An inmate is suing the Canadian government and its correctional service for more than $1.5 million after years of physical and mental abuse allegedly inflicted on him by prison guards.
Screenshot from a video by Frédéric Surprenant
After the altercation in June 2021, Frédéric Surprenant was transferred to a cell before seeing a nurse.
Incitement to suicide and fight, threats, intimidation, assault, armed assault and unjustified use of inflammatory sprays: the guards arrested Frédéric Surprenant, a 36-year-old local man suffering from a neuropsychiatric illness.
Screenshot from a video by Frédéric Surprenant
In the summer of 2018, correctional officers are preparing to intervene with the inmate and stand ready to use gas if necessary. They wear masks and protective suits.
“They will do anything to blow me up. If this continues, they will kill me,” said Frédéric Surprenant in a telephone interview.
The inmate has spent half his life behind bars after being found guilty on around 60 charges. The vast majority of these offenses occurred in prison against fellow inmates or prison officers.
Surprenant claimed to have been the victim of numerous attacks by guards inside the walls and filed a lawsuit for damages against the Canadian government and the Correctional Service Canada (CSC) in February 2021. [voir extraits de la poursuite]. These allegations have not yet been proven in federal court.
“It’s urgent, he needs help”
His request lifts the veil on worrying behavior detected at the Special Detention Unit (SDU), the “super maximum” of the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines Regional Reception Center, where Frédéric Surprenant was detained from 2017 until last January.
This location would be one of the prisons where conditions are the most difficult in Canada and even violate human rights, according to analyzes by a criminologist and a group of attorneys who have turned to the Senate [voir autres textes plus bas].
Photo Martin Alari
Frédéric Surprenant’s mother, Sandra Frey, went to Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary last week where her son was allegedly beaten and humiliated by correctional officers.
“A few days ago Fred said he loves us while sobbing on the phone; it’s urgent, he needs help,” his mother Sandra Frey laments helplessly and desperately.
Donnacona was also aiming for this
The abuse alleged by Surprenant was not unique to Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines. He was allegedly sexually assaulted by fellow inmates at the Donnacona Institution in 2005 without being rescued, the lawsuit says.
Surprenant was declared a dangerous criminal in November 2017 and is serving an indefinite sentence. He left the “super maximum” on January 31st to join the Port Cartier establishment, where he has been ever since.
In response to our questions, the Correctional Service Canada (CSC) states that it takes the well-being of the offenders in its care very seriously. By e-mail, the spokesman points out that the officers are trained to intervene peacefully by intervening verbally. They use tactical intervention only as a last resort, she argues. As this case is in court, the CSC could not comment further.
Who is Frederic Surprenant?
- Since 2004, he has been convicted of around 60 criminal charges, most of which relate to events in prison. He was specifically found guilty of kidnapping fellow inmates and threatening, beating and intimidating correctional officers.
- His most severe sentence came in 2013, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for taking a fellow inmate hostage at the tip of a homemade pickaxe. After several violent incidents in prison, he was declared a dangerous offender in 2017.
- He has been accused of violent reactions since the beginning of his detention, spitting and throwing feces in the direction of the agents and repeatedly being mentally disorganized.
Excerpts from the lawsuit
“ He was kicked in the head and even received an invitation to the fight from employees. »
He “suffered from inhuman prison conditions […]he was deprived of drugs, cell current and food”.
He has “permanent mental and physical scars from all the abuse he has endured.”
He has been “kept in isolation without contact for at least 20 hours a day for more than 4 years
human “.
“ CSC continues to apply segregation measures against the plaintiff, despite the abolition of federal solitary confinement since 2019.”
Almost torture, says expert
Prisoner Frédéric Surprenant would have been locked in a preventive solitary cell for more than eight consecutive months, a duration that could amount to torture, according to a criminologist using criteria set by the United Nations (UN).
Following his $1.5 million lawsuit, Frédéric Surprenant hired criminologist Philippe Bensimon to provide an expert opinion on his detention conditions in the Special Detention Unit (USD) in Sainte-Anne-des-Plains.
Frédéric Surprenant would have spent 249 consecutive days in solitary confinement, more than 20 hours out of 24, in a 75 square meter concrete cell with no outside light, we can read in the criminologist’s report, drawn up in May 2021. The expert had to evaluate, monitor and look after more than 1000 criminal cases in the past.
The criminologist recalls that the UN defines any isolation in a detention center that exceeds 15 consecutive days as “torture”.
According to Mr Bensimon, the mental health impact of a person exposed to such conditions can be fatal. Frédéric Surprenant attempted suicide several times in the small cell he was in.
First in Canada
Photo courtesy of Sandra Frey
Frédéric Surprenant at the age of 7, the age when he was diagnosed with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome.
The criminologist points out that the UN has also stated that “the use of solitary confinement for mentally handicapped prisoners should be prohibited”. However, Surprant has suffered from Gilles de la Tourette’s neuropsychiatric disease, which was known to the prison, particularly since he was seven years old.
“To my knowledge, this case is truly a first in Canada, knowing that the deterioration in his behavior has been built into the walls,” the criminologist says in his report.
The expert is not the only one who has looked into the Surprenant case. Prior to filing the civil suit, numerous complaints had been filed with the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada (OCI), the ombudsman for federal prisoners.
In a report we were able to consult, the BEC found several anomalies in the way it intervened with Surprenant. In addition to physical and verbal violence, he also mentions abusive use of force, power, cuts in food and medicine for a few days.
An agent also suggested that Surprenant hang himself, we read.
The BEC’s director and legal adviser, Jean-Frédéric Boulais, expressed concern at Surprenant’s detention, calling it “a deplorable and inhumane situation”.
“I am increasingly convinced that USD participants have a vested interest in ensuring that the measures that have been in place for years are not called into question,” he wrote in the investigative report.
The worst prison in Canada
The “inhuman and degrading” prison conditions that detainees would experience in the “super maximum” of Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines were denounced in a brief by a group of Senate lawyers handling the case.
In its 2019 report, Simao Lacroix describes the Special Handling Unit (SDU) as the most restrictive in Canada. The lawyers accuse him of withdrawal of contact, gestures of a sexual nature during searches, insults and long power outages.
This letter aimed to draw the attention of the Senate Human Rights Committee to the detention conditions of the prisoners of this “super maximum” in which Frédéric Surprenant was also imprisoned.
Lawyers have collected testimonies from prisoners who say their cells were cut off for up to three days because of conflicts with guards. People of Aboriginal descent say they were routinely called “savages” and “dirty Indians.”
Urinate in the sink
Others said they were “forced to urinate in the sink and empty into a plastic bag” because officers allegedly refused to take action to unblock their toilets.
“Some detainees report being subjected to sexual acts during searches, including having their genitals touched and their bodies rubbed by guards,” the same report said.
These testimonies are all the more worrisome given that the Office of the Correctional Investigator questioned the existence of this facility in the early 2000s. He then addressed questions about this “super maximum” and the detrimental effects of prison conditions on those incarcerated there, the authors recall.
The Senate committee considered that brief, which it quoted in a June 2021 report as Salma Ataullahjan, chair of that committee.
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