Interview with a Chronic Offender

Transcription

1 Interview with a Chronic Offender When you are in society do you have a permanent place to live? This time that I was out I did, but there have been previous times when I haven t. When you haven t had somewhere to live how do you? Usually live in a hotel or in a motel, either downtown Vancouver or Surrey. So not necessarily Vancouver, it could be another city. Yeah, could be another city. So if you were to stay in Vancouver, where would you live in Vancouver exactly, would it be in the skids? Try not to, myself personally I try not to stay in the skids. I find that I don t really fit in too well down there, other than having a drug problem like the rest of them, that s the only that s basically the same. Right, okay so then is it more like the core, the Downtown core? Yeah, downtown, or like I said out in Surrey or so. Would you stay with friends? No, not usually, I kind of like to stay by myself. Stay by yourself, okay. Your relationship, are you in a relationship, do you have a significant other or common law? Have you ever been married? No, I ve pretty well been on my own all my life, I ve had a couple girlfriends, that s it. Like I said I keep to myself and I find that that came as a result of all the prison time. Right, so it s hard if you are in and out, it s hard to forge relationships. Yes, it is.

2 . What about kids, do you have any kids? No, no kids. Education, have you gone to school, have you completed school, how far have you did you make it? I got my GED Grade 12. And did you go to University? No, I ve never had any post secondary education. Is that something you want to do? Well, it is, but it just seems hard to when you ve lived the life that I ve lived; it seems hard to see beyond that. What is your work experience, have you had long term jobs at any point? No, I think the longest I ve worked at a job was 8 months, 9 months. What kind of work was that? Doing home renovations. So hands-on, trades. Do you have any specific skills, any specific training? So it s all on the job learning? When was the last time you had a job? That would have been spring of So a few years ago, okay and how long did that job last? That was when I was doing home renovations. Okay, so it was almost a year. Welfare, do you collect welfare, have you? Actually it is the first time I did, just when I got released.

3 A month ago, so before that time welfare is never something you have been a part of? When you were collecting welfare a month ago how much where you finding you were getting? Not very much at all, $375 for rent and I think $180 for support. For one month right? So that money, you only had one month s experience with it, but in that month, how far did it go? It was terrible, it was starving, that s why I never went on welfare before, that s why I never bothered, and I never gave it a try, because it s tough living on that kind of money, extremely. Does it even give you the bare essentials? No, no not at all, if you can think about how far $180 in a month is going to go for support. Not very far. Where are you going to rent a place for $375 dollars? Downtown in Skid Road, that s it. Basically to me, that s a jib (crystal meth)-rock (crack cocaine) and a wooden prison cell, that s all it is, it worse, it s worse than a prison cell. At least in a prison cell you are safe from drugs, to a certain extent, a lot more than you are out there. Moving on to drugs, presently now, prior to coming here, were you drinking? I wasn t drinking, no. So you weren t using alcohol or anything. Okay, has alcohol ever been an issue in your past?

4 It was when I was younger. How old? I was 18, 19 years old, maybe 17, 18, 19 years old, just when I started to become an adult. And you were drinking a fair bit? What age did you start drinking at? Was it younger than that? That was about it, right around that time. So late teens? When you were drinking, how often were you drinking? Was it daily; was it a couple times a week? Couple times a week, maybe three or four times a week. Do you feel you were abusing alcohol? Well I guess I was, but I was drinking to get drunk, so yeah sure. What kind of drugs have you used in the past? What kind of drugs have I used? Pretty much everything. Okay, what was the first one? I guess marijuana. It was marijuana. And then I guess it escalated from there, so how did it go for you? Because everyone is different, everyone has a different start drug and then their path may be slightly different. I don t know, I can t really tell you how it progressed, but it just did. I can t pinpoint how it did, it just did.

