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May
2008 edition - A benchmark report last year from Corrections Services
Canada was called, 'A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety,' and a
couple of events in Canadian prisons this spring appear to speak
directly to some of the contents delivered in this report last Oct 31
07.
Then again, it was a sweeping
document delivered to Hon. Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety,
which Minister (Day) bears responsibility for a host of important
departments and agencies in the Government of Canada within Public
Safety Canada.
Readers will remember the
response of the Canadian government to the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist
attack was to form a 'super ministry' that brought together various
security services. Public
Safety Canada includes responsibility for Emergency
management, National security, Crime prevention, Law enforcement
policy, and Corrections policy (www.publicsafety.gc.ca).
The Corrections Services
Canada Review Panel delivered a 255 page report, to address,
"the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) operational
priorities, strategies and business plans," said Rob Sampson,
chair of the CSC Review Panel.
Meanwhile, at the end of
March 2008, a prisoner, Trevor O'Brien, 24, convicted robber (2006),
was one of two inmates who died following a riot at the Mountain
Institution, Agassiz, B.C.. O'Brien was reported to have died
of a drug overdose.
The other fatality was more
likely murder, Michael Andrew Gibbon, 39, a convict with sex crimes,
beaten to death. Reports said Gibbons was serving an indeterminate
sentence for sexual offences, and was, strangely, being held in
general population.
It was reported after the
riot that visitors had, incredibly enough, attended a prison 'social'
earlier in the day. Is there any question that visitors smuggled in
the drugs that led to a spike in aberrant behaviour? An CSC
investigation is looking into it.
In the review panel report,
they said, "The panel is particularly concerned about the safety
of front-line staff and we are of the opinion that they require more
tools and training."
Also, and rightly so (in the
light of the Mountain Institution incident of Mar 31 08), the report,
'targeted a need' to keep illicit drugs out of prisons.
They suggest that the
Canadian prison system needs more structured work days for prisoners.
The crux of the debate around policy contains the suggestion (and the
report's most important policy oriented suggestion) for the
construction of, “mega-prisons, to better control security."
The CSC calls for redesigned
prisons, to, "make the most of mental health and other
services," and put, "an emphasis on offender responsibility
and accountability for their rehabilitation efforts; and, in keeping
with that, replacing statutory release with earned early
release."
The panellists argued that
the CSC ought to make important capital investments in aging
infrastructure. "The Panel believes that this situation has to
be addressed," even at the cost of re-arranging the budget.
A report of this length
obviously took time and was written in the context of the present
time. "This Report charts a roadmap driven in large part due to
the changing offender profile."
Prisoners of today are
different, and it is an alarming difference, they say. "Nearly
60% are now serving sentences of less than 3 years and have histories
of violence, and today sees a 100% increase in maximum security
admissions.”
Furthermore, gangstas go to
prison, they say, one of six prisoners are known to have known gang
and/or organized crime affiliations.
Also, addicts go to prison,
in fact, "About 4 out of 5 offenders arrive with a serious
substance abuse problem, with 1 out of 2 having committed their crime
while under the influence(!)"
A lot of prisoners, 12% of
men and 26% of women, "are identified as having a very serious
mental health problem." It all adds up to CSC facing more
violent offenders in populations that require more interventions.
Furthermore, the panel
expressed a lot of concern about CSC personnel because, "Safety
was at risk because of 'antiquated penitentiaries' built for a
population of inmates intermingling."
Studies over the years have
shown what they call 'sub-populations' need to be separated, but the
report states today’s infrastructure for prison populations is
antiquated penitentiaries.
"Many of the federal
penitentiaries in existence today were built in the 1800s and early
1900s." The panel has found, "Some (prison) layouts make it
difficult for CSC to provide an overall safe environment for
staff."
The panel traveled to
penitentiaries across Canada and found what it called
'vulnerabilities' in security, including some unmanned control
towers.
As a consequence of these
empty observation towers, drugs reach inmates, sometimes by bizarre,
almost comical methods, like filling, "tennis balls and bouncing
them over the fence."
Under staffing was part of
the problem leading to the recent Mountain Institution riot; news
reports say two unarmed correctional officers were left in charge of
40 prisoners when the trouble began.
Apparently some inmates were
carrying aluminum bats from a sports equipment room. The riot started
around the gym. And further hearkening to concerns discussed at
review, Mountain Institution was built in 1962, and is, "one of
28 federal prisons now more than four decades old."
Mountain Institution is
located 120 km east of Vancouver and houses 442 male inmates serving
a federal sentence of two years or longer.
What the CSC review
recommends is a change from prisons with a few hundred inmates to
prisons that house 2,000 inmates, including institutions that would
house inmates at various levels from minimum to maximum security in
separate spaces.
Do not be surprised if
problems of housing prisoners increase during the present federal
government crackdown on crime. Once it takes full effect (reported in
CWC over the past few months of Conservative minority government)
criminals who face more mandatory minimum sentences for a growing
number of criminal offences will enter an overtaxed prison system.
It will force the call for
prison reform that would end automatic parole to build those new
prisons. The reforms would lead to longer work days for inmates where
so many are sitting idle.
It would shift away from
prisoners rights, concentrate drug prevention efforts, and even focus
on checking visitors. The suggestion has been made that airport
security is tighter than going through prison security.
The panel review was hardly
remiss in dealing with one surely vexing demographic point in
Canadian corrections services, which is that Aboriginal offenders are
too many, especially for one of the panel members who was Chief
Clarence Louie.
The report noted, First
Nation and Aboriginal people “continue to be disproportionately
represented at all levels of the criminal justice system, including
in the federal correctional system.”
At the end of March 2006,
Aboriginal people represented 16.7% of federally-sentenced offenders
compared to 2.7% of the Canadian adult population. These numbers of
Aboriginal peoples found in jail especially in Western and northern
Canada will continue to weigh disproportionately among newly
sentenced offenders.
In the USA, a close
neighbour, where about 17,000 Canadians are in imprisoned, some
States discuss numbers like one in every 100 adults in jail or
prison.
Justice Department admits 7
million people (one in every 32 adults) are either incarcerated, “on
parole or probation or under some other form of state or local
supervision.” (Pew Center report)
In the US, one in nine young
black men is behind bars, and African Americans now comprise more
than half of all prisoners, up from a third three decades ago. While
the Canadian system is beefing up certain sentencing practices,
including adding elements of the ‘reverse onus’ principle in parole
hearings, the USA is re-examining the elimination of the federal
mandatory five-year sentence for minor crack cocaine violations.
Proponents note that, “It is
a national disgrace that the U.S. incarceration rate is five to 12
times that of other industrialized countries as well as being the
highest in the world.”
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