Newfoundland: Mother speaks out on son’s incarceration [Video]

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. –

As Gwen Perry prepares for a Christmas without contact from her son, who is locked inside a notorious St. John’s, N.L., jail, she wants people to understand that many inmates need help, not incarceration.

Perry says her son, James Perry, is a loving father of two daughters who made good money working in the oilfields in Alberta before addiction and mental health issues upended his life.

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She says that in July, when he finished his first stay at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary for theft and related crimes, he was released with nowhere to go and no support.

Perry says he soon spiralled back into drug use and stealing, and he is now back inside the crumbling, Victorian-era provincial jail, where mould, rat infestations …