Penned In

In an entirely unexpected exception to its locked-door approach to the outside world, Correctional Services Canada agreed in the late 1980s to let a newspaper reporter wander around a protective custody cellblock at Kingston Penitentiary. Not just any protective custody range, but a virtual murderer’s row known as H Block, home to almost two dozen of the country’s worst villains—killers such as Clifford Olson, Saul Betesh and Melvyn Stanton.

Some inmates were withdrawn and resistant. Some were voluble. Olson, memorably, jabbered at high speed while he hopped about his cell like a spider monkey. Oddly enough, though, my strongest memory is that of a young man—a relative unknown in this pantheon of killers—who had recently been transferred to H Block at his own anguished request. Skittish and frail, he was the sort of vulnerable soul who more aggressive inmates gravitate toward.