Anyone who has done the (outstandingly good) tour of the Kingston Penitentiary will have heard the pitch for this book: a career thief and escape artist, Ty Conn was a nonviolent soul sentenced to an outrageously long term in prison. His dramatic escape and the ensuing manhunt dominated the news in the 90’s, and he was shot and killed under unclear circumstances during a standoff with police.
The story told here is a lot more complicated than that. Multiple systems failed him almost from birth — a smart, gentle kid with zero adult role models starts acting out as a cry for attention and connection, gradually evolves into armed bank robberies. Conn’s story is textbook example of childhood trauma and attachment issues causing lifelong antisocial behaviour, a case study for someone like Gabor Maté. Everyone involved failed this poor kid. This piece by Clayton Ruby is a very good summary.
He also had terrible luck and timing — the ’80’s were the beginning of the ‘tough on crime’ political era, and in another time he may have been treated completely differently.
The book has its issues though. It’s much too long. The first half is fantastic, but the second half gets bogged down by detail and unnecessary narrative speculation. More concerning, the tone throughout is extremely sympathetic to Conn, and a few points in the second half left me wondering if the authors glossed over some more unsavoury elements.
For example, page 143: “Early in ’91, the management in Collins Bay threw him in the hole, a segregated punishment cell, for another infraction that he considered to be bogus. They left him there for 30 days…”
Considering we know the model and colour of every car he stole, why omit this? It feels a bit hand-wavy, and there are several moments like this. It’s also increasingly difficult, as the story rolls on, to consider Conn nonviolent. He didn’t physically harm anyone, but I’m sure many of the people who he threatened to kill at gunpoint are still suffering to this day.
It doesn’t really matter — by his 21st birthday, Conn was doomed by a broken system. It’s impossible to read this book and not be angry at the people and organizations that failed to help at several points during his life. The circumstances of his death are concerning, but it’s the circumstances of his early life that warrant the most anger. The system still criminalizes kids, and a failure to identify opportunities to intervene early will always lead to cases like this.