CSC to expand 35 institutions-- waste of money!

Report: CSC expanding 35 institutions

According to a blog post by Rob Tripp of the Kingston Whig Standard (read 6 August 2010 post), Chris Price - Assistant Commissioner, Correctional Operations and Programs, Correctional Service of Canada - has compiled a list of federal penitentiaries where new units will be built.

The report states that "Price says new units will be built at the following men's prisons: Springhill Institution, Westmorland Institution, Atlantic Institution, Montée Saint-François, La Macaza, Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Cowansville, Federal Training Centre, Donnacona Institution, Frontenac Institution, Fenbrook Institution, Pittsburgh Institution, Bath Institution, Beaver Creek Institution, Collins Bay Institution, Rockwood Institution, Bowden Institution, Riverbend Institution, Drumheller Institution, Drumheller Institution (Minimum), Edmonton Institution, Bowden Institution, RHC/Pacific Institution, Pê Sâkâstêw Centre, Mission Institution, Willow Cree Healing Centre, Kent Institution, Ferndale Institution, [and] William Head Institution" (see Map of Canadian Federal Penitentiaries).

The blog post also notes that facility expansions will occur at "all six women's prisons: Nova Institution for Women, Joliette Institution, Grand Valley Institution for Women..., Edmonton Institution for Women, Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, [and] Fraser Valley Institution for Women".

If the details in this report turnout to be accurate, it would signal that for this round of penitentiary expansion, CSC and the current federal government have adopted "pre-designation" and "closed-siting" as the strategies to construct and select locations for what, given the scope of the overall initiative and the new units being established, will essentially be new facilities.

According to Secherest (1992: 96), pre-designation "involves identification of sites in advance of need by using exclusionary or suitability criteria to screen out areas or to evaluate potential sites". This strategy is usually used when planning to build new facilities in areas where there are already penal institutions. While it is unknown whether CSC had developed such a list prior to the manufacturing of the need for new prisons as part of the Conservatives' punishment agenda, by building facilities on existing "penitentiary reserves" - large parcels of land owned by the Government of Canada where penitentiaries are often housed - they will likely be able to circumvent the usual resistance that is encountered when they have tried to establish facilities in towns and cities that don't have a large prison in their backyard (for a recent example, see CSC article on the siting of Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener).

In the case where a host community has not been consulted about the looming expansion of one or more federal penitentiaries in their backyard, it can be argued that CSC and the Feds have also employed a closed-siting strategy "which places the local community in the position of reacting to a government proposal in an adversarial fashion at the time that permits are requested" should they oppose a prison construction initiative (Secherest, 1992: 97).

Taken together, these "decide, announce, defend" approaches (Chambers, 1989) represent the minority Conservative Government of Canada's unwillingness to consult with key stakeholders prior to implementing their policies, let alone developing them. We can now add another checkmark in the column of 'transparent' government. 

 

What a complete waste of money. Prisons are a quick fix to crime, not a long term solution. To effectively reduce, and prevent crime we need to address the root causes of crime through community programming. Prisons fail at addressing the root causes of crime due to the negative environment, subculture, pro criminal attitudes and behaviours, drugs, gangs, etc. The courts need to rely less on imprisonment and more on community alternative sanctions for criminals. 

 

 

We don't need more prisons. They fail to deter, prevent or reduce crime

Corrections plans expansion of 35 prisons

KINGSTON, Ont. - The federal prison service plans to build new cells at 35 penitentiaries across the country to make room for an exploding inmate population.

A total of 60% of the country’s 58 federal prisons will see expansion, according to internal Corrections Canada information obtained by QMI Agency.

A list compiled by senior officials shows that new units will be built at six federal prisons in Ontario, including four in the immediate Kingston, Ont., area — Collins Bay, Frontenac, Pittsburgh and Bath institutions.

All six federal prisons for women will see expansion, according to the information.

Corrections Canada would not provide specific comment on details obtained by the newspaper.

“The Correctional Service of Canada is implementing a multi-faceted accommodation strategy to address the increase of the offender population expected to result from the Truth in Sentencing Act,” agency spokesman Melissa Hart wrote in an e-mailed response to a request for an interview.

Hart wrote the government is providing the money to create 2,700 spaces in the next three years.

It’s estimated that the construction spree will cost roughly $2 billion.

Corrections and the federal government have refused to make public specifics of the unprecedented expansion scheme.

The cancellation of two-for-one pre-trial credit is expected to add roughly 4,000 inmates to the federal inmate population by 2015, requiring construction of 13 penitentiaries, according to a report released in June by the parliamentary budget officer.

The government’s plans have been condemned by criminologists, advocates, and many social agencies as an ideologically driven desire to appear tough on crime, despite decades of research that shows mandatory minimums and longer sentences do little or nothing to improve community safety or deter crime.

“This is basically pouring money down a rat hole,” Craig Jones, the Kingston-based head of the John Howard Society of Canada has said.

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Expansion

A list of 35 federal prisons where new units will be built to accommodate a surging inmate population:

Men’s prisons

(six Ontario facilities listed first)

