Article 18.2 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights says that you cannot “refuse employment to a person without being able to prove the link between the offense committed and the employment” that he is going to do. Social reintegration is like saying “listen, you know you were in a situation, you were removed from society because you were in detention‚ then you must be allowed to reintegrate, you must return to society.
But social reintegration is where it becomes a little more difficult because the person, when they want, can reintegrate society to live, like, what they want to live and be above the law, well not above the law, but rather follow the laws; she’s going to face a lot of problems because she still has the record hanging over her head and then, people are going to look at it differently that’s for sure.
The person knows that she has a record. She’s going to live with it all her life but she doesn’t have to live with it, not only in terms of her thoughts, but in terms of her daily life. She must be able to resume some semblance of life that will be more normal, that will be adapted so that he can, like, pay his rent, pay his mortgage, because it’s super important. We want these people to be able to reintegrate into society normally. You have the right to live a normal life as long as you want to do so. And then when the person has the will, we don’t want to spit on this will either.
My father left one day with his suitcases, I was around 9 years old. So he left with another woman. So he abandoned me, my sister and my mother. There is one of my grand…my grandmothers who told me: ‚ÄúDaniel, now you are the man of the house. “. And then when we say that a little boy of 9 or 10 years old, well he pumps his chest then “I’m the boss”, and I’m going to take care of my mother then my sister. And my mother met another man, maybe a year and a half later…a year, a year and a half later. Fell in love and it turned out to be a violent man. The phrase someone had said to me when I was a child still echoed in my head and I felt like an inadequate person who couldn’t handle the responsibility he had been given,
even if it wasn’t mine. And unfortunately I confronted this man, took his life and was sentenced to life in prison. I was 18, then 19 two days later.
There are three issues of social reintegration. The first is having a decent income, having money. This income will allow you to have a roof over your head. And the third element which is the most difficult and which costs nothing is to rebuild a social network. But how do we create a social network? This is what we do when… at university, during our studies. But the people I know at university were in prison. So how do we do that? We arrive at a street corner: “Hello madam, I served 17 years in prison, I would like to be your friend.”. It’s more likely the police will arrive than they’ll invite us to dinner. So it’s…it’s difficult to do that because, when you make friends you have to be honest with them, then at some point you have to say it, that you’ve been in prison, and then sometimes, well there are people who won’t accept it and then who will “flush” us. But it is important to be honest if we want to establish a healthy friendship.
What are the legal or administrative obstacles that can make it difficult
for an individual to reintegrate into society? It’s the stigma. Stigmatizing a person is
like looking at a person and then saying: Listen, you got a prison sentence for X, Y conviction. Then this person there when they try to return to society for example if they were imprisoned 2, 3, 4, 5 years regardless of the duration, or it’s 2, 3 months, it becomes difficult because the potential employer or the employer who…where the person already works, he will look at the situation and then it will have a bit of a kind of fear effect, because they will say to themselves the employer, well here I have someone who wants to apply with us, but here I see his criminal record, so I’m a bit like, fearful, then I I would be afraid to hire this person.
I was lucky because while I was incarcerated, I knew a journalist who knew a magazine editor, and then he put me in touch with this person, and then he offered to write a column once a month for the magazine. So I wrote a column once a month. And when my parole was approaching, I said, look, I have to find a job you know. And I was able to participate in a program that allowed incarcerated people to find a job and go to work. So I left the prison in the morning, I came back to the prison in the evening and I started working for this magazine, where I did almost anything. Then I progressed in that company, I became an
advertising representative after a year and I got another job after that on a website,
but at the time I worked in the Internet, it’s not very very… it wasn’t like today,
it was difficult. And then I got an offer to go work as a correctional officer. Then at the start I said to myself: Damn, who am I to go and do this. I don’t know anything about that. I have never done an intervention in my life, I have never studied in this. But the service for which I worked is a… service which is very similar to the peer-to-peer service which is in place in psychiatry, which is taking up more and more space today in our society. It’s a bit based on the principle of the “AA”, “NA” brotherhoods. So someone who has experienced the difficulty can help someone who is experiencing this difficulty to get to work.
Because there are organizations right now that are helping people released from detention to get them back into the job market. There are employers who are very like… because they have experienced the same situation themselves, who are made directors or heads of companies, and then who are like: I want to give a chance to a person who has, had a bad space, then I want to have this person, because this person often, when he wants to reintegrate into society, there is a form of humility that this person will have because he will know: I went through something difficult, then I want to succeed, then I will help people after me or people who are in the same situation as me. They will really have some form of protection and then they will redirect them on the right path. I think it’s super important. You must have the right to have a second chance
If there is something that is not working in their life, they should go and ask for help. Asking for help is difficult because it is sometimes shameful. We don’t know how to proceed, but we need to consult a trusted adult and then ask for help. Freedom is the most precious thing we possess. We are here, but there are others who are like within four walls and they cannot get out. Then we control everything you eat, where you go, when you sleep, whereas we can go out until 2, 3 in the morning and do whatever we want, and then we come home and know that we have that freedom. It’s something precious. Enjoy your freedom. Yes we have done stupid things, yes we do stupid things in life but we must never get to the point where it could deprive our freedom and there will be criminal records.
If you don’t ask for help when you have a serious problem in your life that
you may end your days in prison. And then it’s not a very pleasant place.
