New legislation limiting the credit given to prisoners for time served in custody before and during their trials will cost taxpayers $1 billion to implement and billions more to maintain, the parliamentary budget officer said Tuesday. The construction of new correctional facilities alone will cost about $1.8 billion over five years, the PBO said in a report quantifying the implications of the Truth in Sentencing Act. A further $618 million will be needed annually for capital appropriations and operations and maintenance costs. Report, with video, from the CBC News.

“I knew incarceration was expensive,” PBO Kevin Page told reporters Tuesday morning. “When we do the simple math in terms of longer stays, which means higher head counts and we know how expensive … incarceration is, you get to big numbers in a hurry.”

Page and his team used figures from 2007-2008 to derive their rough estimates because the federal government was unwilling to provide specific data, the report said.

“Undertaking the type of costing exercise without rigorous bottom-up data from the department [and] absent any discussion with [Correctional Service Canada] poses significant risks,” authors Ashutosh Rajekar and Ramnarayanan Mathilakath wrote.

As a result, their report, The Funding Requirement and Impact of the Truth in Sentencing Act on the Correctional System in Canada, relied on historical trends, intuition and probability, the authors said. The report “is limited to a high-level estimation” of the costs, Rajekar and Mathilakath said.

That estimation, however, suggests the costs of implementing and maintaining the new sentencing rules will be far greater than the $2 billion over five years the Conservatives cited on April 28.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews quickly dismissed Page’s report, saying he didn’t “know where [Page] is getting his information from.”

“If you indicate that he wasn’t getting any information from Correctional Service Canada, he must be making this up,” Toews said.

The Act, which went into effect on Feb. 23, limits the credit judges can give prisoners for time served before sentencing. Such limits have three major consequences, the PBO concluded:

• Inmates will spend more time in custody
• Convicts whose credit might have kept them in provincial facilities will have to be transferred to federal prisons
• Those convicted of lighter sentences who might have been directly released into community supervision will instead be sent to correctional facilities

The act is expected to increase the number of inmates from 8,618 in fiscal year 2007-08 to 17,058, including 9,021 in community supervision, the report said.

New prisons needed
But Canada lacks sufficient space for so many inmates, requiring construction of 13 new federal and provincial facilities at a cost of $1.8 billion, or $363 million per year for five years, the report said.

The additional facilities would include:

• Two low-security facilities with 250 cells each
• Six medium-security facilities with 600 cells each
• Four high-security facilities with 400 cells each
• One multi-level security facility with 400 cells

The new facilities would increase the annual cost of caring for inmates — including operation and maintenance expenses as well as capital appropriations — by about $618 million a year, from the current $2.2 billion to roughly $2.8 billion, the report said.

The PBO was unable to project the financial impacts of the Truth in Sentencing Act for the provinces and territories because of a lack of current data.

However, using a simulation, it projected that annual costs of correctional services would more than double by 2015-16, from $4.4 billion to $9.5 billion, and responsibility for funding the majority of this would shift from the federal government to the provinces and territories.

Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland criticized the Conservatives for “a lack of co-operation and disclosure.”

“The costs cannot be dumped on taxpayers and the provinces,” Holland said. “The Conservatives must sit down with the provinces and territories to address their very legitimate concerns about how these initiatives are going to be funded.”

jchev Canada, Sentencing

The Canadian government moved Tuesday to strip old age income benefits from federal inmates. Human Resources Minister Diane Finley tabled legislation that would end Old Age Security and guaranteed income supplement benefits currently going to federal inmates over the age of 65 and who are in prison for two years or more. News from the CBC.

Among those currently getting those benefits are convicted killer Clifford Olson, who is 70 and serving life in prison for the deaths of 11 children. Olson has been reported to be collecting more than $1,000 a month in benefits.

Finley said they acted after news that Olson was collecting the benefits was raised in a March 2010 Toronto Sun article.

“Canadians who work hard, who contribute to the system, who play by the rules deserve government benefits such as Old Age Security. It’s wrong, and obviously unfair, that prisoners who break the rules receive the same entitlements.”

“This is offensive and outrageous to the prime minister, to the government of Canada, and to Canadians right across the country,” she told reporters in Ottawa. “Moreover, it is deeply insulting to the victims and to their families.”

Finley said they are working with the provincial and territorial governments to also end benefits for inmates over 65 and incarcerated for more than 90 days at those levels.

Finley said the changes are expected to affect about 400 federal inmates, and could eventually affect another 600 inmates held at provincial and territorial level corrections centres.

She said the estimated savings from the change could amount to about $2 million per year at the federal level. That could increase to about $10 million annually with provincial and territorial inmates included.

The benefits could resume upon a prisoner’s release, and Finley said spouses and common-law partners of inmates will continue to get the benefits on their own merits.

