{"id":8547,"date":"2018-01-30T15:20:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T20:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=8547"},"modified":"2025-09-30T14:03:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T18:03:01","slug":"correctional-investigator-ivan-zinger","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/correctional-investigator-ivan-zinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Correctional Investigator Speaks Truth to Power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Correctional Investigator Speaks Truth to Power\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Ivan Zinger, the Correctional Investigator of Canada<\/a>, has never seen an episode of Orange is the New Black<\/em>, the critically acclaimed television series about female inmates at an American prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is what I do for a living,\u201d says the ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders in Canada. \u201cWatching that show would not be relaxing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he does have time to take a break from work, Zinger teaches downhill skiing at Quebec\u2019s Mont Ste.-Marie and does motorcycle track days at Calabogie Motorsports Park west of Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Correctional
Ivan Zinger, Correctional Investigator of Canada<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI drag my knees in the corners,\u201d smiles the adjunct professor<\/a> in Carleton\u2019s Department of Law and Legal Studies<\/a>, who also has a PhD and undergraduate degree in Psychology<\/a> from the university.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019m a risk-taker, which is consistent with being an ombudsman. You speak truth to power and that requires challenging the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After serving in an acting role throughout 2017 and working as executive director and general counsel in the Office of the Correctional Investigator for the previous eight years, Zinger was appointed to a five-year term<\/a> in the top job in early January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The position entails providing independent oversight of the Correctional Service of Canada by conducting impartial and timely investigations of individual and systemic concerns, everything from the glaring over-representation of Indigenous<\/a> and mentally ill inmates and the dangers of solitary confinement to issues such as substandard food and access to religious services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And though Zinger\u2019s job is not to advocate for prisoners but to ensure compliance with the law and policy, he is driven by a passion for human rights and social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA penitentiary is like a small society,\u201d says Zinger. \u201cThere is education, health care, food, work and, with segregation units, a prison within the prison. But everything is amplified in a penitentiary because of the population, and because everything happens behind a wall, there\u2019s inherently not much public scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get upset when I see injustices. That\u2019s part of my motivation. So, you investigate, you get the facts, and then you let the facts speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Working in the Public Interest<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Zinger was born and grew up in a francophone household in Montreal\u2019s Outremont neighbourhood. His mother, an ophthalmologist, had emigrated from Italy. His father is of Russian heritage and came to Canada from Paris with little education, but worked hard to become a mathematics and statistics professor at L\u2019Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education was important in the family, but Zinger\u2019s sisters both got high marks, which took the pressure off him. He enrolled in Carleton\u2019s Psychology program in 1985 in part to move away from friends who were a bad influence.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cLike my father, I was a late bloomer,\u201d says Zinger, who credits a professor he had in third year, Don Andrews, a pillar of the international correctional psychology community, with igniting the spark that sent him on the non-linear path to his current post.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After earning an honours BA in Psychology with a concentration in criminology and criminal justice in 1989, Zinger went to the University of Ottawa for law school, but had no interest in entering private practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to keep track of billable hours,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to work for the public interest in government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Zinger graduated from law school in 1993, however, there was a hiring freeze in the federal civil service, so he got in touch with Andrews, who agreed to supervise his PhD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zinger did part-time doctoral studies at Carleton, which allowed him to take on consulting contracts for the federal Justice Department and Solicitor General\u2019s Office, and when he started to look for a thesis topic, a meeting with one of Andrews\u2019s former students at the Correctional Service of Canada led to a casual position in the agency\u2019s research branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 1996. Justice Louise Arbour had just issued a damning report<\/a> on the conditions experienced by female inmates at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ont., and Zinger saw an opportunity to use his knowledge of law and psychology to help protect the human rights of convicted offenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After receiving his PhD in 1999, he worked in the Department of Justice and for Public Safety Canada before joining the Office of the Correctional Investigator as director of policy and senior counsel in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A trained prison inspector, Zinger now oversees a staff of 36 and is just the fourth head of an organization that was established to create an external mechanism for prisoners to file grievances in 1973, two years after a pair of inmates died during a chaotic four-day riot at the Kingston Penitentiary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a large department, it can be difficult to voice your opinion,\u201d Zinger says. \u201cIn an ombudsman\u2019s office, you have the liberty and privilege to speak your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Correctional<\/figure>\n\n\n