5 Did you go straight from marijuana to crack? No, I never smoked crack cocaine up until just over a year ago, when I got released from the federal system, I just recently started. And so prior to crack what were you using, anything else? When I was in the federal system I was using heroin. Oh okay. And I found that when I got released from the federal system that I had an addiction to heroin. And then that was what, just over a year ago right? I got released from the federal system in spring of Okay, 2005, and then you found you had a heroin addiction at that point? Yeah, actually not at that point, it took over a year of being on parole, I was on parole, I was clean I was working and maybe around winter in the beginning of 2006 I started using heroin outside, in society as a result of using it from the prison system. Okay, were you first introduced to heroin in the prison, or was it before you went to prison? Well, I used it a couple times before, but I never liked it, I was never into it outside in society, until I went into the prison system. And that s where you developed the addiction? So do you remember how old you were when you first used? It sounds like you used heroin before you used crack obviously, so do you remember how old you were? I guess I was about 22, 23. So basically it was a bit of experimentation? The first time it was mistake, somebody gave it to me instead of cocaine. It was a mistake, it was the first time I ever tried heroin.

6 Okay, and then? And then I tried it once after that and then I never used it again until I was in the federal system. Right now, what is your drug of choice at the moment? I guess it would be cocaine. It would be cocaine, so how often were you using cocaine in the last week? Maybe three maybe four days a week. So you re using it three to four days a week, how much are you spending? I really wasn t using that much and spending that much because I was kind of on the fence with whether to go back to full time crime or not. I didn t want to but at the same time I did want to, where as a year ago when I was doing full time crime I was spending $400 to $500 a day on cocaine, everyday. So that was a year ago when you had a string of charges? And at that point you were spending $400 to $500 a day. Yeah, pretty much. So how much crime would you have to do to support that addiction at that time? Full time. So how many crimes would you commit in one day? I can t say, maybe today I commit three crimes, and say I make $7000, so I don t have to commit crime for five days, you know what I mean, sounds ridiculous but that s how it works. And then other times I d have to commit say ten crimes in two days. Okay, so it depends, it was very money-driven in the sense of how much you could take from each fence.

7 Of course, it was driven by drugs. So at that time, when you were in that mode, what crimes would you pick to do? Usually break and enters. How come, how come break and enters? It just, I don t know they just seemed the easiest, non-violent, I really don t want to hurt anybody, with a break and enter, if I break in somewhere and somebody comes home, I can just flee the scene. It s not like a robbery where I have to go in and hurt somebody, rough anybody up, or anything like that. I don t want to hurt anybody, I just want their money. How would you pick a house? If you were walking down the street, how would you pick that house from that house? I don t know, I guess it s kind of intuition, after doing it for so long, you can just tell. There s certain ways you could tell, people leave their mail, their newspapers, their garbage cans out. Maybe the night before or the day before, you go down to that neighborhood and you list addresses with cars, certain cars that are parked in front in driveways, or in carports in the back and you can walk down maybe five or six blocks in one night with a pad and paper and you just write down addresses with cars and what places look like and what not. Then you come back the next morning when most people have gone to work, because everybody has to work for a living, and you can tell whose home and who s not home from their vehicles, their mail and garbage and whatnot. So it sounds like a lot of things that people do almost puts a target on their house. Well they do, but how are you not going to? There are a lot of things you can do to help yourself, sure there is, there s a lot of things you can do but there s some things you cannot do if someone is determined to break into your house, it s going to happen eventually. When you re doing B&Es was there different ways you would do it, or would it have to be a certain way each time? Would it have to be a basement suite window, or would it have to be a balcony? Would it matter? No, it didn t matter, no.

8 So in your experience, in the offences you did, what sort of entry points would you use? Usually windows, it s quiet. If you kick down doors it makes a lot of noise, leaves a big eyesore. Usually a window, you can just slide it open and close it behind you. Are certain suites more enticing than others? Is a basement suite better than a third floor or does it not make a difference? Or would you go as high as the tenth floor? No, I wouldn t go as high as a tenth floor, but three and four floors, yeah. Vehicle crime, breaking into cars, was that something you find you d do? No, not very profitable. Oh, really? It s not profitable, no. How come? Well, nobody s going to leave their jewellery in there. So the chance of finding something valuable in there is greatly reduced compared to Of course. Okay. Stealing cars, was that something that you found yourself doing? Why would you want to take a car? To do crime, to make crime easier. So purely for a mode of transportation. Well, yeah, just to make break and enters easier. Did it matter what kind of car? Are some cars better to take than others? I guess so, yeah.

