The following are locations for selected Prisoners’ Justice Day events happening in Ontario on Sunday, August 10th:
Toronto: Grange Park at 1:00 pm ET
Kingston: Grounds at the Prison for Women (P4W), 40 Sir John A. Macdonald Blvd at 11:00 am ET
Ottawa: Human Rights Monument, 220 Elgin St at 11:00 am ET
Hamilton: Northwest corner of Barton & Ferguson at 5:00 pm ET
Montreal: Parc Vinet, Coin Lionel Groulx & Vinet at 1:30 ET (rain location at Le Frigo Vert)
Halifax: Seahorse Tavern, 2037 Gottingen St at 7:00 pm AST
Vancouver: Claire Culhane Memorial Beach, Trout Lake Park, 6:00 pm PDT
Please see your local organizing groups for events in other cities and provinces.
Prisons are spaces of concealment. With the exception of a handful of reports generated by government offices and tirelessly put together by advocacy groups, what occurs in provincial and federal correctional institutions remains largely hidden from the public eye. The perspectives of prisoners themselves remain even less visible, confined behind sanctions imposed by correctional staff that provide very few channels for their voices to be heard.
Cell Count, a quarterly newspaper published by the prison abolitionist organization PASAN, offers a unique view into the lives of people serving sentences under the Canadian state. Each issue consists of articles, poetry and original artwork from both current and former prisoners, alongside the highlighting of prisoner-centered resources and harm reduction/HIV information. What results is an elevated form of solidarity through media that raises the voices of those with lived experience of incarceration, further revealing the harm inherent to prisons.
Emergence from the AIDS solidarity movement
Sena Hussain, the lead editor of Cell Count, described to Spring how the newspaper arose in response to the HIV crisis that was being neglected across prisons in Canada during the 1990s. Because homophobic carceral institutions refused to acknowledge that sexual relationships were happening, few resources existed for prisoners in the form of preventing HIV occurring from sex and the sharing of needles through tattooing and drug use.
PASAN led the charge in the response to the escalating HIV rates in prisons and created Cell Count as a means to provide educational information for people inside. For instance, the first issue of Cell Count contains a graphic with instructions on how to clean needles with water and bleach after tattooing. Included as well in the inaugural issue is a moving excerpt from Joann Walker, a Black woman who died of AIDS after being compassionately released in 1994. In it, Walker describes how the lack of education she received around her HIV infection only compounded with the depraved conditions that she experienced while in confinement, ultimately concluding if her impending death did occur, the murderer would be the prison. She ends her article with a request to her incarcerated friends to continue “giving hell” to correctional officers who consider themselves above the law.
Walker’s powerful experience represents one of the many stories highlighted by Cell Count in relation to people with HIV and showcases the re-occurring theme of prisoners’ resistance against the conditions imposed upon them.
Connecting people inside
Spring has written before about how the objectives of socialist writing involve advancing the political consciousness of the working class and building solidarity between the writer and the reader. In describing the impact Cell Count has on people inside, Hussain noted how solidarity is created through people writing about their own experiences, then sharing it in the form of an article that can be easily distributed amongst a population whose access to media is often heavily restricted.
Several topics have been written about in Cell Count, from a man explaining how it is the correctional officers who perpetuate the harmful environment of prisons (Danger pay for cons – Issue #87), to someone who has been imprisoned for 27 years in a 6×8 cell wondering how they will adjust to life once they are released (Is there life after prison? – Issue #96). One person wrote about their role as a peer advocate in helping other people with their issues while incarcerated (Peer advocacy – Issue #104), while others dive deep into law and policy about a specific systemic issue, such as heat in prisons (CSC’s air conditioning policy is obscene – Issue #100).
A specific article that stood out is in issue #92, the awareness issue, titled Criminal Lives Matter by B.G Kerr. It is a piece that was released around the same time as George Floyd’s murder and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, in which Kerr’s words echo the demands of BLM for society to see the criminalized as human beings. Kerr names many people who have died while incarcerated, from Solemein Faqiri to Ashley Smith, followed by a long, heartfelt passage of all the issues they have experienced during their sentence. It is a moving account of the pain inflicted by prisons that rightly points the responsibility at society for failing to care for the lives of the most vulnerable. Kerr ends his article with the request that the reader educate themselves about what happens inside prisons, and then “let the world know that it is wrong and unacceptable how we are treated. Because our lives matter.”
Hussain added that “writing can be a very validating experience for folks and it gives them a sense of pride. People often ask for a copy to be sent to their loved one and family members.”
When it comes to readers, Cell Count can often be the only periodical that someone can subscribe to while imprisoned, and it can bridge a connection between two people who may share similar experiences.
Resources and mutual aid
Throughout the issues of Cell Count, there is an array of resource information that includes prisoner help lines, prisoner pen pal programs, prison in-reach program schedules, organizations that provide help to families with loved ones inside and many more. One such service is the Disability Justice Network of Ontario prisoner support line that provides an opportunity for people to report on prison and lockdown conditions. Another one is Tough Times Inc, who provide help with penitentiary packs that contain essential items for incarcerated people. Hussien mentioned when Cell Count included a resource that showed the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in issue #87, many people went to their psychiatrist and told them that they had those symptoms.
Cell Count is also dedicated to uplifting the enfranchisement of prisoners. Issue #107, which was released in March 2025, is devoted entirely to information on the federal election that occurred in April. The issue contains not only information on how incarcerated people can vote but extensive information on how each of the major party platforms address legal issues, prisons, harm reduction and social services.
The space dedicated to resources inside Cell Count showcases how media that is focused on advancing social justice can be more than just informative journalism. Magazines can act as an extension of mutual aid that connect readers with essential services that they may not know about. Such connections are all the more important for prisoners, whose loss of liberty prevents them from being able to fully access resources from outside their confinement.
Importance of art
A discussion of Cell Count would not be complete without discussing the incredible art and poetry that each issue contains. Hussain says that there many prisoners who are tattoo artists and this in turn translates into creating art for Cell Count. When she meets with people inside she encourages them to turn their discussions and what they have been holding inside themselves into art. “Art can be transformational for people, they can turn their feelings into artwork. When you put it down on paper there is some level of relief. Art is very powerful and people think in very symbolic ways.”
Our carceral society tries its best to hide away those who it criminalizes, to stash them behind walls and deny them their agency. Cell Count is an important avenue through which incarcerated people can reclaim their voices, get information, and reshape society’s narratives about prisons and prisoners. When prisoners speak, and when we listen, we can understand that there is no place for prisons in a world where all of us are free and equal. Cell Count brings us closer to that world.
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