 😺
The conclusion, wherein the editor expresses his frustration, and reiterates McWhinney's, with the latest surface changes that perpetuate the inhumane and prohibited idea of solitary confinement by other names leads to quoting McWhinney's statement, supported by the editor, that abolishing prisons is the only answer, that the research, the work on prisoner experience has all said much the same thing for decades. My own reading on this topic feels like a reflection of this conclusion. Prisons don't work, they don't help, they need to be gone. There are other things we can do, and there are other plans and resources already out there to start implementing the change. I'm still interested in reading up on more comprehensive prison abolition writing, and I would never dissuade anyone from picking up a book that details the issues with prisons and the prisoner experience, but I'm not sure I will get more out of reading further works of this type. Not sure my heart can take it either. Here's hoping the next non-fiction I read about prisons is chock full of abolition how-tos! More hope, less nightmares.
⚠️child abuse, physical and sexual abuse, mental health concerns, self harm, chronic disease, medical trauma, battempted suicide, suicide, PTSD, human experimentation, immolation