“We’re not punishing them for the deeds of their spouse,” she said.
11 life sentences

Olson killed 11 boys and girls in British Columbia before he was sentenced to life in prison in 1982. Olson, who has never shown remorse for his crimes, is serving 11 consecutive life sentences in a maximum security prison in Quebec.

His retirement benefit money has been put in trust.

He was also paid $100,000 by the RCMP to lead them to the bodies of his victims. That money was put in trust for his estranged wife and son.

jchev Canada, Corrections Reform

The number of women starting federal prison sentences in Canada has grown by more than 50 per cent in the past decade — a “troubling trend” that experts say will only get worse as the Conservative government moves toward harsher law and order measures. Story from the Vancouver Sun.

Most concerning, they say, is that the small pool of incarcerated women share many common traits: They are primarily poor or homeless, undereducated and have addictions or mental-health problems such as schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders.

Almost all of them — 82 per cent, according to advocacy group Elizabeth Fry Society — have a history of sexual or physical abuse. That figure rises to 91 per cent for aboriginal women.

“Women who are incarcerated have a particular profile,” said Ivan Zinger, executive director and general counsel at the Office for the Correctional Investigator of Canada, the ombudsman for federal offenders.

“There’s a much larger over-representation of aboriginal women and women with mental health issues than men, so they’re being disproportionately impacted by that lack of preventive measures, and social welfare, and appropriate health care services,” he said.

There are about 500 women — or almost four per cent of the total federal prison population in Canada — currently serving federal sentences of two years or more, compared with more than 13,000 men.

In 2001-02, there were 202 women admitted to federal custody. Consistent with figures from the two previous years, 313 women were admitted to custody in 2008-09 — a 55 per cent increase since the beginning of the decade.

That compares to a 15 per cent increase for men.

Moreover, the number of aboriginal women serving federal time has jumped 90 per cent since 2001, with aboriginal women now representing 33 per cent of women behind bars, although they make up only three per cent of the female population.

While aboriginal men are also over-represented in federal prisons, their figures have grown 17 per cent in that time, according to Zinger.

Women are twice as likely to have a mental-health-problem diagnosis at the time of admission to custody than men — with 30 per cent of women having been admitted to a psychiatric hospital before being incarcerated, compared to 14.5 per cent of men.

“If the mental-health system, for example, is failing, then some of the behaviour linked to symptoms of mental health are now being criminalized, and that can certainly contribute to the rising numbers,” said Zinger.

Zinger said some new Conservative crime laws, such as ending two-for-one sentencing credit for time served in custody awaiting trial, could have an adverse affect on poor women who will have a tougher time getting bail, or paying for a lawyer while in custody.

“The risk is that [the] legislation … may actually exacerbate already very troubling trends, like the increase incarceration of women and women aboriginals, the fastest growing segment of the inmate population in Canada,” said Zinger.

She said the Correctional Service of Canada has developed a comprehensive mental-health strategy that includes a computerized screening system to identify earlier and more easily offenders who may require mental-health services, allowing for earlier intervention and treatment.

“Sentencing a woman to prison also sentences her children often to social services. The cost of imprisonment is also the cost of the state care of those children. The potential for abuse in those settings also increases the potential for those children to end up in a crisis situation. Once you’re caught in that system, it’s difficult to extricate yourself,” she said.

jchev Canada, Female Inmates

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says double-bunking in Canadian prisons “is not a big deal” but critics say his plan to impose more cell sharing contradicts the government’s own policy and is bound to breed more penitentiary violence. News from the Vancouver Sun.

More than half of Canada’s 54 federal prisons recently applied to the Correctional Service of Canada to double bunk, according to a Toronto researcher.

The practice requires approval from headquarters because it contradicts a 2001 prison service directive that “single occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method of housing offenders.”

Toews, since assuming the public safety portfolio in January, has spoken in favour of double-bunking as a solution to ease prison overcrowding, which is expected to escalate in coming years as a result of new and pending federal laws to put more people in prison and to keep them there longer.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said last week on Parliament Hill, echoing a sentiment he has expressed several times.

“It’s an absolutely important aspect of facilities, it’s constitutional, it’s legal. Many western democracies do that. There’s nothing inappropriate about that.”

Toews said the government also plans to expand or renovate existing facilities for the time being, rather than build new penitentiaries.

A bill that is expected to have the biggest strain on prisons — by automatically incarcerating offenders convicted of serious drug crimes — will be resurrected today in the House of Commons, after dying when Parliament prorogued in December.

Howard Sapers, Canada’s prison ombudsman, says double-bunking has already increased 50 per cent during the last five years, so that prisons have approval to let 1,300 prisoners share cells — some sleeping in bunk beds and others in cots or mattresses on the floor. That’s 10 per cent of the prison population.

“We know, for reasons of sanity and personal safety, you need some respite, you need some privacy and that doesn’t happen when you’re in double-bunk situations,” he said.