Confronting Systemic Problems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Canada\u2019s Correctional Investigator has the authority to visit each of the 43 federal penitentiaries across Canada and assess conditions, interview prisoners and staff, access documents, and even hold public hearings and subpoena witnesses. But the reports and recommendations issued by the office are non-binding, which compels Zinger and his colleagues to use the power of persuasion \u2014 including meetings with wardens, correctional officers, inmates and their families \u2014 to make change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zinger has other \u201ctools\u201d for addressing the root causes of egregious issues, such as holding press conferences, issuing news releases or appearing before parliamentary committees, to apply public and\/or political pressure. He is also obligated to notify the Minister of Public Safety if prison officials don\u2019t respond to recommendations in an appropriate or timely manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Correctional Investigator is very successful at resolving individual complaints, such as segregation placements, involuntary transfers and access to health care, says Zinger, but has more challenges when confronting systemic problems that become clear when the same complaints surface year after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lack of resources can be a barrier. But often it\u2019s a matter of overcoming attitudes \u2014 such as the unfounded belief that a tough-on-crime agenda will improve public safety \u2014 that proves costly to taxpayers (inmates cost $115,000 a year to house) and hinder the rehabilitation that\u2019s a crucial component of any effective correctional system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zinger\u2019s office has been part of the push to re-establish the prison farm program cancelled by the previous Conservative government. They\u2019re also working at a broad societal level to address the fact that 27 per cent of Canada\u2019s federal prison population is Indigenous, a group that comprise just four percent of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThat statistic,\u201d he says, \u201cshows that something is broken.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to do things differently,\u201d he continues, pondering the possibility of transferring the $115,000 annual cost for the \u201ccare and custody\u201d of Indigenous inmates from Correctional Service of Canada to Indigenous communities by establishing healing lodges managed and operated by Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, he notes that 75 per cent of inmates have a history of substance abuse, and 60 percent were intoxicated when committing the crime that sent them to jail \u2014 which shows that incarceration as punishment is rarely a deterrent to crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s such a disconnect between what some politicians advocate,\u201d he says, \u201cand what we know from best practices, policy and evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead, Zinger is planning to launch an investigation into how aging offenders are treated \u2014 inmates who are typically low risk but have more heath concerns and could be good candidates for release into the community.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not just how we treat people, but also the profile of the prison population that matters,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very telling of who we are as a society, and we can use it as a barometer to gauge the success and failure of public policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Correctional<\/figure>\n\n\n

Educating Canadians about the Role of the Correctional Investigator<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Although Zinger is too busy these days to teach classes at Carleton, he does the occasional guest lecture at universities across the country, often tied into trips he takes to visit prisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart of my job is to educate Canadians about the role of this office,\u201d he says, noting that the Correctional Investigator website receives roughly 10 million hits a year, which shows that the \u201cbalanced voice\u201d of the office has widespread appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI find that students today are much more interested in social justice and human rights than when I was at university,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s great to see this enthusiasm, and to see how law, criminology and psychology programs have changed. That gives me hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Zinger also remains engaged in academia by doing research and publishing papers in scholarly journals every couple of years, such as \u201cHuman Rights and Federal Corrections<\/a>: A Commentary on a Decade of Tough on Crime Policies,\u201d which appeared in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice <\/em>in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper examines areas such as conditional release and parole, prison health performance indicators and aging prison infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cCanada\u2019s commitment to human rights and evidence-based Corrections should not be subject to changes in government,\u201d Zinger writes in his conclusion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThe endless cycle of retrenchment and reform in criminal justice should end. Long-lasting improvements in public safety and human rights should not be hindered by our continued failure to learn from past history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his office above Queen Street in downtown Ottawa, surrounded by gifts from prisoners and prison officials from the United States and China, Zinger reflects on that lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery country has trouble sometimes,\u201d he says. \u201cGetting Corrections right can be challenging. But as Dostoyevsky wrote: \u2018The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ivan Zinger, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, has never seen an episode of Orange is the New Black, the critically acclaimed television series about female inmates at an American prison. \u201cThis is what I do for a living,\u201d says the ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders in Canada. \u201cWatching that show would not be relaxing.\u201d When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":8553,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[17],"cu_story_tag":[1924,1921],"class_list":["post-8547","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni","cu_story_tag-advancement","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-public-and-global-affairs"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97507,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8547\/revisions\/97507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=8547"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=8547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}