Frontenac

Fenbrook

Pittsburgh

Bath

Beaver Creek

Collins Bay

Springhill

Westmorland

Atlantic

Montée Saint-François

La Macaza

Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines

Cowansville

Federal Training Centre

Donnacona

Rockwood

Bowden

Riverbend

Drumheller

Edmonton

Bowden

Pacific

Pê Sâkâstêw Centre

Mission

Willow Cree Healing Centre

Kent

Ferndale

William Head

Women’s prisons

Nova

Joliette

Grand Valley

Edmonton

Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge

Fraser Valley

The new prohibition

The Harper government, fresh from botching its alleged pander to the libertarian wing of the Conservative party with its voluntary census plan, appears to be having no problem steamrolling over the libertarian wing's sensitivities on crime. In back-to-back performances this week, two Cabinet ministers invoked harsh tough-on-crime motives that show the Tories' concern about individual rights to be a fleeting interest compared with their enthusiasm for escalating the bonkers American war on drugs, gambling and sex.
Under the guise of fighting "organized crime," a global economic sector created largely by government laws and regulations, the Conservatives — with hardly a peep from the opposition or critics — this week expanded the Canadian division of the monstrous U.S.-led war on drugs. For a government allegedly concerned about the "intrusiveness" of a pollster extracting personal information under threat of fines and prison, the Conservatives are disturbingly unconcerned about a massive increase in police power to meddle in the lives of its citizens in the name of fighting crime.
The government's bizarre crime declarations began Tuesday, when Stockwell Day, as Treasury Board Secretary, defended a budget plan to spend $9-billion building prisons at a time when crime rates are declining. Mr. Day, reaching for an explanation, tried to link the prison expansions to "the increase in the amount of unreported crimes that surveys show clearly are happening." This was an obvious head-scratcher for reporters: If the crimes are unreported, how will the criminals perpetrating those crimes end up in the expanded prison system? And, moreover, what is an "unreported crime"? Mr. Day rambled around the subject, ending with the usual Tory calls for tougher sentences and a warning that you can't take a "liberal view" of crime.
"We don't think serious crime should be treated lightly," he said.
It turns out the unreported-crime story may have some legitimacy as a contact sport for the statistical statists who are otherwise at war over the voluntary census. The Crime Victimization survey, conducted by StatsCan, asks Canadians about car and bicycle thefts, residential burglaries, pickpockets, robbery, unwanted sexual assault or harassment, and other physical assaults. The survey, a voluntary non-census effort, shows a discrepancy between the number of crimes people say they experience in real life and actual crime statistics. So what's real: The crimes reported, or the crimes not reported? Are people getting robbed, raped and assaulted but not taking the crimes to police?
Before Canada's vociferous stats community could sort any of this out, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson appeared the next day with a plan that could generate the criminal numbers to justify the prison spending. The government will apparently fill Mr. Day's prisons with thousands of new criminals to be convicted under an expansion of the definition of "serious crimes" under the Criminal Code.
Mr. Nicholson was accompanied by some of Canada's top police chiefs as he explained how the government needed to escalate its war on organized crime. The government, he said, had enacted regulations that, effective immediately, would give police new powers to crack down on a long list of activities that are already covered under criminal law as relatively minor offences.
The list of crimes now considered serious is worth a close look, especially in the context of Mr. Day's concern about unreported crimes. They include:
- Keeping a common gaming or betting house;
- Betting, pool-selling and bookmaking;
- Keeping a common bawdy house;
- Trafficking in barbiturates and other chemical drugs;
- Trafficking in any quantity of cannabis;
- Importing, exporting, producing barbiturates.
Under the new get-tough regulations, keeping a common bawdy-house or selling a couple of ounces of marijuana will now bring maximum prison sentences of "at least" five years in prison. A low-level operator of a bawdy-house could also face five-year prison terms.
More important for police and prosecutors, under the organized crime umbrella, the full force of the gang-war and drug-war crime-fighting machine will be unleashed on small-time players who may appear to have organized-crime connections. These include wiretaps, tougher bail regimes, the ability to seize the proceeds of crime, sentencing conditions and parole rules.
One of the noteworthy characteristics of the new regulatory effort is that it does not include any of the "unreported" crimes — thefts, burglaries and sexual assaults — that Mr. Day seems to think will soon be the source of an expanding prison population.
Take, for example, keeping a common bawdy-house. The sex trade is a booming business in Canada. Nobody sees the transaction between a prostitute and a john as an "unreported crime," mainly because there is no underlying crime to report. There are no criminal victims. The same goes for the thousands of Canadians who smoke dope and take barbiturates or ingest steroids. Bookmakers and hockey-pool organizers ply their trade across the country, but they are not the unreported criminals Mr. Day said exist in "alarming numbers."
The people who are going to fill Mr. Day's jails are thousands of small-time bookies, prostitutes, drug traffickers and others who are seen by government to be a branch of the "organized crime" industry, even though their crime is to deliver a service to Canadians who are willing to pay for it.
Organized crime through the centuries has been the creation of government law. A business gets organized as a crime because government declares it to be illegal. Alcohol trade became an organized crime under prohibition, and disappeared after alcohol was legalized. Pornography was once controlled by organized crime, but now the industry is legitimate and the criminal behavior — smuggling, guns, violence — that once surrounded it is gone. Want porn? Turn on the TV, where it's available 24/7 on cable.
The criminalization of gambling over the decades created a major outlet for organized crime syndicates — until governments came along and organized the crime themselves, in the form of national lotteries and government-owned casinos. Still, private gambling among citizens who like to bet on outcomes other than lottery draws is a continuing business. Governments' war on private book-making and private poker dens is more to protect their own monopolies than to eliminate crime.
Canada's Criminal Code definition of organized crime, adopted as part of an international policing campaign a few years ago, is an open door to extreme law enforcement. An organization "composed of three or more persons in or outside Canada" is a criminal organization if it "has as one of its main purposes or main activities the facilitation or commission of one or more serious offences [see above], that, if committed, would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group or by any one of the persons who constitute the group."
With that wide-open definition, the organized-crime enforcement juggernaut already has spawned a largely futile attempt to curb biker gangs, and an expensive and wasteful money-laundering data agency — whose bureaucracy, incidentally, is to get a new $9-million budget increase this year under the Conservatives.
There is no space or need here to review the already well-documented grotesque criminal culture and social deterioration spawned by the U.S.-led war on drugs — a war the Conservatives are now bringing to the streets of Canada. The enforcement of these new regulations, aimed a low-level providers of services that have willing buyers, will be as effective in curbing genuine criminal activity as the other organized crime measures have been, which is not at all. They are likely to make things worse.

Tough on crime measures are completely ineffective at preventing, reducing and deterring crime. What purpose does prison serve for a sex trade worker or a drug user?! None!! These people do not pose a threat to society or the public's safety and therefore, there is no need to imprison them. Prison is a negative environment which is likely only to have negative and damaging impacts on these groups of individuals. We need less reliance on prison, not more. Drug use should be a public health issue not a criminal justice issue and sex trade workers need assistance and support to overcome the barriers to meaningful employment and education and to overcome poverty. Prison does not address the societal factors leading to prostitution and drug use. 

