By Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service
The Vancouver Sun
OTTAWA, Canada — Four prison guards who failed to help an aboriginal inmate as he bled to death in his cell were docked only 10 to 20 days pay, says a scathing report that condemns the Correctional Service of Canada for a “well-documented pattern” of neglecting to take appropriate action to save lives.
The report, released Wednesday by the federal prison ombudsman also accuses penitentiary officials of turning their backs on allegations of racism surrounding the prisoner’s death on Oct. 3, 2006.
“It’s really disturbing,” said Howard Sapers, Canada’s independent correctional investigator. “This tragic death is only one of the latest cases in which the Correctional Service has not delivered on its mandate to provide safe and secure custody for all federal offenders.”
Martin Blackwind, who was 52 when he died, was serving a 17-year sentence for manslaughter at the medium-security Warkworth Institution in Campbellford, Ont., for the 1998 beating death of his partner, Kathleen Hart.
Blackwind, who was born into a family of alcoholics and violence on a Manitoba reserve, was a homeless Toronto panhandler when he clubbed his common-law wife to death with a piece of scaffolding as she slept, according to a news report at the time.
The Sapers report does not reveal Blackwind’s identity, but it is contained in a brief news release that the Correctional Service issued on the day he died.
Blackwind self-inflicted a cut on his left arm, lacerating an artery. He pushed his cell emergency button, prompting a staffer to look in on him and call an ambulance 10 minutes later. When paramedics arrived they found Blackwind alone on the floor of his cell, unconscious and not breathing. His mattress was blood soaked.
The report said that internal investigators found that staff failed to administer, or have any discussion, about first aid in the 30 minutes before the ambulance arrived. Nor did they talk to Blackwind or check his wounds.
The staffers faced disciplinary proceedings and were suspended from 10 to 20 days without pay.
“There seems to be a lack of proportionality between the fact that an inmate bled to death and staff who were found to have failed to meet expectations were given a maximum consequence of a 20-day suspension,” Sapers said.
His report makes numerous recommendations, including videotaping of all medical emergencies, more sensitivity training for staff to deal with aboriginal and mentally ill inmates and developing a policy to address allegations of racism.
There are 54 federal penitentiaries, which house inmates sentenced to terms of two years or more.
The latest report is a follow-up on a 2007 study on suicides, killings and accidental deaths in prisons that blamed the federal government for failing to save lives.
The first report, which Sapers released last summer, examined 82 deaths in federal penitentiaries from 2001-2005 and concluded the prisons did not properly assess or protect inmates suffering from mental health problems, drug addictions and those connected with gangs.
The report accused the prison system of shoddy record keeping and communication involving troubled inmates, having poor systems in place to respond to emergencies, weak video surveillance and failing to routinely check up on prisoners to ensure they are safe.
However, the study included a caveat that it may “possess an inherent bias” because it did not examine incidents in which lives may have been saved by actions of prison staff.
apers said Wednesday that it appeared that shoddy practices persisted, at least in some institutions, in 2006.
Among other things, a news release on the day of Blackwind’s death was full of errors, including a report that staff called an ambulance “immediately,” Sapers said.
A spokesperson for the prison system could not be reached. However, the report said that the Correctional Service intends to give a “full response” to the recommendations and investigate the allegations of discrimination.
© Canwest News Service 2008