By Jozef Konyari
For over five years, the tragic death of Soleiman Faqiri in a Canadian prison has received widespread attention in press coverage, demonstrations, and teach-ins. The case has posed a challenge to our collective conscience over how we incarcerate people living with mental illness. With the recent commemoration of Nelson Mandela International Day, Faqiri’s case remains on the minds of many as the latest in a centuries-long list of shame from Canadian prisons.
The consistency of cruelty
In 1993, the late Canadian poet, writer, and prison guard, Joel Michael Yates (1938-2019) wrote, “In my opinion there is not one well-managed correctional institution in North America. Not one (316).” Arguably, Yates’ insight continues to be true nearly 30 years after he published Line Screw: My Twelve Riotous Years Working Behind Bars in Some of Canada’s Toughest Jails.
In the mid 19th-century, cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment was routinely applied to prisoners in Canada’s notorious Kingston Penitentiary. As documented in Peter H. Hennessy’s 1999 book, Canada’s Big House: The Dark History of the Kingston Penitentiary, prisoners that transgressed behind the infamous Warden Henry Smith’s bars would be subjected to various coldblooded and ruthless punishments such as, “Meals of Bread and Water,” “The Box,” “The Cats,” and “Confinement to Dark Cell.” In the case of “The Box,” the Warden’s Report states, transgressors were placed into a coffin-shaped wooden box, forced to stand for nine hours straight, and often jabbed with a stick through an air hole. In “The Cats,” the surgeon on duty would oversee the execution of a brutal whipping that included anywhere between thirty-six and fifty lashes with lengthy strands of intertwined rawhide while other prisoners witnessed the pain, cuts, and seeping blood.
According to the Warden’s Report, 1847 was a particularly ruthless year with the following applications: “Meals of Bread and Water” (5,104), “The Box” (759), “The Cats” (58), “Confined to Dark Cell” (69). Two years later a commission of inquiry conducted by George Brown suggested that the “official” records were significantly less in comparison to the actual figures. No matter how many commissions of inquiry are launched, the undignified and harsh reality of life behind bars can never be truthfully captured.
At the intersection of childhood and mental illness, Warden Smith’s approach was anything but sympathetic. According to a testimony in the Brown Commission of 1849, which led to the removal of Warden Smith, children with “disordered” minds should have received better treatment; however, under Warden Smith’s evil watch children with “disordered” minds were subjected to “The Cats.” On one account, a boy between the ages of 12 and 14 years named, Beauche, was punished severely for making sounds, screaming, and claiming that there was something under his bed in the middle of the night. Upon the Warden’s arrival, the boy was referred to as a “scoundrel,” brought out of his cell practically naked and nearly silenced with a gag. In the end, the young boy was brutally flogged and, once covered in blood, he was taken back to his cell. According to witness testimony, the boy was eventually diagnosed as “insane” and transported to the Lower Canada Lunatic Asylum (as it was referred to).
Surely, much has changed since the sadistic rule of Warden Smith, right? Perhaps, but in some ways the situation has become much worse – through the formation of a duplicitous system that recognizes the notion of human rights but fails to protect them.
Since the days of Warden Smith’s atrocious rule, countries around the world and international bodies alike have cultivated numerous standards (e.g., The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners or Mandela Rules, and the United Nations’ Handbook on Prisoners with Special Needs) aimed at protecting those subjected to the inhumanity of prison life. Despite these developments, the consistency of cruelty persists. As a case in point, consider the appalling steps that led to the preventable death of Soleiman Faqiri in a Canadian jail.
Jail instead of diversion
According to the Schizophrenia Society of Canada’s 2005 paper, Diversion, Mental Health Courts and Schizophrenia, “Jails are not the place to treat individuals with a mental illness.” Unfortunately, this advice is routinely ignored. But is there an alternative? The answer is a resounding yes and it is called diversion. In the words of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada,
“Diversion offers the opportunity to treat individuals effectively while meeting overall societal objectives of protection and justice. For governments concerned about budgets, treatment in the community is a more cost-effective option to incarceration or inappropriate interaction with the judicial system.”
Unfortunately, far too many people with mental illness experience the latter – an appalling social phenomenon aptly described as the criminalization of the mentally ill.
On December 4, 2016, a 30-year-old man with no criminal record and diagnosed with schizophrenia was apprehended by police in Ajax, Ontario. The man’s name was Soleiman Faqiri. Soleiman was no stranger to police as he had been taken into custody 10 times under Ontario’s Mental Health Act and cared for by medical professionals. Unlike previous encounters with the police, December 4 was considerably different with respect to legal-medical decisions and outcomes.
Upon Soleiman’s apprehension by police, he was taken to Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario (also referred to as the Lindsay superjail), which was the first wrong step in a series of moves that led to Soleiman’s death.
The Schizophrenia Society of Canada clearly states, “Effective diversion focuses on intervention at the earliest possible opportunity […]” and in situations where this cannot be achieved, there is a basic requirement for “Timely and high quality in-prison mental health services access to visiting psychiatrists and suitably trained mental health workers, nurses and guards; appropriate treatment environments such as hospital units within the prison and specialized forensic psychiatric facilities.”
Not only did police fail to implement an effective diversion strategy, Soleiman was taken to one of the worst prisons in Ontario. As a testament to Central East Correctional Centre’s dysfunction, the Community Advisory Board’s (CAB) Annual Report of 2015 describes mounting concerns linked to countless lockdowns, staff shortages, ineffective family visiting and support systems, increasing presence of ceramic knives, drugs and gangs, inmate-on-inmate assaults, and a lack of mental health training (many of these concerns resurfaced in the CAB 2016 Annual Report).
In addition to these conditions, the Ontario Ombudsman’s Annual Report of 2015-2016, which was released by Paul Dube, declared that the Lindsay superjail received 647 complaints ranging from assaults, lack of medical care, lockdowns, and other issues – that is, the highest number of complaints linked to a correctional facility next to Toronto South Detention (455), Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (394), Central North Correctional Centre (370), and Maplehurst Correctional Complex (267).
Segregation cell instead of a hospital bed
The next unspeakable step involved placing a vulnerable person like Soleiman in segregation (also referred to as solitary confinement). It is important to stress that for years leading up Soleiman’s experience the use of segregation was painstakingly scrutinized. According to the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General’s 2017 review, Segregation In Ontario,
“Over the last several years, segregation in correctional institutions in Ontario has been a matter of growing concern. Viewed as the most restrictive form of custody available, segregation is known to have damaging effects on prisoners’ mental health and overall well-being. It is so damaging, in fact, that it has been reported as ‘cruel and unusual treatment’ by the United Nations, and can even amount to torture. Concerns have been raised over the harsh, harmful and deleterious effects of segregation, as well as its lack of external oversight and accountability.”
Two years before the Ministry of the Solicitor General’s review, Public Services Foundation of Canada released a 2015 report titled, Crisis in Correctional Services: Overcrowding and Inmates with Mental Health Problems in Provincial Correctional Facilities. The report drew specific attention to the influx of inmates suffering with mental health issues and the link between deficient mental health services and increasingly hazardous living and working conditions for inmates and prison guards. The report also points out that the system commonly detains people who need treatment, which goes against basic Canadian human rights and health standards articulated in the Canada Health Act (CHA). In terms of segregation, the report unequivocally states,
“There are numerous reports from across the country where segregation […] is used to isolate and contain inmates with mental health or addictions issues. But segregation is the worst possible response to the overwhelming majority of inmates with these problems” (45).
In addition, the report draws attention to the fact that,
“[…] involvement with a prison system where they [people with mental illness] often do not receive the treatment and support they need may result in more severe iterations of their illness. Behind bars, they are often targets of violence and abuse. Given the tension and multiple potential triggers posed by prison, these inmates can also present a threat to other inmates and workers in the system” (46).
The Public Services Foundation of Canada was clear with their assessment and warning that,
“We must stop using our police and jails as the default treatment option for people with mental illnesses. Our governments must act swiftly to address the serious deficiencies in the delivery of mental health services to ensure these vulnerable Canadians get the treatment and support they need on the outside, rather than being warehoused in correctional facilities” (46).
Unfortunately, our governments did not act quickly enough to prioritize these issues, which sends a clear message to Canadians and our global community: People suffering with mental illness in Canadian prisons system are undeserving of basic human rights and dignity. What type of a society would deprive its most vulnerable members of such basic rights and services?
