Why are so many federal prisoners dying shortly before their release date?

Warning: This story has a description of misuse.

Kendal Lee Campo spent most of his lives in jail and outside. The last time he went in, he never came out.

He was serving a seven -year sentence for the attack among other allegations, avoiding legitimate detention and occupying illegal substances. In 2021, in less than two years of its statutory release date, the 31 -year -old died of Methadone Overdose.

Campu died at the Regional Treatment Center (RTC) of the Pacific Institute in BC, a special jail for prisoners with mental health issues. Earlier, he was shifted from RTC of Suskchewan Penitty to Agassees, BC to Kent Institution.

“Kendall was a very wild child, he got into a lot of trouble with the law,” Campo’s sister, Ashley Fontan, recently told CBC News, while Garson was sitting on a deck filled with his plant in Man, Man.

“He ever said about his experience in jail that you never want to go there.”

Campo had left for a little more than one and a half years on the punishment of his determination before being eligible for release. It is part of a large tendency of prisoners, dying over time to serve.

A “prescribed sentence” means that a criminal has a certain date of release, at the point at which, stopping the circumstances, they will be released on parole for the last third of their time.

An indefinite – or indefinite – is punished when the court considers the culprit a “dangerous criminal”. This means that the prisoner will still be eligible for full parole after seven years, but if it is not given, then their time in jail will continue indefinitely.

A package issued to the CBC in April showed through information request through information request by Canada’s corrective service that the main cause of death for prisoners determining sentences between January 2019 and February 2025 was committing suicide. Overdose came a close second.

Statistics stated that 45 percent of prisoners were killed by suicide on their time sentence, already served more than three-fourths; 39 percent served more than half.

Concern on release

The total number of non-natural deaths-including not only suicides and overdose, but housewives and accidents-72 percent prisoners were prisoners who determined the sentences.

Suicide created 47 percent of non-natural deaths for those serving uncertain sentences.

In other words, prisoners with a certain release date were dying more often than those who were indefinitely – and when they were due to exit.

Four days after CBC received the data package from Canada’s corrective service, CSC sent an email to CBC stating that it was sent to error and asked, “If you can remove the version received on 4 April, it will be most appreciated.” There was the second version of the package attached to that email.

While there was no shortage in the original, the new one was almost fully prepared. The CBC has decided to share the original findings anyway.

Toronto’s defense lawyer Ellison Craig says that release dates may act as a catalyst for already extended conditions.

CBC News said, “Your release date comes, the door opens, he says, ‘Goodbye, good luck,’ and you are out to be out for yourself without any help, no support, nothing, nothing,” CBC News said.

The original data of the CSC has shown that 60 percent of the prisoners committed suicide during their time and was later re -identified in less than three months.

Craig said, “Many people who are in custody and outside cycling are those who do not have homes, they are unheard. They do not have families. They struggle with drug addiction or mental health issues,” Craig said.

“They want to be a productive member of the society. Nobody wants to go out of jail and go out. But they also need help … and they never have the same.”

‘You are just breaking’

Former prisoner Richard Miller says that the mental pain of disorganization is often where the utensils boil.

“Emotionally, it is very … disturbing. Your rights and your dignity have been taken away from you. Many times, people’s mental health, you know, plays a big role in it,” he said. “You are just breaking that you don’t deserve anything.”

Miller was further discontinued at several federal features in Ontario for increased attacks between 2012 and 2017 and later parole violations. He feels that he had gone around as he was speaking about treatment to the authorities.

He said that a long time people bottles the things they are experiencing because they feel that there will be no results for those who have done injustice from them inside. It creates the mentality of fragmentation.

“Many times people have been there for a long time. They just give up.” What am I doing? I have no family. ” (They) have been 26 years here.

In some examples, the pain comes from feeling the lack of safety, which was a case with Kendall Lee Campo.

According to his sister, Campo had long struggled with mental health and managed his good, which was only increased by his experience in jail.

Fonten remembers when Campo first told him that he was being abused in jail. He was a Banff, Alta for work in September 2019. Was on the way to

He said, “When I was driving, I called my headphone, and I was not trying to cry because of the things she was sharing with me on the phone,” she said.

She was overwhelmed when she later had a moment to process it.

“I just penetrated into the embryo position. The types of things you have not heard now. I knew that his mental health was deteriorating.”

According to the Campo, two reformers came to his cell and asked him to map his room. He initially refused, the point at which he said that the authorities urinated in the bucket and proceeded to kick it. From there, a physical change occurred, which the campo started in vengeance.

Campo told his sister that the officials ran her, stopped her and raped her using a mop handle. He tried to take his life soon after.

In a statement to CBC, reformer service Canada said “CSC manages a complex and diverse prisoner’s population, which has a direct impact on the safety and safety of the institutions …. Our employees are trained to handle safe and professionally difficult situations, with the goal of avoiding damage to anyone.”

‘I do not trust a person in a uniform’

The CBC news show had gone to a point in the documents received by Campo till now, as he tried to get evidence to record his own freedom request, trying to get evidence to confirm an attack.

He filed several complaints, “I am scared and living in fear for my personal safety, as if I have damaged myself,” and “I am wetting the bed and harm the speed of higher than normal.

When Campu died on November 14, 2021, it was his second one of his day.

In its statement, CSC said, “Inmates are investigated for the risk of suicide when they arrive and during their time. Employees working with prisoners are trained to quickly respond to self-realizable behavior or indication of suicide.”

After death in custody, an investigation is mandatory. The investigation report on Campo’s death cites 25 compliance issues. Among them, the fact is that on his arrival in the Kent Institution, a proper risk evaluation for suicide and security was not completed, despite the fact that the Campo had a history of suicidal thoughts and “self-infectious behavior”.

Evidence in his cell on his death was also “protected and hence the test was not done.” The report stated that the two reformer officials operating the search “discovered a burnt piece of tinfoil, which appeared on it. Unfortunately, the suspected contradiction was inadvertently settled in the toilet.”

Fonten is not sure that his brother’s overdose was an accident.

“I am ahead with it …. I believe something happened to him, but I don’t know if it happened in the hands of the guard or the prisoners or both.”

She says that her brother told her at one point that the authorities gave her a razor blade and asked her to kill himself. Records indicate that he was found in the shower with large cuts on his arms and legs around this time.

“Kendall spent a lot of time. He mentioned for me during the phone call that he just wanted to finish all this.”

lack of support

Craig said that one problem is that there are not enough effective programs to help prisoners to help infection in parole release.

“They focus on … to avoid your risk factor and stress and avoid how to avoid coming back,” he said. “But they do not help you plan the practicality of release: you are going to live, with whom you are going to live with, how you are going to live life, those kinds of things.”

Today, Fontaine wishes that he can make only another phone call with his brother.

“Sometimes I just want him to call me,” he said. “The only thing that I have left is its Vismacell …. When I am struggling, I sometimes listen to that sound mail, and it is not always positive, but there is some humor that makes me laugh.

“It makes me sad that I do not continue to make memories with him, that my boys do not get that relationship with my uncle.”