“As double-bunking goes up, you see increased incidents of institutional violence. Correctional centres, when they are filled over capacity, tend to be very noisy and very chaotic. You end up with institutions that look less like correctional centres and more like warehouses.”

Sapers also said prisoners don’t make the best roommates, given that the majority are either mentally ill, drug addicted or belong to criminal gangs.

The plan to increase double-bunking is an about-face from about a decade ago, when the goal of the Correctional Service of Canada was to abolish cell sharing, he said.

Sapers plans to outline the problems of double-bunking in his upcoming annual report, which he must give to the minister by the end of June.

The biggest strain, he said, is on medium- and maximum-security prisons, which are filled to capacity.

jchev Canada, Overcrowding

The Conservative government is promising to cut off monthly old-age security payments to hundreds of federal prison inmates, including infamous serial killer Clifford Olson. News from the London Free Press.

Olson is regarded as Canada’s ultimate portrait of evil, a vile and unrepentant psychopath doing life for the grotesque torture, rape and murder of 11 children as young as nine years old.

Yet as QMI Agency columnist Peter Worthington recently revealed, every month since 2005 the federal government has been sending Olson the same old-age security cheque that the average law-abiding Canadian grandma gets.

The latest available figures indicate about 325 jailed killers, rapists and other assorted criminals over 65 receive up to $1,200 a month in old age security.

All of this apparently came as a shock even to the federal minister responsible for the administration of old age security.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said Wednesday she was “very disturbed” to hear that old age cheques are going to inmates.

In an exclusive interview with QMI Agency, the minister said flatly: “We don’t think it’s appropriate, and we want to prevent it from happening again.”

Most right-thinking Canadians would applaud.

This rather extraordinary act of public generosity towards some of the worst of the worst behind bars in Canada today is expected to cost taxpayers more than $4 million this year alone.

But this issue isn’t just about tax dollars, nor the public hatred for killers like Olson.

Giving old age pensions to prison inmates simply doesn’t make sense.

Inmates can’t spend the money while they are in prison, and many who are behind bars at age 65 are lifers who will die there.

They have all the food, clothing, shelter and health care they need to sustain themselves – often at a higher standard than the thousands of Canadian widows forced to survive in society on less than $13,000 a year on old age security.

In fact, more than half the amount Olson is getting every month comes from the guaranteed income supplement that is only available to the poorest of the elderly poor in our society.

It was never intended to go into an inmate’s savings account while taxpayers shell out up to $150,000 a year to keep him fed and housed.

The human resources minister says the government is exploring its options to cut inmates off the dole without unduly punishing their spouses and families.

Finley’s officials are also concerned about possible court challenges on grounds that old-age security is a universal Canadian right of citizenship which, like voting, is not forfeited during incarceration.

Even if that is true, the federal government already tax back old-age security payments from any Canadian over 65 earning more than $66,000 a year.

jchev Canada, Federal Systems

The Conservative government hopes changes proposed Tuesday will make “protection of society a primary goal” of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Reported by The CBC.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he wants to give judges the power to consider non-criminal behaviour when sentencing Canadians under age 18.

Such behaviour would include a “casual attitude to the law [and] complete lack of empathy for the victim,” said Nicholson, flanked by the mothers of two youths who were killed by young offenders.

The changes would also permit sentencing judges to take into account evidence of previous brushes with the law that did not result in charges or convictions.

The amendments are dubbed “Sebastien’s Law” in memory of Sebastien Lacasse, a 19-year-old Quebecer stabbed to death by a group of youths after making racially charged comments about his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend at a house party in 2004.

The 17-year-old ringleader pleaded guilty and was sentenced as an adult.

The proposed changes come as youth crime is on the decline in Canada. In 2006-2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 56,463 young offenders were convicted across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

That represented a slight rise — 0.34 per cent — over 2005-2006 but was a 26 per cent drop from 2002-2003, when 76,153 young offenders were convicted.

The Conservatives vowed in 2008 to reduce protections under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for young people convicted of serious crimes.

jchev Canada, Juvenile Justice

A report on drug use in prisons urges the federal government to set up needle exchange programs for inmates.  Story from the CBC News.

Rates of HIV and hepatitis C infections in prison are 10 to 20 times higher than in the general population, says the report to be released Tuesday by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

“Because of the scarcity of needles and syringes in prison, people who inject drugs are more likely to share injecting equipment than people in the community,” the report said. “This significantly increases their risk of contracting HIV and HCV.”

The report noted that as of 2009, prison needle and syringe programs have been introduced in more than 60 prisons of varying sizes in at least 10 countries in Europe and Asia, producing positive results and few problems.

“In spite of the overwhelming evidence of the benefits of (the programs), at this time no Canadian prison permits the distribution of clean needles,” the report said. “This harms the health of people in prison, given the increasing presence of HIV and (hepatitis C) behind bars.

