Winterbrook Journal

[Doc]

My relationship with the Winterbrook Asylum started in 2011, when the Harper Rock General Hospital asked me to represent them on a provincial wide steering committee about the reintegration of mentally incompetent from asylums into the general prison population. The reason this was happening was because of changes in law and reductions in the funding streams for the mentally deficient. The problem for Harper Rock specifically started in 2010, when the Winterbrook Asylum for the Criminally Insane and Mentally Disturbed was closed, and all it’s inmates were redistributed about the provincial prisons for assimilation into the various prison populations.

Liberal activists took up the banner for the mentally ill because, as they explained, they were not of sane mind and could not advocate for themselves. The activists failed to accept the fact that there simply was not enough funding to maintain the mental hospitals or as I prefer to call them, asylums, with the proper staff and equipment that was needed. The liability insurance alone for such a facility had doubled in the last five years; so when the government was face with cutbacks, it was deemed unnecessary to maintain two facilities, when the inmates could be integrated into one, thus Winterbrook was slated for closure.

The activists claimed that Bill C-130 was made into law to see to the rights of the mentally ill; when the federal government incorporated the “dangerous mentally disordered accused” (DMDA) provisions into Bill C-30. They were patterned on the “dangerous offender” scheme in the Criminal Code that allows persons convicted of a serious personal injury offence or certain sexual offences to be sentenced indeterminately. However, the federal government did not specify in Bill C-130, where the persons that were convicted were to be housed. Incidentally, Bill C-130 merely changed the wording of a few key phrases such as ‘disturbed mind’ to ‘mentally ill’, anything of merit in the Bill had been struck out years before it ever became law, leaving it virtually the same as the law from 1986.

However, the activists were able to key in on four reintegrated inmates that, after ‘assimilation into the prison populous exhibited increased paranoia and failure to thrive’ in their living situations. Why was this a problem for Harper Rock General Hospital? It was a problem because the four inmates all came from the Winterbrook Asylum located in Harper Rock City, which now stood in an empty state of disrepair. Since ‘the four’, as they became to be called by the steering committee, could not be freed and the Winterbrook Asylum was no longer in operation, it fell to Harper Rock General Hospital to house the four.

Why Harper Rock General? Because Harper Rock General Hospital received some generous federal funding in the creation of their locked Alzheimer’s Unit. But a locked Alzheimer’s unit was not equal to an Asylum dedicated to the criminally insane. For Harper Rock General to absorb the four, a wing of the existing hospital would have to be re-purposed at great expense. Reinforced windows, walls and doors would have to be constructed, as well as having dedicated nursing and security staff to oversee the four. When the hospital ran the numbers they were looking at an easy six figure amount, that would only get larger, because of the lost revenue from the lost hospital beds that would be re-purposed. Activists argued that the hospital would be compensated for the four by the Federal prison system. However, the compensation amount that was offered by the Federal prison system, had not been adjusted in twenty years, and amounted to nothing more than a stipend, than true compensation. Harper Rock General Hospital felt they needed representation on the steering committee by someone, in the words of the hospital administrator, 'that would not take any **** or allow themselves to be bamboozled or paid off'. This was my introduction to the Winterbrook Asylum.