The Honey Pit: Phil Jones' Story About a Wilderness Prison Without Bars

By Phil Jones

To the crooks, the guys in the black hats, the baddies: Society is fed up with you. You are a menace to our safety and you are very expensive in terms of the social damage you inflict on us, not to mention the literal cost of keeping you locked up in warm prisons with three meals a day eaten off stainless trays. So we are going to send you to a prison camp in Canada's far north. We will never have to bother about you again. Or will we?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450234658

Book preview

ONE

The twin-engine Beechcraft barely cleared the trees, skimmed the top off a small house breaking off the starboard wing, skidded sideways through a small creek and brought up short of a rising slope. With blood from a broken nose creasing his craggy face, pilot Bunsen Keeling was still conscious as he edged through the busted door falling five feet to the pebbles. He sprawled on the ground for a moment before his instinct drove him to crawl up the bank of the stream. Bunsen Keeling winced from a sharp pain. He had hurt his back in the fall.

Shit, and he drew a white shirt sleeve across his bloodied mouth.

He sat there stunned in the middle of bush country. It took about ten minutes for a woman from the house to tread cautiously through the trees wiping her reddened dish-pan hands on a worn apron.

You okay, mister? she called out.

Yea, replied a shaken Keeling.

The middle-aged housewife stopped and looked back. Who's goin' to pay for my roof?

I am, he said.

You got money?

I had, he grunted.

She squatted on a bent tree trunk a safe distance away and eyed him. This man wore a suit and a tie; looked like a pin-stripe. Know where you at?

No.

Where you from?

East.

Where you goin'?

Nowhere. Not now. I'm hurting. Some.

Some? She looked at him from the distance. You bust your nose? she yelled.

Feels like it.

You took out the phone line.

At that moment leaking fuel from a ruptured line dripped onto a hot engine and erupted in a searing whoosh. The woman cringed and stepped back staring in fear at the flames and smoke. After a moment she cried out, Anythin' in there important?

Not anymore, Bunsen Keeling replied. He gazed at the burning wreck and saw the broken barrels of 'yellow cake', the uranium ore powder spilled out and bubbling in the heat of the burning airplane. It took about an hour for the cops and forestry people to arrive, attracted by the column of smoke rising in the cool air of the northern Saskatchewan forest. It took another six days for them to formally arrest him.

There is a new prison camp in Canada's far north. It is named Penal Colony One and officially it doesn't exist. The prisoners don't know that they are at about Latitude 62 degrees 30 minutes North, Longitude 101 degrees 30 minutes West. It is a secret. Nobody is supposed to know it's there, certainly not its location, especially the prison population itself. But if they did know it wouldn't make much difference.

Nor is anybody too clear about how many men are there, but judging from the first three or four plane loads flown in to the airstrip on those big army planes it seemed like a lot. Maybe as many as 500 souls, most of them looking bewildered and frightened. They say eventually there'll be more. On the ground this rabble didn't form up long enough to be counted. When the transports left - they didn't cut their engines - all the prisoners were looking around, and clutching the flimsy pamphlets they'd been given. The piece of paper showed a sketch map of the camp, the latrines and where the river was located. On the reverse side there was something about the store huts - the commissariat - and the kitchens.

You couldn't call this a welcome home card, said Sam Brett.

There was a single line at the bottom in small type, There are no guards at Penal Colony One.

We don't know where we are, and no guards? What's all that stuff about? Hickory said.

You always wanted your freedom, now you've got it, Sam Brett replied. And if you want to know where you are. look around.

All I can see is rock and fir trees and big mountains in the distance, said Hickory.

Sam looked at him: You do know where you are.

They could both see at a glance the hills, the river and the arm of a lake edged with pine and scraggly larch. It was late in the day but still light enough to read their bits of paper. For Sam Brett there was a sense of foreboding; the slow realization of what he would have to expect. He wondered if the other men thought about it too.

TWO

My name is Sam Brett. Short name. Short story. They say I embezzled two million dollars. I ran the finances for a big city school administration. They caught me out and I was sentenced to seven years imprisonment. I wanted to be rich; I thought that's all there was. Mine is what is euphemistically called 'a white collar crime'. Years ago in the system a guy like me could expect to serve some easy time. After all, I carried no gun, I didn't harm anyone. I might have expected an easy ride in jail - if any time locked up can be called easy. But not any more. The system has changed and they tell me I'm going to Penal Colony One, whatever the hell that is. Right now none of us knows anything about it except that it's bound to be in Canada's wild north. The name has an ominous ring to it and giving it a number hints they're planning a series. As if I care right now. I miss Ginnie more than I thought I would.