“This also creates a further risk to public health more broadly [because] the vast majority of people who spend time in prison return to their families and communities.”

The network’s purpose is to promote the human rights of people living with, or vulnerable to, HIV/AIDs.

“We’re not evil people, we’re people’s daughters, we’re people’s mothers, we’re just people wanting help,” Karen Dooks, who contracted both HIV and hepatitis C in prison, told CBC News. “If they had a needle exchange, there’d be a lot less sickness — it would work, that’s all I know, it would work.”

To bolster its case for needle exchange programs, the HIV/AIDS Legal Network spent 2008 and 2009 interviewing and gathering testimonials from 50 people who had spent time in jail to find out “what do people in prison have to say about the Canadian government’s unwillingness to address the problem?”

Testimonials strengthen message

The group said it hopes the testimonials, which form the bulk of the report, will help bring about a change in government policy.

“They describe first hand how the denial of clean needles in prison has contributed to the harm they have experienced, why (needle programs) are critical to protect their health and what they think a prison system can and should do if truly committed to people’s health,” the report said.

“The hope is that their stories will strengthen the case for change, which governments continue to ignore even as a growing body of evidence highlights the need.”

Greg Simmons, who sold and used drugs during his 20 years in prison, told CBC News his supply came from visitors, guards, volunteers and staff. Now clean and working in a Toronto youth centre, Simmons said the prison environment pushes many people into using drugs.

“It’s a breeding ground for addiction … the loneliness,” he said. “I’ve seen people literally cut themselves and get their vein open and pour it in there without a syringe, that’s how desperate, wanting to kill the pain.”

Dooks spent four years in prison for more than 500 break-ins, all to support her habit.

“I remember using a needle that was so bent and dirty, but you don’t care,” she said.

Both Simmons and Dooks said the millions being spent by the federal government to try to keep drugs out of prisons would be better spent helping inmates who are addicted.

Sandra Chu, senior policy analyst for the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said previous reports on the problem have concentrated on laws, policies and public health issues, but the organization felt a different approach was needed.

“What we thought was really missing was the voices of the people directly affected, the formerly or currently incarcerated people,” she said. “So we thought this report would really humanize them.”

jchev Canada, Drug Treatment & Diversion

Correctional Service Canada has pulled the plug on a unique dog training program at the women’s prison in Truro, leaving its outgoing director distraught for the inmates, the animals and future recipients of the highly trained animals. Story in the Chronicle Herald.

The Pawsitive Directions Canine Program at the federal Nova Institute for Women had jailed women caring for and teaching obedience to shelter dogs to be paired with disabled clients.

Heather Logan, who has run the program under contract with the prison since 1996, said she told administrators in mid-November that she would retire in six weeks but her trained replacement was in place to keep the program going.

Instead, she was shocked to learn that administrators had axed the program, lauded for its success in helping inmates learn highly marketable skills and rescuing dogs from shelters to help those with special needs.

“This is devastating,” Ms. Logan said Thursday from her home in Upper Stewiacke. “There are woman and dogs and children being hurt by this action.”

There were six dogs in various stages of the program, with one just three months away from being certified as a service dog. Prince had been paired with a boy from Onslow, but it is unknown if the training will be completed.

Ms. Logan has heard a rescue group in Halifax has been asked to find homes for the dogs. The program director, her trained assistant Cathie Bell and the inmates were informed of the decision late last week and this week.

Calls to the correctional service and prison administrators in Truro were not returned on Thursday.

Ms. Logan said she doesn’t know why the program has been discontinued. “Up to this point, I’ve not had a bad relationship with (prison administrators).”

She said if cost had been the issue, she had proposed running the program at a lower rate as a correctional service employee and not as a contractor, but the plan was not accepted.

The dog behaviourist, who teaches courses at the University of Prince Edward Island and the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, said the prison probably axed the program now because she had to step down a few weeks early for medical reasons.

But Ms. Logan said she had assured the prison that Ms. Bell, who works and volunteers for Pawsitive Directions several times a week, was ready to take over. “I had no intention of leaving my women or my program high and dry.”

Ms. Bell, who first met Ms. Logan several years ago when she was looking for a dog for a nursing home, confirms that she was more than willing to step in, even just temporarily if the prison wanted to put someone else in charge. She is equally distraught about the change.

“I’m upset about what I feel they’re doing to these women and the families who need these dogs,” Ms. Bell said Thursday.

Mel Harris, who is originally from Truro but lives in Labrador City, said his family’s been thrilled with their now 12-year-old border collie mix Lucky, who they adopted in 1998 as a companion for daughter Lynn, who has cerebral palsy.

He said Lucky was less than 24 hours from being put to death at a shelter when rescued by Ms. Logan.

“Lynn took to him right away,” he said Thursday. “He’s a member of the family.”