9 Moving along the list here, relationships, friendships, do you have any, what do you have for friendships? I have a couple friends that I ve had for quite a while, but I really don t want to speak about that. Okay, no problem, are you willing to touch on your background with your parents or anything? Sure. Are your parents still with us? Actually I got released on (deleted) from the provincial system and I hadn t seen my mom in over a decade and (deleted) she died the day I got out. Really? Yeah, (deleted) that kind of threw me off, threw me back into the start of crime and using drugs when I first got out last month. My father, I don t speak to. I haven t spoken to him in quite some years. Is he in the province or out of the province? I believe he is in the province, I m not too sure though. I haven t seen him in a long time. Do you have any brothers or sisters? Yeah, I have two older brothers. And how are they? I ve seen one of them recently, he does well for himself (deleted) So are they people you have an opportunity to see regularly or not really? Well, not because I m mixed up in the life I m mixed up in and they don t want me around and I don t want to be around at the same time. But I still go see my brother where he works from time to time. Addiction, we were talking about addiction before, was that something that was in your family? My father was an alcoholic.

10 Do you feel that had an effect on you? Developing the addictions that you are dealing with now? I guess in a way it did, I can t really explain it, but I guess in a way it did. Mental health; we were talking earlier in the week, about your goals, which is definitely to deal with your addiction and to turn your life around. Obviously a big portion of that is rehab, getting off the addiction, is that something you have tried in the past? I have, but just limited, I didn t really put myself forward to it fully. I just did it, just to please a parole officer. Oh, I see, it wasn t something you were committed to at the time? Which it sounds like is something you want to commit to now. Going through a rehab, where did you go for that? I went to a place (deleted) Okay and how long were you there for? I was there for about three and a half weeks. And that was living on site? How do you feel about that experience? I just, I didn t want to be there and I talked my way out of it with my parole officer, to get my way back into a halfway house in Vancouver, to go back to work, because my time on parole was coming to an end soon and I felt I would be better suited back at work at the halfway house from my eventual release from the parole system. So you haven t had a huge experience with rehab, but from the weeks you were there, what do you think about it? Is it a good thing, does it work, could it work?

11 Well, I mean it could work, yeah, you d have to put yourself into it, and you d have to apply yourself one hundred percent. There s no other way about it, you can t just be half-assed, half there, half the time. You would have to be committed to it. If that s what you want, if you want to be clean you have to be committed to it. So the onus is on you? Of course. Do you have any ideas about rehab? What would work for you or someone else? What are your thoughts on the whole idea? Like I said, you need to commit yourself to it if you want to be clean, that s what you have to be after. You can t be focusing on other things, you can t be going to work, you can t be holding down a family or anything, and you have to be focused on being clean. It takes a lot. It does, it takes a lot, from what I ve seen. Have you ever had any experience with a drug counsellor? Yeah, limited, the halfway house I lived in, there was drug counsellors that lived there, not lived there, but worked there and I used to speak with them quite often. Okay, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I guess it depends on who the person is and how the person is. How the person comes off and whatnot, but the one guy that worked in the place I lived, he was pretty sincere, he was an honest guy, he was a caring guy, he seemed like a good guy. Have you ever dealt with methadone? That s never been a part of your treatment or anything? Okay, back to drug use, when was the last time you used? A few days ago I guess (deleted). Okay, so the day we met, you had used that day?

12 So how many hours prior? Maybe a couple hours, two hours. So just before you came in to speak with us. Again, what drug was it? It was cocaine. Cocaine, okay. You found when you were using cocaine, we talked about heroin and stuff, were you injecting heroin? No, never. So would you smoke it? Yeah, I d just smoke it. And cocaine, how are you finding that you were using cocaine? Smoke it. Were you using crack? Mental illness, has that ever been a part of your life? Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness? Never, hey. Have you ever had to see a psychiatrist being a part of the court order? I did see a psychologist, being a part of the prison system, yeah. And what did you think about that?

