Should prisoners get mail?

Not only are telephones not free, but it can be difficult to get in touch too. A friend of mine from Algeria sent my son a letter a couple of months ago. The letter has not yet arrived to Derik.

That did not upset me too much at first, but then I received an email from the Innocence Project at UBC asking why Derik had not responded to their last 3 letters.
On Sunday. I asked Derik if he had received their letters. He said no that he only know what I had told him from the letters we had received. Unfortunately, our letters do not contain the information as to what they have done and are doing on Derik's case. Our letters also do have the Questions that they require answers to.

These letters are legal mail and cannot be held back. The letters were written in February, March and April of this year. It is now June. I called the institution, and was told that someone would check into it and call me back. At the same time, I requested that they pass a message to Derik to call home. This was at 10 am.

By noon, I had not heard anything, so I called the Deputy Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada in Abbotsford. Could not speak to her, of course, but her assistant did take note of my concerns and said someone from William Head would contact me soon.

Around 7 pm, Derik called thinking some sort of emergency was going on since I rarely use that method of getting hold of him. I said no emergence, just informed him of the calls I had made. Also passed along the message that the Innocence project has been waiting for a reply. He told me that there were 3 letters waiting for him to pick up after the call. As I found out, those were the 3 letters that had not been delivered to him.

What really bothers me is that if we were to somehow interfere with mail delivery, we could get up to 14 years in prison. It seems they can do it without penalty. 4 months to deliver a letter is absolutely absurd. the letters came from Vancouver. they had to travel a total distance of 40 km to get to him. Funny how they all showed up on the same day, after I had made a call to Regional Headquarters!

Unfortunately the one from Algeria still has not turned up.

My letters take two days to get to the institution, but usually another week to get to him. but legal mail is supposed to be delivered the day that it arrives, unopened. My letters have to be opened for security reasons. It only takes extra time if they want to photocopy them or read them first.

Reminds me of an incident about 14 years ago. A staff member at Matsqui's visiting and correspondence location was suspended after taking mail home to read. The only way she was caught doing that was that she became ill and the mail she had at home did not get back to the institution for a few days. Someone had noticed it was missing.

Surprisingly, she was not fired for interfering with the mail. had it been me, I would now be in prison! Different laws for different folks.

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Coach Elouise
604-794-3218
Skype coach_elouise
Email: lordelouise@gmail.com
rascal60@shaw.ca