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.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart