After six months the money was gone, and so was the clinic, but in 1980 McGill Law School created a short-lived prison law workshop, and in 1982-83, a university professor and lawyers with the Montreal legal aid office conducted a feasibility study for the creation of a new prison law clinic. Meanwhile, in Montreal, a prison law clinic was established at the Laval Legal Aid office in 1975 with a grant from the Solicitor General of Canada’s office. Two years later, activists in Quebec City organized La groupe pour la defense des droits des prisonniers, which continues to make efforts on behalf of prisoners to this day. This was also the first year that, on August 10, Prison Justice Day, a national day of remembrance and resistance, was observed in and outside the country’s penitentiaries. of Claire Culhane, founder of the Prisoners’ Rights Group, and Canada’s most high-profile prison activist for the next 30 years. That same year marked the arrival in B.C. The Queen, and this watershed judgment against the antiquated institution was confirmed on appeal. Professor Jackson and his legal team achieved a landmark victory in McCann v. penitentiary and the conditions they endured there. In 1975, the Federal Court for the first time was seized of extensive evidence from prisoners complaining of arbitrary placement in solitary confinement in the maximum-security B.C. Legal Aid took on lawyer Mary McGrath to practice prison law full time at New Westminster. Unfortunately, the funding dried up in 1978, and with it, the clinic. John Conroy went on to pursue a critically important private prison law practice.įederal money also allowed the creation of a prison law clinic at Sackville, New Brunswick. Prison Legal Services, still administered today by the West Coast Prison Justice Society. The prison law scene expanded further in 1974, as John Conroy created a dedicated prison clinic attached to the Abbotsford legal aid office with partial funding from the federal Department of Justice. penitentiary, and in 1974, his clinic received legal aid funding to add a remunerated lawyer and paralegal. 1973 saw Professor Jackson’s clinic expand to the maximum-security B.C. This clinic today is more active than ever. The following year, Queen’s University’s Faculty of Law adopted Professor Price’s proposal for a prison law course and law clinic, first under Professor Price’s direction, then Allan Manson’s, and later, Fergus (Chip) O’Connor’s. The same year, Québec’s Ligue des droits de l’Homme formed a working committee called L’Office des droits des détenu(e)s. In 1972, Professor Michael Jackson, employing University of British Columbia students and provincial legal aid funding, created a prisoners’ rights clinic at Matsqui federal penitentiary, the country’s first. Individual litigators’ efforts were spurred on by the arrival of the Federal Court of Canada in 1971, although Professor Ron Price and others will testify this forum was anything but welcoming in the early years. In Canada, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies was created in 1962, and in 1963, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme in Montreal began wading into prison issues.
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