As far back as 2012, a report conducted by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) titled, Changing Directions Changing Lives, Mental Health Strategy for Canada, points out that Canada’s 2010 ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) created an opportunity to articulate and put into practice all the legal, policy, and regulatory measures that would promote and protect the human rights of all persons with disabilities. As mentioned in the report,
“A key principle of both the CRPD and recovery-oriented mental health policy and legislation is to always employ the least intrusive and least restrictive interventions possible. Instances when people living with mental health problems and illnesses are placed in seclusion, physically restrained or restrained with medications should be examined to see if they represent a failure of the system” (43).
Furthermore, the report states,
“People living with mental health problems and illnesses – whatever their age and however severe their mental health problem or illness – and their families should be able to count on timely access to the full range of options for mental health services, treatments and supports, just as they would expect if they were confronting heart disease or cancer” (58).
Given Soleiman’s identity, as a racialized person, devout Muslim and immigrant from Kabul, Afghanistan, the MHCC’s report is particularly insightful when it states, “People who are immigrants, refugees, members of ethno-cultural groups or who are likely to be racialized (that is, to have others make assumptions about them based on perceptions about race) face particular challenges that put their mental health at greater risk” (82).
Despite countless reviews and reports detailing the need to keep people with mental illness out of segregation and the necessity of providing timely mental health services, Soleiman was placed into segregation and denied access to a hospital bed – a step in the course of events that cannot be minimized.
A beating and death instead of care and treatment
On December 15, Soleiman was taking a shower and started to toss shampoo bottles and spray guards with water. After refusing to leave the shower area the guards attempted to physically remove him despite MHCC recommendations to “always employ the least intrusive and least restrictive interventions possible.” Another escalation point, in an already calamitous situation.
In the process of removing Soleiman from the shower he was struck by one of the guards, pepper-sprayed twice directly in the face and eventually shoved back into his cell, which contained no security camera. It was here where the abuse and torment spiralled even further out of control. With a code blue alert, several more guards entered Soleiman’s cell. While some guards pinned his limbs to the ground other guards placed a spit hood over his head and pressured his body to the floor with leg irons. On top of the already excessive measures, which went on for an agonizing three hours, Soleiman was handcuffed behind the back in the prone position. After all the trauma, Soleiman was found to be unresponsive and pronounced dead in a cold bloody cell far away from those who truly cared for him.
According to a 2017 coroner’s report, Soleiman’s body was filled with over 50 cuts and bruises and contained many other clear signs of blunt impact trauma. Why was a person with a serious mental illness beaten to such a degree by the very people and institution responsible for his well being and safety? Soleiman was not only a vulnerable person that was brutally struck, pepper-sprayed, shoved, pinned down, hooded, cuffed, cut, bruised, and traumatized by a group of guards, he also lost his life in a legal-medical apparatus that astonishingly concluded the cause of death was “unascertained?” How could this be? In response to such bizarre assessment, Yusuf Zine, has attempted to piece together the chain of events in a 2021 six-part TVO podcast series titled, “Unascertained.”
Bureaucratic re-traumatization
As any family would do after such horrifying chain of events, the Faqiri family attempted to get some answers and accountability for what happened to their beloved Soli (as family and friends called him). So much more than his illness, Soli was a kind, loyal, intelligent, and warm soul with an outstanding sense of humour. He was also the precious son of Ghulam and Maryam and a brother to Yusuf, Sohrab, Ali and Pelatin and an uncle to a number of nieces and nephews. Even though Soli’s life changed dramatically after a traumatic car accident in university and a subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia, with the love and support from his family Soli continued to live a meaningful and productive life until the day of his undeniably preventable death inside a legal-medical system and culture that dishes out trauma as opposed to safety, protection, transparency, and accountability.
The initial trauma to the Faqiri family is clear: The premature death of their adored Soleiman. But to make matters worse the legal-medical system has made healing among the Faqiri’s an unattainable goal. At every level of analysis, the very systems responsible for so-called justice have failed the family, which forces them to relive the pain and suffering they yearn to start healing from.
As a case in point, the nearly one-year initial investigation, which was conducted by the Kawartha Lakes Police Service, stated that no charges would be laid against those involved with Soleiman’s death. While the initial investigation included almost 70 interviews with prison guards, inmates, and medical personnel, a known eyewitness named, John Thibeault, located in a cell across Soleiman’s, was never questioned. According to Thibeault’s account, which was captured by, The Fifth Estate, the guards were yelling at Soleiman to “stop resisting” even though there were no signs of life.