Mr. Harris, who joined a Facebook group devoted to lobbying the correctional service to overturn the decision and has also written directly to the government agency, said he was sad to learn Pawsitive Directions had been axed.

“The program was a win-win situation for everybody involved,” he said. “I don’t know who’s making the decision, but it doesn’t seem to make sense.”

Fifteen inmates at a time took part in the three-tier obedience program that took two and a half years to complete. In the latter part of the program, the women worked with the future recipients of the service dogs.

When released from prison, the women have gone on to work at veterinary offices, dog daycares, kennels and even zoos. Ms. Logan said one former inmate now owns and operates a successful dog day care and boarding facility.

She said prison administrators told participating inmates on Wednesday that they wanted to provide different vocational training.

“The whole point of a vocational program is to get employment that is full-time, is meaningful and keeps the women out of prison. That’s what the canine program has done.”

The director said the decision is even more puzzling considering that the prison built a new wing for the program with a dog bath and outdoor play area.

But in hindsight, she said the area has been finished since August and her group had never been allowed to use it.

jchev Canada, Inmate Programs

A federal bill that would impose mandatory jail time for serious drug crimes would increase the workload of the parole system, and the government intends to inject more than $23.3 million over five years to ease the burden, according to the commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada. Reported by Canwest News Services.

Commissioner Don Head said at a Senate committee hearing Thursday that if the bill is passed, CSC will receive an additional $23.3 million over the next five years to support an expected increase in cases for the National Parole Board.

The parole board supervises both federal offenders who are sentenced to two years or more, and provincial offenders in some provinces.

Under the proposed legislation, mandatory sentences would be handed out to everyone convicted of a serious drug offence, such as trafficking, production, and possession for the purpose of trafficking narcotics. A person who grows five to 200 marijuana plants with intent to sell would get a minimum six-month sentence. An addict selling heroin to fellow addicts near a park could go away for two years.

Head said that while there’s no evidence that federal prison populations will increase with mandatory sentences, provincial institutions likely will be affected by the proposed changes outlined in the Conservative government’s Bill C-15, which is now being debated in the Senate.

“There’s going to be some impact in terms of (provincial) sentence populations and (the provinces) will have to re-visit their approach to providing programs to provincial offenders,” Head said after his testimony. “At this point, the figures that we have don’t allow us to draw definitive conclusions in terms of the impact on the federal institutional population, and we’ll continue to assess that as time goes on.”

Head said CSC continues to invest in prison substance abuse programs and treatment.

Critics of Canada’s proposed mandatory drug sentences compare them to similar failed U.S. policies and say they lead to prison overcrowding and end up punishing street-level dealers, most of whom are drug addicts who need treatment, not jail time, they say.

Furthermore, the bill would imprison people who do not pose an immediate threat to the public, said Neil Boyd, criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver.

“Bill C-15 will have the unfortunate consequences of annually jailing thousands of Canadians who do not threaten the social fabric any more than those who produce, in a regulated framework, drugs such as tobacco and alcohol,” Boyd said at Thursday’s hearing.

He asked for an amendment to the bill so that cannabis growers are not treated along the same lines as heroin and cocaine traffickers.

Boyd also said the bill, when applied to the recorded number of British Columbia’s marijuana cultivators, would cost a total of almost $30 million annually for the additional imprisonments.

According to CSC, 80 per cent of offenders have grappled with substance abuse, and for approximately 50 per cent of them, there was a direct link between their crimes and substance abuse.

Head said CSC has an anti-drug strategy to combat illicit substances in prisons, with $122 million in funding announced in August 2008 for the next five years. He acknowledged the difficulty in ensuring that institutions remain drug-free.

The Senate will continue to hear testimony and is expected to go through the bill’s legislation clause-by-clause on Dec. 3.

jchev Canada, Parole, Sentencing

The Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE), a component union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), is launching a campaign to stop the federal government’s plan to close six farming operations run by Correctional Service Canada (CSC) over the next two years.

The Save Our Farms campaign launched a website (www.saveourfarms.ca) to provide information about the farm programs and to mobilize public opinion against shutting them down. Save Our Farms hosts an electronic petition and provides a conduit for sending protest e-mails directly to Prime Minister Harper.   Also, working closely with organizations such as the National Farmers Union, the campaign is organizing protest meetings and community support events in the communities that will be most affected by any closures. Save Our Farms also intends to pursue an Access to Information request to force the government to make public the rationale for the closures contained in the Strategic Review recently conducted by the department.

The goal is to mobilize public opinion to pressure the Conservative government to reverse “an incomprehensible and short-sighted decision,” says John Edmunds, USGE National President. “The Harper government has so far been unable to provide a sound rationale for eliminating prison farm programs. It is outrageous that this major decision was taken without a proper accounting of the true costs and benefits.”   Edmunds says the prison farms make many positive contributions both to inmates and to the communities where they are located, including:

• training in skills that directly or indirectly boost inmates’ employment chances upon release;
• more effective rehabilitation and integration of former inmates into the community;
• a low-cost source of food products for all federal penal Institutions,leading to taxpayer cost-savings; and,
• creating an effective, positive and visible presence in localcommunities through contributions to food banks and other charities.

