September 22, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Mary Anne Franks has made a name for herself fighting “revenge porn” – the dissemination of intimate photos of a woman (it’s almost always a woman) without her permission or knowledge – often by an estranged partner.
But she’d really rather you didn’t call it that.
Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Omar Khadr stands a good chance of having at least two of his five terror convictions overturned. But that probably won’t get him out of prison any sooner.
Janet Hamlin
Saturday, July 14 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Omar Khadr’s Canadian lawyers are asking a federal court to order Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to make up his mind on whether to bring the Canadian convict back to serve time in Canada.
In an application filed on Friday, John Norris and Brydie Bethell asked judges to review what they argue is an unreasonable delay in deciding on Mr. Khadr’s transfer application. The 25-year-old was eligible to return to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada as of October, 2011.
Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Thursday, July 12 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he has no problem with the number of federal inmates sharing cells built for one.
And even as he reiterated his commitment to building 2,700 new cells in existing prison facilities, he said those additional units aren’t meant to alleviate the pressures caused by double-bunking – because there’s no need.
Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Friday, June 29, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Public Safety Canada has been in close consultation with telecommunication companies over the logistics of Ottawa’s so-called Internet “snoop and spy” legislation – talks that dealt with who will shoulder the costs of pricey “intercept capabilities,” and whether it will even be feasible to monitor user behaviour in an increasingly complex “cloud-computing” environment.
The reams of e-mails, meeting and teleconference agendas, obtained by The Globe and Mail through an access to information request, indicate the talks extended more than a year prior to the government tabling its online surveillance bill in February.
Photo by Kevin Van Paassen/Globe and Mail
Thursday, May 10, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Inmates in Canada’s federal prisons have been sleeping in trailers, interview rooms, family visiting spaces and gymnasiums, while the percentage of prisoners sharing cells built for one has nearly doubled in under three years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The documents, obtained from access to information requests, suggest a penal system stretched to capacity. Canada’s prison population has been rising since 2005 after years of steady decline, growing 7 per cent between March 31, 2011 and May 1, 2012.
Part of the latest increase can be attributed to the government’s tough-on-crime agenda. At the same time, the government will lose 1,000 beds after it closes aging penal facilities such as Kingston Penitentiary and Leclerc Institution in Laval, Que., but says it will more than make up the difference with new units.
CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Canada’s federal prisons are getting more crowded, more tense and more polarized between young and old inmates – and that’s contributing to an increase in violence and deaths behind bars, says Ottawa’s prison watchdog.
As new rules send more people to prison for longer periods of time, correctional investigator Howard Sapers argues, it’s putting a greater strain not only on Canada’s aging prison infrastructure but also on its inmates.
“The indicators that we look at in terms of getting a measure of institutional violence are all going in the same direction,” Mr. Sapers said. “And they’re all going up.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews argues that’s not so.
“I haven’t seen that statistic,” he said. “There isn’t as much prisoner-on-prisoner violence that used to exist eight or nine years ago, before we put in policies that restricted some of the movement of prisoners.”
“It’s like Criminal University,” says Oluwasegun Akinsanya. “All you do in jail is sit down and talk – what he did, what he did, what he did. You realize, ‘Hey, that’s an opportunity.’ You learn from their mistakes. You’ll come back and do a better version.”
(Photo by J.P. Moczulski for the Globe and Mail)
Monday, July 18, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Canada incarcerates more convicted youth than almost any similarly industrialized country.
And new federal crime legislation is poised to drive those numbers higher, even though imprisoned teens are statistically less likely to get jobs after they’re released and, if anything, are more likely to reoffend.
Years after enacting laws that have been successful in reducing youth incarceration rates, Canada still sends five times more of its convicted teens into custody than England and Wales, according to data obtained from the British justice ministry and Statistics Canada’s justice arm.
a business of misfits 