After the failure of the Kawartha Lakes Police Service investigation, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) launched a reinvestigation into Soleiman’s death. Similar to the Kawartha Lakes Police Service, the OPP declared that it was not pressing any charges against those involved in Soleiman’s final moments. Even though charges linked to group assaults are regularly dished out in Canada, the OPP claimed that no charges would be laid because they could not determine which guard executed the final strike to Soleiman’s body.
In terms of the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services’ (MCSCS) response, MCSCS initiated a host of blame tactics, suspensions, and dismissals geared towards abolishing the claim of negligence. As opposed to a deeper analysis of institutional deficiencies linked to incident investigations, psychiatric assessments, and staff training in the areas of, use of force, negotiators, Institutional Crisis Intervention Teams (ICIT), pepper spray, spit hoods, and escort, MCSCS maintains that their employee training and processes are anything but flawed. Instead of receiving concrete answers that would assist in a long overdue psychological and emotional healing process, the Faqiri family remains caught in a blame game between MCSCS and terminated guards.
With minimal options on the table, the Faqiri family has turned their attention to a civil lawsuit that names MCSCS, the superintendent of the Lindsay superjail and several correctional staff as well as the Kawartha Lakes police in their failure to interview a key eyewitness. In the year 2021, the Faqiri family continues to seek full transparency and accountability in a legal-medical system saturated in bureaucratic re-traumatization in the form of inaccuracies, coverups, waiting games, and blame tactics.
The insanity of the system
While one might be tempted to think of Soleiman’s death as an institutional anomaly, the concrete reality suggests that solitary confinement, institutional brutality, and racial profiling are linked to a long list of – and in many cases forgotten – names: Ashley Smith, Edward Snowshoe, Abdurahman Hassan, Justin St. Amour, Moses Amik Beaver, Matthew Hines, Jordan Sheard, Cleve Geddes, Yousef Hussein, Adam Kenneth Reed, Adam Capay, and Clayton Cromwell. How many more preventable deaths under government care will we tolerate? How many more avoidable deaths will we, literally, pay for? How many more Faqiri’s will it take before we radically transform a severely broken system euphemistically classified as “corrections?”
According to the Legal Information Institute, negligence refers to,
“A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances. The behaviour usually consists of actions, but can also consist of omissions when there is some duty to act.”
With this legal definition in mind, a few questions arise: Would a reasonable individual take a person diagnosed with schizophrenia to a jail, let alone a disreputable jail? Would a reasonable individual place a person diagnosed with schizophrenia into segregation? Would a reasonable individual participate in a gang-like beating of a person with a serious mental illness? We must also ask: Did the institution and employees of the jail fulfill their duty of care, or did they fail to act in ways that worked in the best interest of the human being in their custody? Cases like this scream insanity – that is, the insanity of the system. As a means of understanding this recklessness, it helps to examine a report published three years before Soleiman’s needless death.
In the Ombudsman Ontario report of 2013 titled, The Code: Investigation into the Ministry of Community and Correctional Services’ Responses to Allegations of Excessive Use of Force Against Inmates, Ontario’s watchdog, Andre Marin, maps out a system oozing in concealment, silence, denial, and sanitization of undesirable incidences. The report documents the ways in which some guards use lies, annihilate records, make deals with inmates, and strategically conceal facts as a means of protecting themselves and their co-workers. As mentioned in the report,
“[…] the “code of silence” is a persistent, recurring factor in cases of excessive use of force. It is essentially an unwritten social incentive for staff to conceal information that might have negative consequences for a co-worker. As in policing, in the world of correctional services, where personal safety and security often depends on the support of other officers, the pressure to keep silent and even lie to protect colleagues can be prevailing and pernicious” (64).
Marin’s report spells out the fact that the application of excessive force by some guards, is not only illegal and inexcusable, but also an enduring aspect of a dysfunctional prison culture that needs to be addressed with a sense of urgency. The report goes into disturbing detail concerning cases in which restrained and controlled inmates suffering from mental illness were subjected to head kicks and other harsh attacks that resulted in countless abrasions, contusions, and lacerations.