Mandatory Minimum sentences (MMS) and longer prison sentences have been proven in research not to deter, prevent or reduce crime in the long term. They actually have been shown to increase the chances of re-offending and decrease the chances of successful reintegration because of the negative prison environment and subculture which counteracts any programming from being incorporated into an inmates' life. As a result, many inmates are released with little assistance, rehabilitation or support in the community and they resort back to crime. This does not improve public safety at all. Prisons fail at addressing the root causes and contributing factors to crime such as poverty, addictions, mental illnesses and unemployment. We must focus our attention and resources on crime prevention and rehab/reintegration programs for offenders and at risk populations in order to effectively reduce and prevent crime. Prison is a quick fix, not a long term solution. Most crime occurs as a result of social and societal factors, not personal choice. Society sets up the crime and the criminal commits it. The main emphasis should be on crime prevention initiatives instead of focusing on punishment and retribution. To reduce prison overcrowding we need to abolish MMS, place less reliance on prison as a sentence, grant more offenders bail divert more offenders to alternative and community sentences. The mentally ill, addicts, drug offenders, property and non violent offenders should not be imprisoned. Only the most dangerous offenders should be in order to protect society and the public. We dont need more prisons. What we need is for society to address the root causes of crime, such as poverty, unemployment, mental illness and addictions among others. More prisons will not solve the societal causes of crime. The overcrowding situation could also be reduced by the courts relying less on imprisonment as a sentence and more on alternative sanctions. Plus, there is no need to get tough on crime when crime rates are decreasing and have been for the past 25 years. We dont need more prisons. What we need is for society to address the root causes of crime, such as poverty, unemployment, mental illness and addictions among others. More prisons will not solve the societal causes of crime. The overcrowding situation could also be reduced by the courts relying less on imprisonment as a sentence and more on alternative sanctions. It's a stupid legal system we have when they want to send "low-level criminals, non-violent, non-h...armful people like pot smokers, sex trade workers, shoplifting youth, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and so on" to PRISON of all places. NONE of those crimes warrant a prison stay! 

"We shouldn't be under any illusions that they're in some way protecting people... their crime agenda laws are actually very harmful — particularly when it comes to people who are in vulnerable positions, such as sex workers or people who use drugs." -- Libby Davies

Prostitution should NOT be illegal. Those women often need help and assistance in their lives and face many barriers to securing other forms of employment and they should not be criminalized. Criminalizing sex trade workers puts them in an even more vulnerable situation. Police, prisons and punishment are not an effective way to help sex trade workers. Criminalization creates conditions where prostitution fosters in the underground market, where it is unsafe and dangerous. If it was legalized and properly regulated, safer working conditions could be created and implemented. Punishment and prisons are not the answer. Criminalization of the sex trade only results in more harm falling upon sex-trade workers.

Whatever your feelings about the morality of the sex trade, police, prisons and punishment are not the solution, they are indeed part of the problem in this case. Sex trade workers need help and assistance to overcome their situation, not prisons and punishment. Completely ineffective.

Conservatives blasted after suggesting more prisons needed

Day blasted after suggesting more prisons needed

OTTAWA -- A senior cabinet minister in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government came under fire Tuesday for suggesting Canada needs to build more prisons in part because of a rise in unreported crimes.

"We're very concerned... about the increase in the amount of unreported crimes that surveys clearly show are happening," Day said at a news conference. "People simply aren't reporting the same way they used to."

The comments were immediately contradicted by the government's main statistical agency -- and inspired a rapidly spreading Internet video that mocked the minister for not being able to identify the source of his arguments.

Day made the remarks as Harper's cabinet and caucus returned to Parliament Hill for a series of meetings to review the government's agenda and economic policies. He said the government was committed to winding down stimulus spending programs to eliminate the deficit, but added planned multibillion-dollar investments in new prisons would be needed to replace aging facilities, deter violent criminals and cope with what he claimed is a rise in unreported crimes.

"Those numbers are alarming and it shows that we can't take a liberal view to crime (or) suggest that it's barely happening at all," said Day. "We still have situations, too many situations of criminal activity that are alarming to our citizens and we intend to continue to deal with that."

Day is not the first minister or Conservative MP to suggest the police-reported crime rates are an inaccurate picture of crime in Canada.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, in an email missive to supporters July 22, blamed statistical dishonesty and soft-on-crime apologists in the media and Liberal caucus for suggestions the crime problem in Canada is getting better.

"No amount of statistical manipulation is going to dissuade Canadians from what they know to be true: in this great country, we have a crime problem," Toews wrote.

He went on to say Canadians are no longer reporting crimes, in increasingly large numbers, to the police.

"Whether it's in respect of serious sexual assaults or more commonplace property offences, the argument that Statistic Canada's "police report" statistics show that the crime rate is falling, is seriously flawed," he wrote. "As with all statistical measures, it depends on your point of reference -- and often, your level of honesty."

During an appearance before a parliamentary committee in March, Toews pointed to 1999 and 2004 victimization surveys by Statistics Canada as evidence crime rates have gone up 15 to 19 per cent. He said crime rates in cities like Winnipeg and Vancouver exceed those in most U.S. cities.

Those surveys, conducted once every five years, suggested the proportion of crimes reported to police dropped from 42 per cent in 1994 to 37 per cent in 1999 and 34 per cent in 2004. The proportion of violent crimes reported went up slightly from 31 to 33 per cent between 1999 and 2004.

The percentage of people who had been the victim of a crime in the previous year went from 26 per cent in 1999 to 28 per cent in 2004. The rate of most violent crimes, including sexual assault and physical assault had stayed the same or gone down. The rate of household crimes, including robbery and vandalism, had gone up.

The surveys suggested most people who didn't report crimes kept silent because they dealt with the crime another way or because they didn't think the crime was serious enough to report. Victims were more likely to report the crime if they were injured or had lost property worth more than $1,000.

Statistics Canada quickly shot down Day's assumption, saying this data cannot be compared to police-reported crime statistics, since it only surveyed eight types of crimes as opposed to the hundreds of crimes investigated by police.

"So for example, you can't ask somebody: Have you ever been a victim of a homicide?" said Warren Silver from the agency's centre for justice statistics.

"It's just not possible to do. So what (the Statistics Canada research) does do is track some of the types of crimes that people might not report and might report and some of the reasons why."

NDP MP slams Tories over new organized crime regulations
NDP MP Libby Davies says it's "outrageous" that the Conservative government has quietly enacted new organized crime regulations — which include making bawdyhouse offences a "serious crime" — while Parliament is on summer break.

As part of its plan to crack down on organized crime, the federal government put through several regulatory changes to the Criminal Code in the middle of July. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced the changes on Wednesday.