13 It took me a while to get to know (the psychologist), but (the psychologist) was actually really nice. And actually when my federal parole ended, I continued to see (the psychologist), (the psychologist) continued to see me on (the psychologist s) own time. But in that time you were never diagnosed with anything? So you ve never been institutionalized for any mental illness? Have you ever been instructed to take any medication or anything? Nothing like that. Okay, let s move on. We ve already touched on it a bit, back onto the criminal side of things. Do you remember your first serious criminal offence? No? You don t remember when it was or how old you were? No, I ve been doing this a long time. What s your best estimate, how many years? I mean you re in your early thirties now, so has it been, what do you think, has it been twenty years? Over twenty years. So you were a pretty young kid, eh? Do you remember the first time you were ever arrested? By the police? No? Okay. Any idea when your first conviction was? The first time you had to go through the court system?

14 I think I was fourteen years old, it was (deleted). Pretty young, eh? And what did you think about that, when you re being a kid going through that? Well, I don t know. I don t know if I can parlay my thoughts from that long ago. Okay, fair enough. Okay, so we ve already talked about the crime that you ve committed. Your crime of choice was generally break and enters, anything else that you would do? That s pretty much it? That s pretty much it. So you found with break and enters you would get enough property, and then with the property you would do? Say you committed a break and enter; you ve stolen some items, what would be your next move? Sell the property. Is there anywhere in particular you would go to sell the property? No, not really. Would you use pawn shops? I would use pawnshops, yeah. How do you find using pawnshops? I guess it doesn t really matter, as long as you get rid of the stuff and get what you want. On the street, what s it like selling? I m assuming if you aren t using a pawnshop then you re selling on the street.

15 So would you go anywhere particular to do that? I knew people, to sell the stuff to. Okay, so you had fences. So was that someone that you could just call up? Go find them? Yup, yeah, you could call them. When you were selling stuff on the street, how much money were you getting for stuff? Like how much on the dollar? Maybe, it depends, depends what it is, maybe thirty percent, forty percent. So for a hundred dollar item you were probably getting thirty, forty bucks? Would it vary from a pawnshop or a fence? Of course. Okay, so which one would you get more from? From the fence. From the fence, hey, so obviously it was a little more enticing to go to them, I guess. Well sure, yeah. What do you think would help you stop committing crime? You ve dealt with this incident, what do you have to do? Curb the addiction. Okay. The addiction, that s what it s all about. So what do you feel are the best things to help you deal with your addiction? Long term counseling on addictions, working on the addiction long term and then working on the recovery. It s more than a three or a six month

16 fix, it s taken me all these years to get this far into this addiction, this deep into it. The way I look at it, it s going to take me that long to get out of it. Okay. It s not as easy as people think. It s not easy at all. It s like you, how long have you been a cop? Three years. Three years. So that s all you ve known in the last three years and maybe a couple years before that working up to it. So you try and turn all that off tonight, right now, and become a criminal tomorrow. Pretty tough. Pretty tough, you wouldn t know where to start. You d have a clue from being a cop, but you don t really know how to go about it all. Being a criminal for twenty years, it s hard to shut it all off and just turn around overnight, or even in six months or a year. Even a year, when I think about it, it kind of makes me self-destruct. When I think about how long it s going to take. It s intimidating. Sure it is. Extremely. Of course your number one concern is curbing the addiction, getting that dealt with. Right. The courts and the conditions they impose on people, I mean I know you ve had conditions in the past, probation orders, conditional sentence orders, what are your thoughts on those? Do they work? It s a joke. It s a joke? Why?

17 Especially in the downtown core. It s ridiculous. Look how many people come in and out of those doors. The same people, continuously, for the past ten years. I m a chronic offender, I ll admit it, of course I am. Those guys are a lot worse than me, they ve got hundreds if not two hundred convictions on their record, in the last few years you know. It s a joke, it doesn t work. Do you think it can work? I think it can but they re going to have to make a lot of changes. I don t know how they are going to make the changes; I don t know where they are going to make the changes. But it obviously isn t working right now. Right, so what s being done now doesn t work? Of course not, the prisons are full to the max. They re full to the max (deleted). (deleted) (deleted) Do you think building more jails is an option, more prisons? No, it s not, it s treatment.is what it is, it s treatment. Do you think forced treatment is necessary? No you can t force treatment on somebody, there s no way you can, you cannot force it. So it s something they have to want to participate in? In the past when you have had conditions, when you were on the street in crime mode, did those conditions weigh on your mind at all? No, I never followed them. I never really had many conditions for some reason I always kind of slid through having conditions. I ve only had probation a few times, and to tell you the truth, years ago, when the Vancouver Pre-Trial Service Centre used to be open when you get bail or whatnot or when you d get released, they d give you a probation of six months or a year and you d have to report to the probation office upon release right away. If you didn t go and report, they didn t know about