Under the section, Dealing with Inmates with Mental Illness and Special Needs, the report states,
“The Ministry’s latest Use of Force policy specifically directs that when inmates exhibit signs of mental illness or are known to have mental health issues, correctional staff should consider getting health care staff involved, moving the inmate to a quieter environment and invoking de-escalation techniques. However, without specialized training relating to mental illness and other disabilities affecting behaviour, correctional staff can misinterpret inmate conduct and mismanage or precipitate conflict situations” (102).
The report also mentions that most of the abuse that inmates experience occurs in areas like a cell, which contain no video surveillance. As demonstrated in Marin’s report, the writing was on the wall and clear steps needed to be taken to prevent the ongoing victimization of people suffering with mental illness. Unfortunately, the issues of excessive force were not addressed in time, and as a result, Soleiman’s name would be added to the list of preventable jailhouse victims.
What adds to the already disturbing nature of Soleiman’s case is the fact that all the reports and papers that informed Canadian officials and the public about the possibility of more brutal outcomes were simply not implemented in such a way as to prevent Soleiman’s death. While the determination of Soleiman’s death and the accountability of guards is imperative, it is also essential to recognize that what lies beyond these narrow applications of law is a socio-historical legal-medical apparatus of cruelty and a dense track record of failing to implement evidence-based measures with the capacity to truly protect, support, and rehabilitate those with mental illness. This perpetual failure can be conceptualized as an overarching negligence of a dysfunctional system. A failure to see and understand this is yet another expression of denial. The question is: Can an effective evidence-based approach be implemented in our existing prison system? If not, perhaps it is time to disassemble the monstrous system that we constructed and rebuild from the ground up.
No body is immune
Mental illness can affect anyone. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), schizophrenia is a complicated biochemical brain disorder that affects a person’s capacity to differentiate between reality and false perceptions. People who live with this complex brain disorder may be seriously impacted by delusions, hallucinations, social withdrawal, and unclear thinking. Like other mental illnesses, there is no universal experience; but rather, a unique trajectory, one of which should never include an experience such as Soleiman Faqiri’s.
As a high school teacher and parent of two young children, I was deeply concerned about the prevalence rates linked to children, youth, and mental illness prior to the pandemic (roughly 1 in 5), let alone under pandemic conditions. During the first wave, an article written by Liam Casey titled, ‘Kids Are Not All Right’: Mental Health Among Ontario Children Deteriorating Amid COVID-19, revealed that “70% of children experienced deterioration of mental health.” All this to say, when I first joined the Justice for Soli Movement in August 2020, I instinctively understood the short- and long-term consequences of not getting involved. Without some degree of political participation and sustained public pressure geared towards rapidly changing the existing prison system, there is nothing in place to guarantee that the type of brutality that occurred to Soleiman will not occur in the adult years of one of the children or youth that are currently growing up in our schools, families, and ultimately, society.
Like many Canadians, I had no idea about this chilling case until I stumbled across a Toronto Star article in the late summer of 2020 titled, ‘Tragic, preposterous’: Family of Soleiman Faqiri reacts as OPP says it won’t charge jail guards in mentally ill Ontario man’s death. The article was terribly moving and put me into instant tears as I could not bring myself to comprehend what the Faqiri family was going through to achieve some form of justice in a clearly unjust system.
My immediate reaction was to contact Soleiman’s brother Yusuf Faqiri to see if there was anything I could do to support his family’s struggle. After a quick search online, I messaged Yusuf and he called me back almost immediately. Within the first five minutes of our phone call, I realized that I was talking to someone that was, on one hand, deeply shattered by the circumstances of his brother’s death, and on the other, filled with a unique love for humanity and an unshakable passion to drastically transform a dehumanizing prison system incapable of protecting the most vulnerable members of our society.
Till this day, I remain committed to the Justice for Soli Movement and believe, alongside countless other people and organizations such as, the McMaster Muslims for Peace and Justice, The Schizophrenia Society of Canada, Naseeha Mental Health, Muslim Medical Association of Canada, Across Boundaries, Elizabeth Fry Society, Bar None, East Coast Prison Justice Society, No One Is Illegal, B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims, that people with mental illness like Beauche in the 19th-century or Faqiri in the 21st-century, deserve so much more than jails, flogs, handcuffs, spit hoods, beatings, and premature death. It is time to end the consistency of cruelty.
For more information on getting involved please visit: https://www.justiceforsoli.com/
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