"The fact that an offence is committed by a criminal organization makes it a serious crime," Nicholson stated in a press release. "These regulations will help ensure that police and prosecutors can make full use of the tools in the Criminal Code that are specifically targeted at tackling organized crime."

While most of the regulatory changes announced to the Criminal Code affect gambling, betting or drug trafficking, the government also included "keeping a common bawdyhouse (subsection 210(1) and paragraph 210(2)(c))."

Bawdyhouse laws have been repeatedly used by police to target gay bathhouses and raid them, as recently as 2002 in Calgary and 2004 in Hamilton.

NDP MP Libby Davies, who has studied the country's laws around bawdyhouses and sex work, is concerned.

"It's outrageous that they do it in the dead of summer," Davies says. "This is such a characteristic now of the Conservative government — they bring about manoeuvres and policy changes and announce them when they think no one's paying attention.

"To have changes to the Criminal Code that are regulatory and to do it outside of Parliament, when there's less chance of scrutiny because everybody's away, is terrible. It means that we can't hold the government to account because everyone's away, because Parliament's not sitting."

"We shouldn't be under any illusions that they're in some way protecting people," says NDP MP Libby Davies of the Conservative government's crime agenda.

 

As to the specific bawdyhouse provisions, Davies feels this is little more than the government maintaining the illusion that it is cracking down on organized crime when she feels the existing laws are tough enough.

"If their intent is to put a tighter grip around bawdyhouses, then that will affect sex workers, and it will affect their safety and their rights. We should be very concerned about what they're up to here."

Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland has also raised red flags. "When you do legislation as a political weapon, when you do legislation in the middle of the night with no consultation, no utilization of Parliamentary committee, and you just whip it together to try to change the channel politically, it has all kinds of unintended consequences," he says.

Justice officials state in the release that making these provisions serious offences will make it easier for police and prosecutors to take full advantage of specific Criminal Code offences dealing with organized crime.

Davies begs to differ.

"We shouldn't be under any illusions that they're in some way protecting people because the story is, is on their crime agenda, their laws are actually very harmful — particularly when it comes to people who are in vulnerable positions, such as sex workers or people who use drugs."

We do not need more prisons. The prospect of punishment and imprisonment fails to deter, prevent or reduce crime in Canada. What we need to do is stop over-relying on imprisonment as a sentence and start imposing alternative sentences such as conditional sentences and others that take place in the community. Prison is a negative environment which harbours pro-criminal attitudes, values, beliefs, gangs, drugs, and fails to facilitate or encourage rehabilitation or reform. Prisons increase the chances of re-offending and decrease the chances of successful reintegration. We must place more emphasis on rehabilitation and address the root causes and contributing factors to crime, such as poverty, addictions, mental illness, etc. 

So, the Cons want to build more prisons to house unidentified perpetrators of unreported crimes? And they want to base their decision on surveys that are at least 6 years out of date? Hmmmmm.

So to be clear....we are going to spend billions on new jails for unreport crimes? First - how do you charge, much less convinct, someone for an unreport crime? Second - even if we could convinct someone of a crime that went unreported, Mr Day's own "evidence" says that these crimes are not the type of crime that you go to prison for.

This is the worst case of Karl Rove/George Bush "scare the crap outta people" politics we've ever seen. Harper and his social conservatives what people to believe that crime is getting worse in this country because they believe it's a good campaign issue for them. This is just twisted. This is why the Tories want to make Stats Canada useless - so they can make stuff up, and no one will have the data to disprove them.

Just as Day didn't know which way a river flowed, he demonstrates he doesn't know if crimes are being committed, but wants more prisons built.

The crimes being committed are crimes of stupidity that are perpetrated upon us

This is the same guy who said humans walked the earth with the dinosaurs. Is it any wonder he think it's a good thing to spend billions building new jails when the stats prove the crime rate to be dropping? Perhaps if he spent any money on prevention programs, the jails would not be necessary and there would be less victims.

If crime goes "unreported" what are we building more prisons for?

Surely if no one reports a "crime", nobody can be brought to justice for a crime that was not "reported' so how can we imprison anybody?

By the way, when incidents are "reported" that by definition takes them our of the realm of being "unreported": Hence an investigation can be initiated (depending on circumstances; whether it is a serious crime, and whether or not the police force is at Horton's ejoying their do-nut.)

The point is, only "reported" crimes can be "punished". Unreported crimes go unpunished, because . . . well, you figure it out from there.

Geez, these Conservatives: Dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber . . .
First; if the crimes are unreported there is no police investigation. If there is no police investigation there are no suspects to arrest. If no one is arrested and charged there is no one to send to prison. So what is Day really saying here? We are going to put people who do not exist in prison? What an idiot!

Did any of the commentators actually read the report here. The reference to crimes that go unreported as one commentator put it "If crime goes "unreported" what are we building more prisons for?" completely misses the point. This is made in reference to people who believe crime rates are decreasing when in fact a portion of crimes do go unreported thus skewing peoples perspective of what is truly happening.

To suggest Stockwell Day is calling for jailing non existent criminals and thus justifying his call for more jail cells is both fatuous and ridiculous, get a grip folks!

If the reason we need more jails is that the ones we have are full, say that. Not some mumbo jumbo about unreported crimes. If you read the last paragraphs of the story, crimes go unreported when damage is minimal (as in less than insurance deductibles) or if there were no injuries. That's unlikely to change with new prisons.

Crime requires more complex solutions than either the neocon iron fist or the liberal namby-pamby "forgive the poor little (insert some socioeconomic or racial identifier here) for he knows not what he does."

The solutions have to span the range, from dealing with root causes to providing legitimate economic activity and sufficient childhood activities (community activity centers, etc.) to a justice system that toughens up the process of punishment and rehabilitation. Progressive mandatory sentences, as in mandatory sentences that increase with each offence, jails where prisoners are actually expected to work and abide by accepted protocols (a military protocol, perhaps) (which makes the idea of re-offending less and less attractive), and providing skillsets so that prisoners don't leave prison only to find crime is all they know.

Another typical Con ideological tempest in a teapot. Using "unreported" crimes to support justice initiatives. It would be laughable if it wasn't from the mouth of a minister. A Con's view of the world is that anyone who breaks a law should be put in jail for a long time. It's all part of the nasty Con view of the world, just like the people who constantly lament how bad our justice system is. To them the sky is falling, the sky is falling.... 

Imprisoning more people for longer periods will not make Canada safer...

