'They're human too': Woman worries for brother's safety at Manitoba prison after deadly riot

A Manitoba woman is still anxiously waiting to learn if her brother was involved in last week's deadly riot at Canada's oldest running federal penitentiary.

"It's scary," Bernadine Sinclair said. "My brother he's my friend. He's my everything."

A man was killed and seven were injured in a large fight involving about 50 inmates at Stony Mountain on the evening of July 17, Mounties said last week.

Sinclair says her 39-year-old brother has been serving time at Stony Mountain Institution just north of Winnipeg since December, but has spent around 15 years total at the prison. CBC News is not identifying Sinclair's brother due to safety concerns.

Sinclair, who lives in Thompson, Man., says family worried for her brother as soon as they learned of the riot, and they're still not sure whether he was hurt.

RCMP'snews releases about the brawl included no names of the injured, which sent Sinclair's mind "all over the place," she said.

"It's nerve-racking when they go in there, because it gets crazy in there."

'A lot of worried families'

She has not spoken to her brother for two months after her phone number changed. She called Stony Mountain to update her phone number on his file last week, but said the person responsible for changing it was not working then.

Regardless, Stony Mountain should have contacted all family members of all inmates after the riot to provide updates on their safety, she said.

"There's a lot of worried families."

In a statement to CBC News on Monday, Correctional Service of Canada officials said they are required to notify family members of inmates who die while in their custody, but could not provide any further information about the riot as the investigation continues.

There were just over 100 inmates in the yard at the time of the brawl, with less than half directly involved, James Bloomfield, the Prairies regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, previously told CBC News.

About 50 homemade weapons were seized by officers after the incident, Mounties said.

Prisons mirror communities: criminologist

Michael Weinrath, a University of Winnipeg criminologist, says prison environments often reflect their surrounding communities.

"We have a violent city, province, and homicide is a problem," he told CBC News. "So when we see it inside our prisons, we shouldn't be totally surprised."

Prison gangs, which are often extensions of city street gangs, have a similar willingness to use violence to control the drug trade, maintain turf and sometimes collect debts, said Weinrath.

That pursuit for market share can lead to conflict between gangs, causing injuries, fights and killings, he said.

Weinrath says it's important that Stony Mountain staff react to last week's riot, and the institution can curb future violence by redoubling efforts to keep drugs out and providing more resources to security intelligence to keep track of gangs.

But he hopes the institution does not overreact by restricting activities that are important for prisoner rehabilitation. He said Stony Mountain must remember "their mission to give people a chance to rehabilitate themselves and come out as better people."

Facilities like Stony Mountain are "far from" correctional institutions because they're not succeeding in correcting behaviour, said Jonathan Meikle, founder of Strength in the Circle, a Manitoba trauma-healing support group for Indigenous men.

They're not built to accommodate the adverse childhood experiences or collective and historical traumas that affect too many of those behind bars, he said.

"They're not treatment-oriented. In fact, they're quite the opposite, where they perpetuate a lot of that trauma by fostering toxic environments."

Last week's riot gave the public a glimpse inside the prison's walls, he said.

"As a society, we turn a blind eye to what's happening in these institutions a lot," Meikle told CBC News.

"I feel that we need to move away from that normalization and just have more of a voice [on] what's happening in these places."

Sinclair wants Stony Mountain to do more inmate searches for homemade weapons. She says everyone, including her brother, deserves a safe environment.

"They're human too. They're just like us," she said.

"And there's people out here that love them."