18 you. If you didn t show up they never knew about you. They never knew. If you look in my record I don t have one breach. I don t have one; I don t have a single breach, for that reason right. Because you never reported so they never bothered you. No, I never reported, so they never knew about me. We re getting sort of near the end of stuff here, regarding once you ve dealt with the incident you are here for now, do you have a plan? Do you have ideas of how you want to tackle this issue? You ve already expressed how intimidating it is when you are released and obviously this past time when you were released there was obviously the circumstances involving your mother; it didn t work out so well. Have you thought about it, have you had the chance to think about what you want to do? I have and I haven t, because I m nervous about it. Actually I have some other things on my mind at the same time and I m nervous about it. I don t know exactly what to do. So that s something you feel like you need help with. Of course, yeah of course. Who do you think the best people to help you with that are? I m not sure. I mean I know you ve got some people outside who do care about you that want to see you succeed. I would assume they are someone you look to lean on. Of course. Do you think the police can help you out in any way? I m hoping they can. I know I ve said that before, but I m actually kind of hoping now.

19 That the police can help you out with that stuff? Do you think if the police took an invested interest in chronic offenders once they are released from custody other than just monitoring? Do you think that would help? I think so, yeah. Do you think guys would want to be a part of it, would want help from the police? I d say that some would, but most wouldn t. I d say it would be about a 70/30 split; 70 percent wouldn t, 30 percent would. Because they are just so fixed in the adversarial side of things? Yeah, most people are fed up with living like that, except they just don t want to admit it. They don t want to come out and say it because they don t know how to change it and they re too afraid to ask somebody for help. Okay, so things like, I don t know if you ve heard of the new drug court system that s going to be, not drug court sorry, but the new community court that s going to be coming forward where they re going to have all the resources pooled. Yeah, I heard about that. What are your thoughts on that? I think that might help, because it s proven it works, I believe it was in New York, it worked quite well down there. So I believe that will help. If that was something that you would, because I know they are going to look at individuals and say if they feel they are a candidate for the system or not. Say at this point right now that was something that you went to; do you think that would help you? Sure I would try that. You would want to try that.

20 Sure I would, yeah, just because of the success rate. I seen a thing on TV about it, I think I ve seen a couple things, about how they are going to introduce it down here, isn t it starting this summer? It s supposed to; I believe it s supposed to be, yeah. So you think it s going to be something that, from what you know about it, will be helpful? Yeah, I think will be helpful, yeah. If you were looking to the police for help, what could the police do to help you, any ideas? Would it be setting you up in some sort of assisted living environment? Would you want to live with your support members? Your family members that would want to help you out? Where do you think you would have to live to deal with your addiction? In some kind of residential treatment place, where you have all the same kind of people living there, dealing with the same kind of things. So people you can talk to that understand what you are going though? Yeah that s right, because living at home with mom, it just doesn t work, because she s just kind of blind and naïve to how it really is, she knows from what I ve told her, but I haven t exactly told her everything. And obviously, the kind of big question is, do you want help? Of course. Of course, we ve talked about it right. Okay. I ve just got some very general questions; they re kind of larger scope questions just to get you before we end. I think we ve touched on most of them but we ll just go through, there some specific points I want to cover. Rate of offending, so we ve talked about that right, it would vary depending on how much money you needed. So I guess when you were in crime mode, you were offending quite regularly. Oh, of course, yeah. So, on a daily basis. Obviously we ve talked about your cost of habit at the time was about $400 to $500 a day. Would it ever exceed that? No, that was pretty much it. That was as about as bad as it got.