“Rather than eliminating prison farm programs,” Edmunds says, “the government should be moving Correctional Service Canada in the other direction, increasing the availability of such programs and widening their scope.”

jakking Americas, Canada, Economic Issues, Food Services, INTERNATIONAL, Inmate Programs

The Canadian government believes its move to scrap “two-for-one” credit for time offenders serve in pre-trial custody will clear up clogged courts and provincial facilities.  Reported by the Calgary Herald.

Calgary MP Jim Prentice, a lawyer and the government’s regional minister, said Friday the proposed changes will be a deterrent to criminals, adding the current system provides offenders with an incentive to remain in remand and pile up credit that ultimately reduces their jail term.  “It’s created a system where there are many sentence delays which actually benefit the accused because they’re getting additional credit for time served in provincial custody,” Prentice said at a press conference at Calgary’s Remand Centre …

It has become standard practice for courts to give offenders double credit for so-called “dead time” in remand centres. The credit is sometimes given because of overcrowding or a lack of programs for inmates.  Inmates have received credit as high as three-for-one.  The proposed legislation would cap the credit for time served to a one-to-one ratio allowing individuals one day of credit for each day spent in custody prior to sentencing. However, it would allow courts to permit a ratio up to 1.5 where circumstances are justified.

jakking Americas, Canada, INTERNATIONAL, Pre-Trial, Sentencing

Correctional Service Canada’s (CSC) recent announcement that it plans to cut farm operations at six prisons, two of which in Kingston, Ontario, has raised eyebrows in some circles.  Report from Kingston This Week.

Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, said the decision could prove beneficial if the money from the sales are used on new educational and rehabilitation programs for inmates.  “I have no idea what they’re going to do with that land, but it’s extremely valuable real estate,” said Jones, from his Kingston office. “If it’s sold and the money goes into new educations programs, I’ll be standing on the sidelines and cheering.”

Jones stressed he has nothing against the concept of inmates working a farms – something the National Farmers Union (NFU) says is an exceptional way for an inmate to learn life skills.  The question that lingers in his mind is whether the farming experience is beneficial enough that the government shouldn’t consider selling the land. He said he honestly doesn’t know the answer, as, to his knowledge, no recent studies have been done on the programs.  “I have not been able to locate a body of peer-reviewed evidence endorsing the prison-farm program, particularly given the huge demand for things like basic adult education,” he said …

The NFU believes the decision was short-sighted. Its president, Stewart Wells, wrote to Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, expressing displeasure for writing off agriculture “as fundamental cornerstone of the Canadian economy.”   NFU executive-secretary Terry Pugh elaborated on issue, saying that inmates on penitentiary farms learn machinery skills and responsibility and social skills that can translate into any profession they may enter upon release.“The attitude that these inmates aren’t learning anything useful because farming is an obsolete career path is very upsetting to us,” he said.

jakking Canada, Food Services, Inmate Programs

A recent escape has prompted the Saskatchewan government to make promises regarding correctional resources in the Province.  The following is from a press release from the local union responding to that report.

The Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union (SGEU/NUPGE) welcomes a promise by the province to increase resources, staff training and security measures in the correctional system as a response to the high-profile inmate escape from the Regina Correctional Centre last August.   “We have been asking for these changes for decades. Our front-line staff have identified issues such as inadequate training, sub-standard infrastructure and information systems as key problems for many years,” says SGEU president Bob Bymoen.

Bymoen noted that many of the same recommendations, such as enhanced training, were made in the 1993 Rankin report but were not acted upon. “While many of the recommendations in this report respond to what front-line workers have been asking for over the years” …

The increased beds announced for corrections in Saskatoon are long-overdue and welcome.   “But it is worth noting that, while this will help alleviate pressures in the men’s system, it does not help solve the overcrowding problem in Pinegrove, the correctional centre for women in Prince Albert,” Bymoen notes.   He adds that many of the problems with inmate management result from the fact that there is very little positive, rehabilitative programming left in the system.   “Programs were cut in a short-sighted effort to save money over the last two decades. With little to fill their time inmates are more likely to engage in dangerous activities that have serious consequences for themselves and staff,” he says.

jakking Canada

Civic leaders in Kingston, Ontario, are hatching a cash-for-convicts pitch to Ottawa.  Officials have resurrected a long-standing gripe that the city, the penitentiary capital of Canada, faces policing costs above anything faced by any other community.  This report from the Kingston Whig-Standard.