Doing the math on 2 for 1

In the old James Cagney movies, there were always two prisoners to a cell. One was in the top bunk, the other in the bottom.

That was called double-bunking, meaning two bunks to a cell, not two prisoners to a bed, which is not always fun for the little guy.

They usually got along fine until Cagney shouts, “You dirty rat” at his cellmate.
It was great stuff for the movies, not in real life.

Double-bunking was finally abolished in the Canadian penal system in 2001. The government, in its euphemistic style, declared that “single-occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method.”

But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who likes old movies, wants to take us back to the days of double-bunking.   
”Double-bunking is not a big deal,” said Toews. That was three weeks ago.

The next day, half of the 54 federal penitentiaries announced they are going back to double-bunking, just like in Victorian times.
Double-bunking can also be a great way to make new friends.

Critics disagree, arguing it’s more likely to promote violence among cellmates.
Still, it’s a lot less expensive than building new penitentiaries, according to Toews.

Toews has a big problem because, last October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government passed a new law that took away the rights of judges to hand out two-for-one credit for time already served in jail before sentencing.

Two-for-one credit supposedly makes up for harsher conditions in remand and pre-sentence jails.
Eliminating the extra credit is part of the Conservative government’s crime agenda.

It’s part of an ideology based on the premise that putting more people in jail and keeping them locked up longer will make Canada a safer place. Increasing jail time by wiping out the double credit is one way to do it.

They have great lines, including the one about “truth in sentencing.”
It’s as if the judges haven’t been telling the truth when they give out two-for-one credits. But now they will have to tell the truth.

The opposition parties caved in on the vote, lest the Conservatives call an election and win a majority.
Now as the prisons start to fill up, Toews has to find spaces.

More bunks, not more jails, are Toews’ answers.
It will cost only $2 billion over five years, he says.

But he hasn’t provided a published report detailing the numbers, so he can’t say how he came up with his $2-billion figure. Maybe he has the same accountants who at one time put the cost of the Harper summits at only $179 million.

Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says Toews is way off. It’s going to cost at least $5 billion, he said last week.
The provinces will be paying another $5 billion more themselves for the increase in prisoners in their jails.

In Canada, convicts receiving sentences of less than two years serve them in provincial facilities. Those handed harsher punishments go to federal penitentiaries.

Page and Toews don’t agree. For his part, Page put out a 500-page report on the issue last week, the work of one-third of his staff for eight months.

Page estimates the new law wiping out double credit will add, on average, about half of a year to every sentence. He has the average sentence in federal prisons increasing to 722 days, up from 563 days currently.

Page says that works out to $1 billion a year for five years.
Page couldn’t care less about the ideology behind increasing jail time. That’s a political thing. He’s a bean counter, the best we have. He’s concerned that the public gets the right numbers.

That’s his job. Fudging figures to make government policies look more attractive is not his way of doing things.
The provinces are going to be hit harder than the federal government because “their head count” is twice as big, says Page.

Provinces get all the remand inmates and those jailed for less than two years. That works out to 260,000 inmates a year, compared to 8,500 for the federal institutions.
Toews put the issue delicately: “There will be some cost to the provinces.”

”Some cost” is right, about $5 billion over five years in extra costs, says Page.
Toews replied: “Costs will all be done within the fiscal framework.”
That’s a euphemism for saying the costs will be downloaded onto the provinces.

Toews explained the federal costs will be “taken out of future budgets.” That’s true, but he doesn’t point out that Harper already has a deficit this year.

Budgets are not the Conservative government’s strong suit. It took over four years ago with a $12-billion surplus and ran it into the ground. Once the hard times came, it racked up a $47-billion deficit.

Toews says the important thing is not to build new penitentiaries but to slip more bunks into existing institutions, especially those minimum-security facilities where the cells are nice and big.

Toews says he doesn’t have the detailed figures right now but when he does, he’ll be glad to make them public. The last figure given before Toews’ most recent $2-billion estimate was $90 million last fall. It seems to have gone up substantially.

“Just think about all the money saved by society when those criminals are incarcerated instead of being out on the street committing crimes,” Toews said.

Of course, that’s presuming that anybody let out is going to reoffend.

Conservatives' irrational crime laws make no sense and cost billions of dollars!

Conservatives' irrational crime laws make no sense, cost billions of dollars

In these days of public sector restraint, there is one realm of waste that is often neglected -the planned and pointless expenditure of billions of tax dollars on new provincial and federal prisons, the consequence of a series of Conservative crime bills.

Never mind that Canada already is a global leader in rates of incarceration, far ahead of almost all of the nation states of Western Europe -and, perhaps paradoxically, Canada typically has higher rates of crime.

The more interesting and relevant finding from recent research is that rates of imprisonment and rates of crime are not related in any systematic way, from one nation state to the next.

What is significant, however, is the relationship between confidence in the political and justice systems of a country and rates of imprisonment. Polls consistently demonstrate that nation states with the lowest rates of imprisonment also have citizens who have the highest levels of confidence in their political systems and their justice systems.

As one contemplates the lack of science in virtually every crime bill dutifully trotted out in Parliament by the Harper Conservatives, one is tempted to either laugh or cry.

It's easy to dismiss them as ideologically driven fools (and there is certainly a wealth of evidence in support of such a proposition), but I think we have a deeper problem -a fundamental lack of belief in the tenets of science.

Consider the recent legislative initiative regarding mandatory minimum sentences for any person who grows more than six marijuana plants.

Does it make sense to spend billions of our tax dollars putting the producers of a relatively benign mind-active drug in jail, at the same time that the executives of tobacco and alcohol companies are regarded as contributing corporate citizens?

Completely agree with this article. Imprisoning more people for longer periods will not reduce or prevent crime. In fact, it could increase crime rates as levels of violence within prisons will increase due to overcrowding, there will be less opportunities for rehabilitation and many offenders will be released with little assistance, support or guidance. Prisons are often the schools of crime and can have negative effects on non-violent, drug, property, addicted and mentally ill offenders. If the government is truly interested in reducing crime, they need to spend money on social programming which addresses the root causes and contributing factors to crime and on more prevention programs for at-risk youths, and reducing poverty, addictions and mental illnesses. 

Tough on crime laws are tough to swallow!