21 How easy is it to get $400 worth of drugs in a day? Is it easy or is it difficult? It s quite easy actually, in a big metropolitan city like Vancouver, it s quite easy. Okay, do you have regular people you would see or would it just be going to the downtown core, the skids, or how would it work? To do what? To get dope. No, I had regular people I would see, to get if off, but I d get it from downtown. Okay. I d always get it from downtown. One of those houses, one of those hotels. Like down in the skids? Yeah, that s where I always got it, yeah. Solutions. Is long term incarceration a solution in your opinion? I think for some people it is, yeah, I think for some people it is, like I said it s taken me this long to get this far into a criminal drug lifestyle, it s going to take a long time to turn it around. So some of that time in prison you think would be good? Yeah, because there are some half-decent programs in prison, but it takes a while to get into them and a while to do them, and therefore you need to be there for awhile. Does that happen? Say you find a program that s beneficial to you and then next thing you know you are getting released so then you don t get to finish it? Does that happen? It could happen, yeah, but I kind of went through that thing when I did my federal sentence. I was in for five years before I even took a program and I found once I took the program that I did where it was (deleted), it was a six month program, I did the program, after I finished the program, they asked me to stay to do it again. So I stayed and did it again. I ended up

22 staying for another nine months after that, so I stayed there for fourteen months. When you were supposed to move or? After you do the six month program you are supposed to go back to your institute where you came from. But the nurses who ran the program, they asked me to stay to do it again. We ve talked about the courts already, about conditions and stuff but you ve been through the system a number of times. What is your general impression or thoughts on the BC court system? That s kind of big question. It s a joke I think it is. Why do you think that? Just because they are too lenient. They re too light. That s just how I think, that s just how I feel. The crimes that I ve committed, I should have gotten a lot more time. So they are being too lenient on sentencing? Oh yeah, and on letting people out too and on releasing people on bail and whatnot. I m sure (deleted). I m sure if I wanted to I could go to court and get bail. I could try to get bail and they d let me out. They d say he fessed up to it, you know, just let him out. I guarantee they d let me out. And then if that had happened, would that be a concern that you may reoffend again. I think so. (deleted) Not in this situation though. In the past when you have been on bail, how often have you offended while in bail? Every time. Every time? Sure. You said you lived in the downtown core, in your experience living in skid row, the whole idea of individuals leaving the skids and going and committing crime in other parts of the city.

23 It s a big thing. It s a big thing, eh? And how do people that you know, just speaking from your experience, how do they accomplish those things? As in what do you mean? Do they walk? Well, they could walk, they could take transit, they could use stolen cars, and they could use their own car. And so it is a common thing amongst individuals that are in a crime mode to just leave the skids. Yeah, to get out of that neighbourhood. Of course, yeah, of course. And then they come back to that neighbourhood and then they, I guess it s a rich environment to get your drugs and sell your property? Yeah, everything s down there, yeah. Okay, I think that covers most of the stuff I wanted to ask. Okay. (deleted) I want to thank you for your time today. That was awesome and your honesty was evident. Was it kind of a job for you in a way? Do you see it that way? Yeah, it is a job. When you are in crime mode, is it full time? I wouldn t say full time. But the crime was a job for you, so every morning it was like going to work for you. Put on my stuff, grab my B&E tools, hits the road and see what s going on. Yeah, got to go get a new car, exchange it, drop this one off. Would you target specific areas in the city?

24 What areas would you target? Just a more upper class neighbourhood, a richer neighbourhood I guess. So Kitsilano? Yeah, better than downtown or the eastside. Would you ever target businesses or were homes all you ever did? Yeah, just homes. Do you have any idea why some people would pick homes and some people would pick businesses? I think because the courts tend to give out less time for crimes against businesses. I see, okay. In the time that courts do give out for B&Es, homes generally carry a little bit of a heavier weight. So that s why people are more inclined to rob commercial businesses. What would be a good deterrent for you? Well maybe there s a police presence in the neighborhood. What motivated you this time? I m just tired of it, sick of living like this, sick of doing crime, sick of using drugs, sick of doing time in jail. It s got to come to an end. Obviously your first goal is to deal with your addiction, what would be your next goal? Just to deal with my addiction, to keep it maintained, to get a job and a place of residence. Okay, any sort of field you want to work in? I d take anything as long as I m clean and I m off the drugs, it doesn t matter. It doesn t matter, okay. Do you think you are going to do it this time, because chronic is chronic.

25 Sure it is. Do you feel you are ready? I am, I am. Okay, well I think we will end it on that note then, bit of a positive note then.