****

My name is Hickory. My real name has never mattered much. I'm Canadian, born and bred in Toronto and I'm black. Not even a nice coffee tan, but real black. In prison, apart from the women, you miss freedom - not just the obvious kind but a deeper kind; for your soul. Life is passing you by. You feel sick inside, and bitter. Imprisonment only makes better criminals. Can't remember now how I got the name Hickory. It's what everybody calls me, for as long as I can remember. As long as it matters. I dropped out of school. There was never any point in going on. Nobody was ever going to let me sell stocks or bonds, or help run their company for them as a vice president. I had lots of clean shirts. I looked after myself, you know. But it didn't make any difference. None of my shirts was white enough. I killed some guy in a convenience store one night. I needed some change. Shooting a guy gets you a lot of attention. They're sending me to a place called Penal Colony One, up north someplace. Sounds cold but it can't be much colder than Toronto in February. Although they say it will be.

****

My name is Harry Percival Buchanan, I'm going back to jail again. All my life I've been harassed. I'm in my late forties now but I've never had a fair shake. I grew up with mom and dad on the Ontario farm. But then the cops found a lot of buried bodies there and blamed me. Did I tell you that I also killed Georgie, my brother-in-law? It was a knife fight. Circumstance. I've done a lot of time, on and off. Most of it wasn't my fault - well, maybe a couple of times. Now I'm going back. For me it's like going home. I've done this lots. I can work my time just fine. It doesn't suit everyone but it suits me. Inside these days the kids leave me alone. A clean bed to sleep in. They give you three meals a day on stainless steel trays. Good showers. It's warm. It's too late for me, but for them that wants to get an education there's all kinds of courses. Personal rehabilitation programs they call them. You have phone privileges, not that I have anyone to call. People can come and visit you, although after about three years they stop coming. Polished floors. Keep out of trouble Inside and it's easy. You have to put your life back together again. I know my rights. I read some of their books in the library. You don't have to work if you don't want to, although the Warden said that if cons don't work they get bored. What does he know! As I said; easy time. I figured I'd have to earn $40,000 a year on the Outside to live like this. If the Federal government has anything to do with it, it will be number one. I guess that's why they call it Penal Colony One. No big deal for me and it's better than living in Campeytown with that wife of mine and the kids. She's as dumb as a barn door and about as heavy. The only thing I don't have is wheels.

****

My name is Michael Morrison. They call me Mikey, which I don't like much, but it's stuck. I probably deserve to be here, but mine was a crime of passion, they said, but a couple of cops were dead at the end of it all. I hate prison. People knock me around pretty good. I'm fit but not as tall and heavy as some of the other guys. It's the black guys that bug me the worst, I hadn't met many before but there seems like an awful lot of them in prison. I think most of us here have a contempt for the idea of rehabilitation and improvement. Every young punk should get to visit here for a while. Everybody would go straight because nobody is born to be put in cages.

****

My name is Lester. I don't talk about it much but I was baptized Jocelyn Babcock; that's what's on my card. I was born in Stepney. That's a part of London, England. My mom and dad came from Kenya. That's in Africa someplace. I ended up in Toronto. My girlfriend used to run stuff for me. She disappeared and those assholes blamed me. She was sixteen. They've told me I'm going to Penal Colony One. We'll see. I'm the boss on the Inside.

****

My name is Bunsen Keeling, and I shouldn't be in prison. I know everybody says that, but I really don't belong here. I'm a victim of a political change, and a move against corporate North America where 'profit' these days is seen as anti-social. I'm wealthy in my own right. I think they put me in prison as an example to a world gone mad. I worked hard for my money. I'm rich, at least I was, and I deserved every penny I had. I was trained as a mining engineer, and I'm an entrepreneur by nature. I'm not making any excuses for that. I didn't steal any mining stocks; the properties and claims I had were legitimate. The world needed uranium, and I knew where it was. I made millions of dollars for other people as well, but I wear long pants. I know how the system works. I enjoyed my money, but people who don't have any can't stand that. After the Securities Commission got finished with me they sent me into Penal Colony One in the helicopters on the second draft.