Tough on crime laws are tough to swallow

Canada has a $47-billion deficit, a crime rate that is falling steadily, and a public that is not clamouring for tougher crime laws. Yet in the face of little real need and even less available money, the Conservative government is planning to more than double the country's spending on prisons, to double the number of inmates.

The Conservatives' latest piece of get-tough-on-crime legislation, the Truth in Sentencing Act, will require about $1.8 billion over five years to build 13 more prisons, and then an additional $618 million a year for capital, operations, and maintenance costs, according to Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page's report last week. The act dispenses with two-for-one credit for time spent in pre-sentence custody.

Instead of using the report as a chance to rethink the wisdom of spending billions of dollars -as much as $9.5 billion by 2015-16 -Public Safety Minister Vic Toews rejected Page's figures, saying he "must be making this up."

But if Page has to rely on estimates, it's because he can't get access to accurate figures. In any case, Page's estimates should force Toews's hand. The minister must know what the real costs are, and should publish them in detailed, reliable form so they can be studied by everyone from Page to Joe and Joan Taxpayer. If Toews doesn't know what the real costs are, he has no business bringing in legislation that can force Canadian taxpayers to pay billions they might prefer to spend on health care and education.

Toews is the minister who first said the Truth in Sentencing Act would cost $90 million over the next two years -at the very most. Today, he admits $2 billion over five years is a more likely figure -double the $1-billion federal gun registry price tag. There's a big difference between Toews's original estimate and his revised one. And he's accusing Page of making things up?

The Truth in Sentencing Act is just the latest in an astonishingly long list of tough-on-crime laws introduced by the Harper government since it was first elected in 2006. As Le Devoir reported recently, the Conservatives have introduced 53 public security laws in the last 31/2 years. Only a dozen of these have been adopted, the rest dying on the order paper.

One effect of the new laws in general is to remove judges' discretion and, with it, the ability of the justice system to react appropriately to individual circumstances.

Excessive costs and negative results should be enough to send a government back to the drawing board. But the Harper government appears determined to continue talking up, and sometimes passing, "tough on crime" laws with few redeeming features.

Getting tough on crime is completely ineffective! It will not reduce or prevent crime and will not increase public safety in the long term. There will be more prison overcrowding with increased tensions, stress and levels of violence among inmates and staff, which leads to angry and bitter inmates being released with little assistance, support and guidance in the community. Prisons are quick fixes, but not long term solutions to crime. If the government is truly interested in reducing and preventing crime, they need to spend more money on prevention programs and community rehab programming, as opposed to incarcerating more people for longer periods. 

Fakers trash Tories? Please educate yourself Tom Brodbeck!

Fakers trash Tories

Did you ever notice how critics of the federal Conservatives’ “tough-on-crime” agenda rarely, if ever, go after other political parties who support the changes brought in by the Harper government?

Pro-criminal groups like the John Howard Society and their disciples consistently bash the federal Tories for their “misguided” and “knee-jerk” reactions to justice issues.

They accuse the federal Tories of trying to score cheap political points with the voting public by pandering to the lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key crowd.

Their attacks are usually quite visceral and personal.

But they’re almost never directed at the provincial governments — many of whom are NDP or Liberal administrations — who not only support the changes but who lobbied for them in the first place.

The latest onslaught from  the John Howard Society crowd has to do with the elimination of 2-for-1 pre-sentence credit.

The federal Tories have eliminated the double-time credit — which was judge-made law — and replaced it with 1-for-1 credit in most cases.

The objective of the change is to ensure criminals serve something close to the sentences they were given in court.

Critics of the move say it’s bad policy because it won’t reduce crime (it’s not meant to) and it will cost taxpayers more money.

But what’s interesting is their vitriol never seems to be directed at the provincial governments who are partly responsible for bringing it in. In Manitoba, for example, we have an NDP government that for years has been lobbying the federal government aggressively for a number of “tough-on-crime” changes including the 2-1 amendment.

In fact, the NDP in Manitoba has been a leader in demanding the elimination of 2-1 credit. They have been arguing for several years that 2-1 credit encourages criminals to delay their court cases because they know every day they stay in remand will count as two days at sentencing.

Which means some criminals are staying in the provincial jail system longer than necessary when they should be in a federal penitentiary. In those cases, the province is footing the bill for jail time instead of Ottawa.

It’s one of the many salient points Ottawa’s Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page missed in his latest report on the cost effects of this change.

Despite that, I don’t see the hug-a-thug critics going after politicians like NDP Justice Minister Andrew Swan.

Why not?

They love jumping all over big, bad federal Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

But they conveniently leave provincial Liberal and NDP governments alone, even though those administrations have contributed to and still support the changes.

Sure, it’s a federal law. But the administration of justice in Canada is a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments.

Ottawa enacts criminal law — often with advice from the provinces — and the provinces and the federal government jointly administrate it through policing, prosecutions, courts and corrections.

Which is why they often work together when making changes to the Criminal Code.

The truth is, most of the criticism of the federal Tories’ justice reform agenda has more to do with partisan politics than real policy debate. If it weren’t about partisan politics, the critics would be going after provincial NDP and Liberal governments just as much as they trash the federal Tories.

It’s pretty obvious.

The Conservatives are only implementing tough on crime policies that sound appealing and which cater to the uneducated or misinformed voters who only seek revenge. Getting tough on crime has proven in other countries to be an expensive failure. So what makes us think it will work here in Canada? All it does is get them votes. It is ineffective though in reducing and preventing crime. It will only imprison more people for longer periods, increase prison overcrowding, and levels of violence within prisons. It will disproportionately affect the marginalized groups, such as Aboriginals and non-violent drug offenders. It will not increase public safety. Longer sentences have been shown in research to increase the rates of re-offending. Why is the Harper government ignoring the research compiled by educated criminologists who study crime trends? Plus, why the need to get tough on crime when crime rates are currently decreasing and have been for the last 25 years? We are shifting from correctional policy based on rehabilitation to policies based on punishment and retribution, which is dangerous. Rehabilitation should always remain the prime focus, along with assistance and support in reintegration after serving a prison sentence. If the government is truly interested in reducing and preventing crime, they should be spending more money on crime prevention programs, and programs that address the root causes of crime.  

Harper's billion dollar crime agenda: More out of control spending

Harper's billion dollar crime agenda: more out of control spending

Ottawa – With the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirming today that just one of the Harper government’s crime bills will cost a fortune more than what the government claimed – and that provinces will have to pay for it – Liberals are calling for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to immediately provide his department’s estimates to Parliament so Canadians can see the truth.

“What else can we expect in the Conservative culture of deceit but a lack of cooperation and disclosure,” said Liberal Public Safety Critic Mark Holland. “The Conservatives talk about ‘truth in sentencing’ – well, how about some truth in accountability?”

“Instead of leaving Parliament in the dark, the government should have been up front with Canadians about the costs – and not just for this one bill, but their entire tough-on-crime agenda.  They need to come clean on the total cost – including to the provinces – and where they propose to get the money from.

“The costs cannot be dumped on taxpayers and the provinces.  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,” said Mr. Holland.

Bill C-25, the Truth in Sentencing Act, will cost $10-13 billion over five years, costing the federal government more than $1 billion a year to implement and maintain, plus an estimated $5-8 billion cost to the provinces over 5 years.  The Conservatives initially claimed the bill would cost a mere $90 million, but later revised that figure under pressure to $2 billion over 5 years.

“$90 million is only a fraction of the total cost, which could be as high as $2 billion annually,” said Mr. Holland. “The remainder of the bill for this government’s U.S.-style super-prison system will have to be picked up by the provinces and territories. And, as the PBO report points out, the government has no plans to supply transfer payments to assist them.”

Other highlights of the report include:

• The Harper government’s refusal to disclose their costing for this legislation, and their continued insistence that it is a ‘cabinet confidence,’ forced Parliament to vote on the bill blindly;

• There remain serious questions about what the government has set aside in the fiscal framework, whether or not the funds allocated will be sufficient, and if they even conducted a proper costing of this bill.

“If this is the cost of just one of their crime bills, I can’t even begin to imagine how much the 13 bills currently on the legislative agenda will cost taxpayers,” concluded Holland.

Contact:
Justine Villeneuve
Office of Mark Holland, M.P.
(613)769-9644

Exploding cost of Conservative crime bills, not justified

Exploding cost of crime bills not justified

In what's become a sorry habit with the Conservative government when its poorly considered policies bump up against embarrassing truths, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is attacking the messenger who reveals that the federal Truth in Sentencing Act is far, far costlier than initially projected.

If only there was a Truth of Budgeting Act, Mr. Toews wouldn't be taking Canada blundering down the same kind of ideological path that led to the creation of the Liberal gun registry boondoggle.

If only there was some principled leadership at the provincial Corrections and Public Safety ministry, Saskatchewan wouldn't be meekly going along, with minister Yogi Hughebaert going so far as to join his federal counterpart's disingenuous attack on parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page.

Mr. Page reported that the act could double the cost of the federal prison system to $9.5 billion a year by 2015-16 from the current $4.4 billion, along with shifting the provincial share of prison costs to 56 per cent by then, from the current 49 per cent.

Mr. Toews has already backtracked from his original claim that provisions of the Truth in Sentencing Act would cost a mere $90 million over the next two years, with Correctional Services Canada officials telling him that the tab actually would be $2 billion over five years.

But as Mr. Page notes in his report, CSC officials provided his office with limited information at the onset and then refused to meet with his staff while the report was being prepared. Consequently, says the parliamentary officer, his staff had to use educated estimates to produce their report, with their figures being on the conservative low side, if anything.

As to Mr. Toews's claim that Mr. Page must be "making this up" because CSC officials had met with the budget officer, the starkly contrasting records of the governing politicians and of Mr. Page on openness and transparency in conducting their affairs suggests where the credibility rests.

Mr. Toews would have been in a better position to criticize or question the budget officer's figures had his own officials been more forthcoming about their plans and projections, and had the federal budget or departmental estimates contained any actual cost estimates for the reforms projected under the new legislation.

When the federal minister says Mr. Page is wrong about the need to build new prisons to accommodate the greater numbers of inmates who will be serving longer sentences, because cells will be added to existing facilities instead, there's little to suggest how this will be accomplished.

Meanwhile, until facilities are expanded or built, the immediate impact will be to double or triple bunk prisoners in current cells, adding to the stress and danger of an already overcrowded prison system.

In Saskatchewan, for instance, where the impact of longer sentences and elimination of double-time credit will disproportionately impact aboriginal people, the average per prison cell already is 1.3 inmates. At one of the 11 prisons, there are 1.96 inmates per cell, another has 2.02 and a third, 2.06, according to the PBO's report.

To cram in more bodies seems a recipe for trouble.

It could well be the case that the federal government and provincial governments are completely on-side with public sentiment in seeking to eliminate such things as two-for-one credits for the time spent in remand by accused persons.

Ultimately, however, assessing the value of public policy has to be done in the context of delivering results for the money spent, and with ascertaining the opportunity costs in terms of other priorities that go unfunded as a result.

It's one thing for those such as Mr. Hughebaert to say, "We'll be there" if the prison costs balloon -- the PBO report suggests between $340 million and $560 million for construction capital, plus ongoing operating costs -- but at a time when crime statistics are declining, and health, education and social programs are jostling for scarce public resources, is expanding prison capacity the best use of our money?

High price for law and order

How can the Tories justify the cost of the Truth in Sentencing Act in light of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report?

I'm outraged that this report forecasts a cost of about $1 billion a year for the next five years to implement this legislation. How can this be justified as a spending priority while the government is posting record deficits and the recovery of the Canadian economy is the expressed mandate?

The Conservative's ideological law-and-order agenda cannot rationally top a long laundry list of essential service provision, such as health care and education, all of which require the investment of precious taxpayer dollars.

The cost of this legislation and the outlandish cost of security and planning for the G8/G20 demonstrates a gross mismanagement of the public purse.

Crime bill will cost dearly

The minority Conservatives like to talk about "getting tough on crime." But they are reluctant to reveal the bill or initiatives that might or might not improve public safety.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page filled in one of the blanks this week.

The government's Truth in Sentencing Act will mean more people in prisons for longer periods.

Page looked at the impact and concluded the cost to run federal and provincial jails will more than double, to $9.5 billion from $4.4 billion a year by 2015.

Provinces are responsible for inmates serving less than two years. B.C.'s jails are already overcrowded. Page estimates the provincial government will need to spend between $700 million and $1.1 billion to build new prisons. Operating costs would also rise.

Why would the government introduce a new law without understanding how much it would cost? (Public Safety Minister Vic Toews originally said the law would mean additional costs of less than $90 million over two years.)

