Corrections

They said, you know, he was in mental difficulty and for a 24-hour period detention at North Fraser Pretrial Center in 2021.

They go into this long thing, give him $15,000 and blame it on B.C. Corrections.

B.C. Corrections denied the allegations, saying that...

Everything was clean.

There was no documentation of any issues or concerns.

that the prison wasn't doing anything to foster this growth.

In fact, the bureaucratic hurdles that existed in the prison, the often indifference to suffering that the prison system had, the ways that it tried to deal with issues in the system, they all made things worse.

And that Jesse was able to successfully navigate prison is nothing short of a miracle.

And the reason why I was so thrilled to speak with Jesse and tell his story is because that this story serves as a reminder that these systems, prisons and jails, that they are failing fundamentally to help people.

And that internal barrier, that's really the one that we have to get over.

And the only way to get over it is by creating opportunities and giving people the chance to actually put in the reps and do things differently.

But instead, we have a prison system that hasn't put in the reps doing all the things they were doing before, like just making things worse.

Yeah, a theme that I have encountered of the people who are incarcerated is that the hardest thing to keep alive is hope for something different, right? It's so easy to just buy into what the system tells you, to embrace the fact that I am no longer Jesse, I am convict, fill in the number, right? Like to let the system take your own identity and your own potential, that that's what kills guys quicker than anything else is when they lose that, then it's all over, right? So I want to like that now that we kind of have a little bit of the introduction with the books about what this whole story is about.

And so I became this crazy woman around getting corrections to assist me.

to get access to those two prisons, which are theoretically supposed to be quite thought-leading women's prisons.

And Corrections talk a lot about the Norwegian model, don't they? They do.

Ironically, I don't know how we've ever visited it, but they talk about it as being thought-leading and one that we could possibly learn from.

And certainly Scotland, very aligned to what we do here.

in the way that it was.

So it was fortunate that the CEO of Corrections, who's now no longer there, he helped me break through the firewalls and start a conversation with Norway.

And it was a wonderful woman called Doris, who was a senior consultant to Norwegian Corrections that took me out to Skien, which was two hours.

Yeah, it's quite an interesting one.

So the Department of Justice and Corrections has put out a statement.

They won't go on camera.

They've said prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there's a clear medical need, like preventing serious conditions such as type two diabetes and access to prescribe weight loss medication was introduced in response to a recommendation from the coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity so that is the description from the department of corrections and our premier here has weighed into saying uh that they have to respond to a coronial investigation like a death in prison they have to take that really seriously so when it comes to it that is why that she is getting these weight loss drugs it is a clinic a clinical decision

Um, in November 2024, in recognition of Kerrie Tucker's 20 years' service to prison reform, education, and fraud awareness, her criminal imprisonment record was spent and removed in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria.

This was with the endorsement and support of the Victorian Chief Commissioner of Police, the Attorney General of Victoria, the Assistant Commissioner of Corrections, and the Chief Magistrate of the Magistrates' Court of Victoria.

My understanding of this is that your criminal history, you're, I'm, I'm not talking to a criminal [laughs] here now.

It, it's been, uh, been spent.

And then as prison becomes a, quote, replacement punishment for That replacement builds up and needs an infrastructure which generates something that calls itself a profession.

Corrections, a weird name if you pause.

Corrections says, we know how to punish.

We can keep you safe.

We can keep you secure and give us the authority to do so.

After he learned that his appeal had been unsuccessful, Mr Scanther must have formed an intention to end his life at the first opportunity.

Although Corrections had previously taken steps to address the risk that Mr Scanther would cause harm to himself, for example by moving him to the at-risk unit and carrying out regular risk assessments following his initial entry into prison, and after the guilty verdict, Corrections officers were unaware that he had been informed that his appeal was unsuccessful.

Mr. Scanther did not tell anyone that he had just found out his appeal was unsuccessful or that he was thinking of taking his own life.

When he and his cellmate were given an opportunity to leave the cell for recreation, Mr. Scanther elected to remain in the cell as he was entitled to do.

This includes taking steps to identify situations where he may be at risk of causing harm to himself.

During the periods where the risk of self-harm appeared to be heightened, steps were taken to address this, including conducting risk assessments and transferring him to the at-risk unit.

The main issue which emerges from the evidence is that, while mental health staff at Corrections were aware that the risk of Mr Scanther harming himself would increase if the outcome of his case was adverse, Corrections staff were not aware that he had been told his appeal was unsuccessful.

Following Mr Scanther's death, some steps were taken to address this issue.

We just said this is going on based on our research and things like that.

And the prison held on Friday held a town hall meeting and town hall meetings are usually scheduled in the prison system uh at the inconvenience of ordinary corrections officers so they it's hard for them to get to um in this case it was held at 11 30 on friday so after count and everything in the morning they were able to go to the meeting it was only 15 minutes long and what happened was the acting uh warden basically said, you know, this thing that's going on in this dispersing the fog podcast is, you know, it's essentially divisive and it hurts us all.

And some of the corrections officers are going, no, it's all about you guys.

It's about the bosses.

The

guards are colonialists.

Seems like it might be somebody who has more of a theoretical understanding of the prison system than a reality-based one.

I mean, you know, I wonder if he's read the Justice Hatt's decision on Robert McLaughlin, who was sentenced to three years for smuggling drugs into the prison in Northeast Nova here, right? Where he's been, you know, the decision was all about how that undermines the culture and the potential for a prison to, you know, rehabilitate people.