Pubdate: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 Source: Nanaimo News Bulletin (CN BC) Copyright: 2010, BC Newspaper Group Contact: http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/948 Author: Mitch Wright MORE INMATES WORSEN JAIL SITUATION We're sending more people to prison. A lot more. Is it a crime wave of epic proportions sweeping across the country? Hardly. Despite what Conservative MP James Lunney would have his constituents believe, it's widely accepted and regularly proven through statistical compilations that crime rates are falling across Canada, and have been for some time. Yet with our inadequate prisons already overcrowded, our federal Conservative government is making things even worse. Its get-tough-on-crime legislation eliminates 'two-for-one' provisions - giving two years off a sentence for every one year spend in remand awaiting trial - meaning people convicted of a crime will spend more time in jail. The real 'get tough' aspects of the Tories' new approach comes with mandatory prison sentences for drug-related offences and scrapping statutory release, which required prisoners go free after serving two-thirds of a sentence. There's also changes to conditional sentences, which kept convicts out of jail, but put them under (often) strict restrictions regarding their mobility and with whom they associated. The union representing corrections officers issued a warning outlining all of this earlier this week and suggesting the situation is just going to keep getting worse. Other issues such as a provincewide shortage of judges, recently reported in other media, are complicating the issue further, as more and more accused face longer and longer waits to get in and out of a courtroom. Some examples given of existing overcrowding include the North Fraser Pre-Trial Centre, which was built for 300 inmates but regularly houses some 650. In Kamloops, a jail built for 168 prisoners averages more than 300 and in Victoria, the maximum security jail on Wilkinson Road was built to house 206 of our worst offenders, but now holds as many as 400. While the union suggests two more facilities will be required as a result of the new federal legislation, those numbers indicate a situation that is already past the tipping point. There's already a bear in the kitchen. Now we're going to poke it. Ottawa plans to built 2,700 new spots in federal prisons to deal with the expected increase in inmates, but whether that will be sufficient to accommodate all the petty criminals who will be getting thrown behind bars remains to be seen. I say it's doubtful. But beyond the added pressures on the prison system, which the union says will worsen working conditions for jail staff while also worsening conditions for the prisoners themselves, there's also questions about the added cost. We'll be paying to build all these new facilities, as well as paying to keep more inmates there for longer periods. Furthermore, many of those new inmates shouldn't be there in the first place. For all the criticism heaped on provisions that allow people convicted of a crime to walk free (with conditions) or get out early, there is solid, proven thinking behind those methods. For me, the primary reason to keep those provisions is that jail simply doesn't work. It breeds more crime. It turns a petty criminal into a hardened criminal, in many cases because that is what is required to survive. Prison might not be anything like what is depicted on TV or in movies, but it's no picnic either. Programs designed to help rehabilitate offenders work in many cases, but they fail in just as many others. Efforts such as restorative justice, on the other hand, offer more effective rehabilitation, while keeping offenders out of jail. Rather than passing laws that simply result in an expanded and vastly more expensive prison system, we should be doing the opposite. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart