By Gabbriel Schivone and Abby Stadnyk
A former Saskatoon correctional prison guard is breaking ranks to speak out against the injustices he says he witnessed inside the provincial prison system during his 22-year tenure.
Through his Youtube channel, Making Corrections, correctional officer Chris Katzell takes aim at the Saskatchewan government of Premier Scott Moe for maintaining the deplorable conditions in that provinceâs jails. His videos help shed light on a dysfunctional correctional system that perpetuates problems such as chronic overcrowding, underfunding, lack of basic nutrition and a general apathy towards the physical and mental health of staff and prisoners.
âWe [staff] deserve to be protected,â he says in one of his videos. âThe inmates deserve to be protected.â
Endemic Issues
Katzellâs critiques come on the heels of developing troublesome situations at Saskatchewan jails including recent COVID-19 outbreaks at both the Saskatoon and the Regina Correctional Centres, as well as prisoner hunger strikes and community actions in support of Saskatchewan prisoners. In one post titled âEx-CO Challenges Top Sask Party Officials â Where Is Your Integrity?â he blasts Saskatchewan Minister of Corrections, Public Policy and Policing Christine Tell for mismanaging the governmentâs COVID-19 response by failing to implement appropriate health and safety measures to protect staff and prisoners.
However, he stresses, these issues are nothing new, as they stem from the governmentâs resistance to systemic change like providing appropriate funding for effective programs addressing mental health. COVID-19 has merely exacerbated conditions that are, in fact, endemic to Saskatchewan jails.
It âjust happens to be the current issue,â Katzell points out in one of his videos, referring to the Coronavirus. âThe problems are the same as theyâve always been.â
In another video, Katzell takes aim at the politicians who allow these conditions to continue. First, he turns his attention to Minister Tell.
âYou have a background as a psych nurse,â he reminds her. âYou should know exactly what goes on in this kind of placeâŠ. You built yourself up to being a sergeant with the police. You should know how to handle corrections.â
His most scathing critique is reserved for Premier Moe, however, who in 1997 killed a person in an automobile crash and received only a âticket for driving without due care and attention,â according to a CBC report. Katzell reminds the Premier that, if not for his âprivilege,â he could have âended up on the wrong side of the bars.â
He concludes the video by demanding the premier take responsibility for the state of Saskatchewan corrections.
âScott, obviously you canât handle time in jailâŠbecause you did whatever you could to dodge your own accountability,â he says. âWell, you know what? Itâs too late. Thereâs no dodging anymore.â

A Culture of Violence
Like Katzell, journalist Shane Bauer also has much to say about the culture of violence and abuse that characterizes the prison system. From 2014-2015, Bauer went undercover as a prison guard at the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, La., an experience out of which he wrote the book âAmerican Prison.â
In an interview with Perilous Chronicle earlier this year, Bauer observed that prison staff âtended to have very little sympathy with prisoners.â
âI think that maybe starts as a survival tactic, or just a way to kind of get through the job,â he said during the summer 2020 interview. âAnd then they end up becoming cruel, or at least indifferent.â
âThe people who werenât like that,â he continued, âwould just end up leaving.â
Speaking to the Media Co-op, Katzell directly attests to this as he recalls various examples of violence and bad behavior that he and other guards perpetrated against inmates and even colleagues. Although he is technically still a Corrections officer for contractual reasons, after he repeatedly advocated about his deteriorating mental health, ultimately stating that the prison system had turned him into a danger to himself and to inmates and colleagues, the prison administration finally removed him from his job, drastically demoting his pay.
Once he reclaimed his humanity, Katzell explained during the interview with the Media Co-op, he began calling for compassion toward everyone involved in the system.
âIf you still donât understandâŠthat justice demands compassion and mercy and grace, I donât know what to tell you,â he says.
He also asks viewers to examine their ignorance and racism toward Saskatchewan prisoners.
As an example, he cites recent derogatory comments directed at prisoners who led an uprising at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre. While some members of the public, he says in a video, have blamed prisoners â and even staff â for the event, he insists the responsibility âfalls solely on the government and their policy and how they handle Corrections.â
â[T]he government does not care about the inmates,â he says.
He also draws attention to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the corrections system, who make up 75 percent of prisoners even though today they are vastly outnumbered by the Canadian settler population.
âWe owe them a lot more, to make sure thereâs a change,â he says.
Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers in the prison system are extremely rare, but they do exist, just as there are dissidents in other areas of law enforcement. More common, however, is advocacy and resistance by prisoners themselves. Perilous Chronicleâs November 2020 report documented more than 100 instances of prisoner resistance in North America in the first 90 days of COVID-19, which hit prisons particularly hard.
