“Please. I’m begging you.”Matthew Ryan Hines, 33, an inmate at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick, uttered these words as he lay on the floor in a shower stall, handcuffed behind his back. It was late at night on May 26, 2015. Moments earlier, prison guards had repeatedly pepper-sprayed him in the face.Despite his pleas, a guard turned the shower on him again. Later, guards dragged Hines out of the stall, motionless and unresponsive.Hines, who had a history of mental illness and was serving a five-year sentence for robbery and property crimes, was pronounced dead about 90 minutes later. A post-mortem concluded his death appeared to be asphyxia from pepper spray.In a scathing report last February, Ivan Zinger, who was acting Correctional Investigator, concluded Hines’s death was preventable and a result of a “catastrophic and fatal breakdown in the chain of response and accountability” at the prison. And the probe into his death by Correctional Service Canada (CSC), the agency that oversees federal prisons, demonstrated the “self-serving and unreflective” way it investigates inmate deaths, Zinger said in his report.On Jan. 3, the RCMP charged two correctional officers with manslaughter and criminal negligence in connection with the death.Two days earlier, Zinger was officially appointed Canada’s Correctional Investigator.Zinger sees himself as a staunch advocate for the rights of nearly 13,500 men and 700 women behind bars, including the most hardened and notorious inmates. He has taken some controversial positions, including a call for the return of tattooing by trained inmates.“If you believe that all persons are born free and equal in dignity and rights, then that belief must also apply to those who are less fortunate, less privileged and, even so to those deprived of their liberty,” says the 52-year-old lawyer.Zinger learned these values at an early age from his parents. Though he grew up ...
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