There are five federal prisons within city limits.  “There is a lot of time that’s spent by Kingston Police, either directly or indirectly, on offender management,” Kingston Police Chief Stephen Tanner said yesterday at a meeting of the city’s police services board, the civilian body that oversees the department … Tanner said Kingston Police spend more than $700,000 annually just on salaries for officers who work full time on prison-related issues.   The city does not get any compensation for those expenses.  For decades, city politicians and police chiefs have asked Ottawa for extra money, but the federal government has consistently rejected the appeals …

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Kingston Police investigate crimes inside prisons, track escaped convicts, respond to a large number of incidents involving released offenders and dedicate substantial resources to monitoring released, high-risk prisoners.   Three Kingston officers are members of a special police penitentiary squad that is co-ordinated by provincial police. Two Kingston officers are on a provincial team that tracks escapees and parole violators and two other Kingston officers deal with high-risk and dangerous offenders who have been released from area prisons … The figures do not include other costs that are impossible to quantify, he said, such as responding to problems at the former federal halfway house on Portsmouth Avenue or answering complaints about the conduct of paroled inmates …

Corrections Canada is Kingston’s fifth largest employer, with more than 2,600 workers, more than double the number of employees of the largest private sector employer.  The presence of the penitentiaries and related activities injects more than $150 million into the local economy annually.

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Thirty-five years after his office was set up in answer to a deadly riot at Kingston Penitentiary, the correctional investigator of the Canadian Correctional system says history is dangerously repeating itself.

Corrections officials now give themselves 60 working days – up from 15 – to deal with the most serious inmate grievances, complaints that sometimes lead to explosive uprisings, Howard Sapers said yesterday in his annual report to Parliament. Such grievances include harassment and discrimination along with claims of unfair segregation and various rights violations.  Mr. Sapers has a ready answer for those who roll their eyes at the dissatisfaction of sometimes brutal convicts.  “It would be easy to dismiss this,” he said in an interview. “But internal grievance resolution … is a core, central component of effective, safe correctional practice.”

Two inmates died and much of the fortress-like prison was trashed during a four-day riot that erupted at Ontario’s Kingston Pen on April 14, 1971.  A public inquiry found that the prison system’s failure to deal fairly with inmate grievances was a major factor, Mr. Sapers said …He chides the Correctional Service of Canada for repeatedly extending the timeline for meeting its legal duty to resolve inmate complaints – especially those that have been deemed serious enough to clear two of three assessment levels. “The explanation given by the service is that … they can only resolve 15 to 20 per cent of these very significant grievances within the previous [15 working days] time frame.  So instead of working to comply with their policy and legal requirement, they simply made the time frame elastic so that it fit their current level of effort.”

The full article at the Globe & Mail has more detail.

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As reported by the Edmonton Sun:

Documents obtained through Access to Information reveal how Corrections Service Canada manages its annual budget of $2.2 billion to care for its 14,500 inmates.In the 2007-08 financial year, the department spent over $322,000 on dentures, $162,000 on prosthetic limbs, $256,000 on eyeglasses and almost $82,000 on hearing aids. The numbers do not include Atlantic Canada.   A partial picture of the cost of prison dentistry reveals that, excluding B.C. and Atlantic Canada, taxpayers spend $2.2 million just filling cavities and cleaning prisoner’s teeth. But these numbers pale in comparison to the cost of food for Canada’s inmates, which is just over $25 million a year. The cost of household and sanitary supplies is over $8 million a year nationally.

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People in jail aren’t supposed to have cell phones.  But across America, one way or another, they’re getting them.  The following is a view from Pennsylvania:

In Maryland, inmate Patrick Albert Byers Jr. used one to arrange the murder of a witness in a homicide case, prosecutors say. He’s facing the federal death penalty. In Canada, imprisoned drug lord Rivo D’Onofrio used cell phones to make thousands of calls to his cronies. “He gabbed for hours and hours,” a prosecutor said.  In a notorious case, drug kingpin Ronald Whethers used cell phones to run his narcotics empire from the Westmoreland County Prison, leading to a state law prohibiting cell phones behind bars.

Corrections officers at home and abroad are struggling with how to keep inmates from wreaking havoc by phone.  “They’re pulling their hair out,” said Louis Garzarelli, a former U.S. Bureau of Prisons intelligence officer who teaches criminology at Mount Aloysius College in Cambria County.  “They really don’t know what to do about it. The damage that is done is unaccountable. They don’t know how many are in there.”   The problem has reached absurd proportions in some states.  A Maryland legislator was stunned when a prisoner called him on a cell phone to complain about his prison.  In Texas, a warden received a call from the mother of an inmate asking why her son was getting such poor cell phone reception behind bars.  Some other countries have it a lot worse.  Two years ago in Brazil, hundreds of incarcerated gang members used cell phones to coordinate riots at 73 prisons and attacks on the outside against police. The wave of violence paralyzed the state of Sao Paulo and left 160 people dead.