THREE

The plan is to ease the tension in our penal system, said George Menaris. The courts are clogged with backed-up cases and the jails are hard pressed to hold all the law breakers. My job is to empty the prisons, but not turn the inmates loose on the streets. They'd only be back. Right now the expenses of the penal system are climbing. We don't want to spend more taxpayers' money on bricks and mortar. Menaris was responsible for organizing Penal Colony One. He had an Order In Council from the Canadian cabinet that gave him the authority. A sturdy, gray-haired man in his early fifties, Menaris was a likeable character - unless you were a convict. He'd had a long career in the nation's correctional services. He'd often said that a good warden always knew about what was going on in his prison. They also know that they don't really run the prison: the inmates do that. Penal Colony One was to be a part of what was to be a new system. We want to get rid of any confusion between humanitarian concerns and a criminal society running wild. We've always known how to fix the line, it's just that before, we never had the political will to do it, he said. So far the traditional prison has failed. Making prisons comfortable doesn't work. It's a plan from a misguided prison bureaucracy that means boredom for prisoners. It hasn't imposed a better morality or protected decent families from threat, and he tried a small smile as he looked out at the room of reporters. I want your kids and my kids to walk around town on a summer evening out of harm's way.

Menaris took a sip from the water glass in front of him. He had a momentary flash that he wished it had been gin. It wasn't.

"I want to describe this carefully how we feel - the way I hope most of us feel. I am a product of the political field. Yet I have been a part of the correctional field for years and I know we have been failing. I have despaired as I see our released inmates going back out into society simply more sophisticated, better criminals.

"If I claim them to be a waste that is deemed to be 'politically incorrect' but they are, they are dross - and now we are going to send them away. I expect you will never hear from them again. That is our aim

When this drive becomes common knowledge we will, indeed, have protesters flashing placards about the abysmal trampling of human rights, but I suspect that not one of the protesters will have to endure the horror of a loved one murdered nor an aged parent defrauded. The people I'm talking about abdicated their human rights, these people, these vermin among us. They don't know what decency means. They say Christ forgives everybody but he's going to have a tough time with some of these characters.

Several reporters taking notes were getting restless, edgy in their seats. Menaris held up a hand in caution. "Stay there. You have been invited to hear me; so listen. We have to do something when our violent repeat offenders are charged with crimes again and again. It has now got to the stage where too many people are being killed by people police already know will kill. That doesn't make a lot of sense. The weak sentences handed down by the courts don't help either. It's frustrating. A policeman can work for months, even years, gathering the evidence against an accused, to see the courts send him home, free or with a slap on the wrist. Canada's justice system is in a tragic spiral of failure. So also is the USA's scenario. Their system has been overtaken by an obscene rush to imprison to the extent that their rate is five times the average for other nations. Almost one in every thirty-one adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one-in-three chance of being imprisoned sometime in their lives. That's a bad prospect for any society, especially reflective and ambiguous for a nation with a black president.

"This incarceration rate in the US is a disgrace, but here in Canada it is hardly better. But in terms of the ruined lives of the offender, the encompassing mixture of misery and fury for the family and friends of victims, it is a deep incision, a life-long wound.

For people in my line of work, said Menaris, it's been clear for some time that the government agency known as Correctional Services is a misnomer. We are not 'correcting' anything. He paused. "So far nothing is improving and we're spending a lot of money doing it. Something is rotten, and we're going to stop it. Were going to cut this off, to stifle the feed line. We are going to take these people out of society. The recividists - the repeaters -- the white-collar guys, they're gone. We don't have to bother about them anymore.

"To strengthen our resolve about what we're doing, we have been learning over the past several years of a change in the enemies of our society. Forget the romantic, or populist, notion about the lone, quaint crook with the misguided, inept, low IQ. With some alarm, we are learning of a new kind of offender. They are more likely to be violent, gang-affiliated, addicted or mentally ill. Even worse, they are often savvy, professionally organized and feel they are well above the law. Before, they were able to talk to high-priced lawyers. Our aim now is for them to talk to climate-challenged pine trees.

Earlier, there was a discussion about putting all this riff-raff into special complexes to house those weirdos and dangerous people - a different roof for different offenders. There was never a plan to ask the inmates to pay for all of this. Menaris peered at the reporters. You would.

Mr. Menaris, can I ask a question?

"No. Not yet. I have you here all in one place and I will never have this chance again. I want you to understand what I'm telling you about your decayed society. This ocean-change in our strategy is not a fifteen-second tv clip for the six o'clock news. If you like, this is a philosophical earthquake. We are going after, once and for all, everybody who threatens our safe, pleasant urban lifestyles.

"I want to quote you a recent statement from my own political sphere, citing my own professional point of view which I think now is naïve and disingenuous. At worse, probably nonsense. Nobody asked me about the press release. I have saved it and headlined it in a blue pen BULLSHIT. It reads, ' We need to ensure our prisons are