Katzellâs actions represent an additional and unlikely area of support from those who run the prisons. When guards like Katzell turn against the system, the prison as an institution becomes more vulnerable to external pressures and less able to keep prison abuses; the prison loses credibility (while potentially gaining legitimacy for abolitionists).
Katzell is committed to growing such efforts, however small they may be.
Katzell, born and raised in Saskatchewan to working-class parents, rambled through a series of thankless jobs serving at gas stations and fast food restaurants in his early 20s. Then, the summer he spent as a youth counselor showed him his calling was to work with children, so he eventually attended a two-year program at a polytechnic trade school specializing in youth care. His studies involved placements in a group home, an addiction centre, a school and a jail. After graduating, he found that work as a prison guard, which came with benefits and a union, was a powerful incentive, and his taller-than-average, bulky frame was suited for the position.
He first worked in youth detention until 2013, when he transferred to adult incarceration work â by which time his life had gone into a tailspin from the emotional and mental strife of the job. After having worked in corrections for 22 years, Katzell says, he finally âescapedâ the system in 2016, but not without suffering from PTSD, which he says is commonplace among guards.
According to the Prairies region for the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers citing an internal Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) report, âcorrectional officers in male medium-security prisons have a 36 percent PTSD rate,â a CBC report states.
â[That PTSD] rate is higher than any other workplace we know of out there right now,â local Union of Canadian Correctional Officers president James Bloomfield is quoted saying. âIt is very high, compared to the private sector.â
In his first video, posted on Christmas Eve 2020, Katzell stands at the front entrance of the jail, staring intently into the camera as he discusses the way the prison environment perpetuates violence.
âI had to leaveâ Katzell says in the video, his hair styled upright into a tall spike down the middle of his head, âbecause I was afraid I was going to kill somebody.â
He says no one listened to his health concerns â neither the Saskatchewan Government Employeesâ Union (SGEU), nor the Workersâ Compensation Board (WCB), or the Ministry of Corrections. According to him, they were more concerned with getting him âback to workâ than with his well-being.
Neither the Saskatchewan Ministry of Corrections nor the Saskatchewan Government Employeesâ Union (SGEU) responded to requests for comment for this story.
In a recent interview with the Media Co-op and Perilous Chronicle, Katzell explains he was transferred to a social services desk job at an income assistance office, but his deteriorating mental health, still not fully acknowledged, kept flaring up. He was consequently labeled too much of a risk to work and lost his psychological/medical coverage. Since then, he has been surviving on meager disability coverage.
By mid-December 2020, he says, the union stopped helping him.
At that point, after exhausting all the internal channels for redress, he decided to blow the whistle because, as he says in one of his YouTube videos, âIâve already had everything taken awayâŠ. They canât take any more.â
In 2017, he faced and overcame suicidal ideations. It was that moment of ultimate loss that gave him the strength to start fighting back.
âIt turned what felt like losing everything into a power position of not having anything to lose,â he said in the interview, âand not having anything else to be afraid of anymore.â
Unmuzzled
Katzellâs videos are not only a way for him to air his own grievances, however. His goal is to illuminate the shared concerns of staff who, he says, are muzzled, unable to voice their views about the system without censure, ridicule, or even being fired.
âIf you have anyâŠstories that you want to share, especially evidence-backed,â he addresses fellow staff in one of his videos, âget ahold of me and letâs see what changes we can make together.â
âAs employees, weâre not allowed to speak out about what goes on, because it would embarrass the government,â he says in the interview. âSo we could lose our job and there wouldnât be anything that the union could do about it. And Iâve just seen too many under-staff go through similar circumstancesââ co-workers who want to speak out âand just canât.â
As for the other prison guards and workers who Katzell is appealing to join him in speaking out, he spares no illusions of the obstacles that will be in their way, because âthe more you fight,â he says, âthe more you look like a problem â especially when youâre fighting something systemic.â
Still, since he posted the videos, he says he has been moved by the former inmates, advocates and corrections workers outside his area who have reached out to thank him and share their stories.
While the intense video-making process has drained his strength, Katzell says he is nevertheless committed to making more in the hopes of helping others find their voice and join him.
âI can use my experience to help other people,â he says, âand I can keep collecting evidence, and I can keep speaking out, and I can keep fighting.â
This article is a co-publication between The Media Co-op and Perilous Chronicle.
Gabbriel Schivone is a writer from Tucson, AZ, and founder of the Longshot newsletter of fiction and journalism.
Abby Stadnyk is a contributing writer to Perilous Chronicle based in Edmonton, AB, Canada. Follow her on Twitter: @AbbyStadnyk
Ryan Fatica contributed reporting to this article.
Source: Perilouschronicle.com