The United States has seen nothing on that scale, but officials are seizing thousands of cell phones nationwide.  Some are brought in by visitors, who have been known to hide them in body cavities.  But the majority are supplied by guards, often in exchange for bribes. The going price: $500. In Pennsylvania, corrections officers can themselves end up in jail under the law inspired by the Ronald Whethers case in 2000.  In Cambria County, for example, former part-time officer Donald Burkett is awaiting trial on a charge of letting an inmate use his personal cell phone to call his girlfriend. A second guard is under investigation.  “It’s not a problem in every jail, but it is in most jails,” said John Prebish Jr., the warden. “You have everything from guards smuggling them in to inmates and visitors smuggling them in.”  The state system generally gets high marks for cell phone detection, but it’s not immune. At SCI Graterford, four guards were indicted last year on federal charges of supplying cell phones and drugs to inmates in exchange for bribes.

The newest threat behind bars is the SIM card, a tiny, portable memory chip that allows lots of prisoners to use a single phone.   The prison system simply hasn’t kept up with communications technology.  “Cell phones become a huge threat to three people: the officers inside the prison, the prisoners themselves, and the public,” said Terry Bittner, director of security products for EVI Technology, a Maryland company whose cell phone detection system is used in one Pennsylvania prison, some facilities in the federal system and elsewhere. There are three ways to crack down: stop the phones from coming in, stop inmates from using them or stop the signals from reaching the prison.  But there are complications with all three.  No screening process, called “portal security” in prison-speak, works all the time.

In Pennsylvania, the Department of Corrections said it seized a total of eight phones, batteries or chargers from prison cells so far in 2008. Six of the system’s 27 prisons didn’t provide information on phone seizures to the department’s public relations staff.  The department seized 15 last year and 10 in 2006.   But some other states seize hundreds in a given year. In California, for example, officials have confiscated 1,331 phones from prisoners so far this fiscal year.

How can Pennsylvania be finding so few? The state says it’s because the phones don’t get into prison in the first place.  “We really are that good,” said Susan McNaughton, corrections spokeswoman.  Unlike many other states where guard unions have successfully resisted security measures, officers in Pennsylvania have to pass through metal detectors and are subject to searches.   “I think the numbers show that we are not experiencing problems to the extent that some other state DOCs are,” she said. “I think that is attributed to the fact that we have a multi-pronged approach to keeping contraband, drugs and cell phones out of our prisons” …

At some lockups, officers rely on sophisticated electronic wands, which cost up to $15,000 each.   They work, but critics point out that the user has to be very close to the signal and that the device generates a lot of false alarms, such as setting off alerts on gum wrappers.  Many jails, tight on resources, stick with the low-tech approach.  “We just search all the time,” said Ramon Rustin, warden at the Allegheny County Jail. “We do sweeps. We will lock down the units and send in dogs. We’re searching for everything, not just cell phones.” He said his staff has found one phone in his four years in charge …

Cell phone jammers are illegal in the U.S., even in prisons, under the 1996 Communications Act. But an upcoming experiment in South Carolina, and a series of petitions pending before the Federal Communications Commission, are forcing a hard look at whether they should be.  Next month, a Florida company called CellAntenna plans to demonstrate its jamming technology at a South Carolina prison, risking enforcement action by the FCC that could include fines of up $16,000 a day.   Jamming is legal in other countries, although a lack of accuracy has been a complication in urban areas. Jammers set up at a prison in Brazil, for example, also knocked out cell service to 200,000 people who lived nearby …The cell phone industry, threatened by any attempt to jam its signals, has asked that jamming equipment remain illegal.

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The B.C. government is facing criticism over its decision to house inmates in futuristic-looking giant tents next to prisons in Kamloops and Maple Ridge as a temporary solution to overcrowding.

Solicitor General John van Dongen said Tuesday the structures are secure and sophisticated, with air conditioning and heating systems. “They have remote control automatic doors,” he said. “They have surveillance cameras. And I want to emphasize these will only be [used for] low-risk offenders. The structures will house about 150 inmates while new permanent buildings go up, van Dongen said.

The prisons in British Columbia are well over capacity.

There are 1,557 jail cells in all of the province’s correction centres, but on average they have to accommodate 2,545 inmates, government figures show. On any given day, the jails operate at 170 per cent of their capacity.

Perhaps the managers of the BC Corrections system have been reading about Sheriff Joe’s tents in Phoenix.   However, BC’s rain forest is hardly the same as the southwestern desert.

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• Canada’s only military prison is far tougher than any civilian prison.
• Tougher sentences and yet another reorganization expected in the UK.
• A $25 inmate booking fee in Porter County IN is questioned by the State Audit Board
• The Gov of Kansas’s son sells a “Don’t Drop The Soap” prison board game.
• Nurses launch whistleblower suit against CCA.

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