And how much more will the Conservatives' other crime measures -- longer sentences, mandatory minimums and the rest -- cost taxpayers?

Getting tough on crime looks a lot like getting tough on taxpayers.

Eliminate double time credit for violent criminals only

New estimates of the cost of the Truth in Sentencing law, passed by the Conservatives earlier this year, show the realities of the lock-'em-up approach. Is the law aimed at the right people and will it generate the right results?

Now that we have a better idea of the costs, it's much less clear.

The law, which eliminates the two-for-one credit for jail time served before trial, is a tenet of the Conservatives' tough-on-crime campaign. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said his party supports the "idea that individuals should ... serve the time they've been sentenced to."

Fair enough. Many victims have been infuriated by sentencing that has allowed criminals to serve only a few months, or even weeks, after a conviction, despite a sentence that supposedly fits the crime.

The two-for-one credit was established on the principle that pre-trial time is harder because there is no access to rehabilitation programs and guilt has not been established -- as lawyer Eddie Greenspan called it, "dead time." But supporters of the law say most of those people are eventually convicted, so that time is deserved.

There are other issues. For example, allowing two for one encourages trial delays by the defence, but eliminating it is more likely to yield fewer guilty pleas, meaning more trial time and higher costs.

When the legislation was introduced, the Conservatives said it would cost $89 million a year, which was increased to $2 billion over five years.

But Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page's analysis shows that the overall costs to federal and provincial corrections could well rise to $9.5 billion from $4.4 billion by 2015, largely because more jails and more corrections employees will be needed. He notes these are guesstimates, because he says the feds didn't co-operate fully with his analysis.

The argument is that making criminals spend more time in jail makes society safer. Yes, but safer from what? The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, five times that of Canada and much higher than most other developed countries. Yet its violent crime rates are higher than Canada's, but our property crime rates are higher.

The higher U.S. violent crime rates can be attributed to the prevalence of guns. Property crimes are typically fuelled by poverty and drugs.

Eliminating the two-for-one credit feels right for Canadians, hence its political capital. But whether it actually makes Canadians safer, and whether it's worth the enormous expense, is dubious. This would be more effective if it were aimed just at violent criminals.

On Truth and $entencing

Budget officer sounds fiscal alarm on Tory sentencing law

Conservatives' tougher rules will cost Canadians billions, Kevin Page says; Toews questions estimates

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has put a price tag on the Tory's touger sentencing law, and it's a big one.
According to a dense report released by Mr. Page this morning, the Harper government’s Truth in Sentencing Act will cost Canadians an additional $5.1-billion by 2016, or about $1-billion a year over five years.
In 2009-10, corrections cost $4.4-billion; by 2016, the report projects, they will cost about $9.5-billion.
Mr. Page says the act will cost the federal government alone about $1.8-billion in new-facility construction costs, or an average of $363-million a year over five years. Provincial construction costs are projected to be even higher.
“It's a lot of money in a period of time we're generating deficits,” Mr. Page told a news conference Tuesday.
The act limiting the credit a judge can allow for time served will add about 159 days to inmates' average sentences, Mr. Page said, bringing their average time in federal custody to 722 days from 563.
Mr. Page's report says the number of inmates in federal prisons at any one time will increase to 17,058 from 13,304. That increase will require construction of 4,189 additional federal prison cells, he says.
And Mr. Page cautions that's only the federal tab.
“If you look at average head counts, they are twice as big in the provincial system — 26,000 every year versus 13,000 at the federal level,” he said.
“The provinces and the territories carry the weight of the correctional services system in Canada so the impact is going to be enormous on the provinces and territories.”
Mr. Page said he knew incarceration was expensive but, when it came to calculating the figures and the total costs, he said “you get to big numbers in a hurry. Originally, I was shocked how big it was.”
The bill, a cornerstone of the Tories' tough-on-crime agenda, became law in February. But the government has been criticized for launching its initiatives without carefully considering the costs.
Mr. Page, whose relationship with the Harper administration has been strained at best, said the government has been less-than-forthcoming in its estimates.
“One of the major concerns we have ... [is whether] sufficient funds [have been] been set aside in the fiscal framework, have we provided the full kind of transparency we need to parliamentarians?
“On the transparency side, the answer is no. The government has not been transparent and debate has been impaired as a result of that.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Correctional Services Canada did co-operate and because of that he doesn't understand Mr. Page's estimates, especially figures suggesting around a dozen new prisons could be required.
“If he wasn't getting any information from Correctional Services Canada, he must be making this up,” Mr. Toews told reporters.
Mr. Toews said he is sticking by his government's estimates that the program will cost approximately $2-billion over five years, which will include adding some new prison cells.
“I've seen nothing that would change my mind in that respect,” said Mr. Toews.
“Our goal is to protect Canadians, to keep streets safe. We want to keep dangerous repeat offenders off the streets and we are prepared to pay the cost in order to do that.”
Mark Holland, the Liberal MP who asked for the costing, said he was shocked by Mr. Page's findings.
“This figure for one bill is enormous, and we have to remember this is one bill,” Mr. Holland said. “When you start thinking about all of the other [crime] bills — 13 — this can crush Canada's budget, it can destroy and cannibalize the other departments.
“How are we going to afford our health care? How are we afford education? How are we going to afford our military if we have these failed Republican policies eating away at all the other departments?” 

On Truth and $entencing

The debate over the net costs of the government’s Truth in Sentencing bill is of the kind that makes me want to throw up my hands and whine “Aw, I don’t knowwwww…”. On the one hand, the Parliamentary Budget Office has presented an estimate of the costs that makes the bill seem demented. Kevin Page’s numbers don’t factor in the benefits of any potential deterrence effect; they admittedly rely, at many points, on wild assumptions; and they were assembled with the help of a lot of the sort of “independent” expert who sees prisons as inherently barbarous and would happily blow them all up if someone presented them with a big red button that would do it instantly. But as Page himself has pointed out, this is a fight between questionable evidence and no evidence. The government hasn’t really shown any good-faith sign of a serious effort to cost out the elimination of two-for-one credit for time in remand.
Penology, by and large, isn’t treated as a fundamental political issue in this country at all. We have a series of arguments over specific proposals; we don’t have explicit contending ideologies. Yet it’s discernible, surely, that those ideologies exist.
What we have, I think, is a group of citizens who believe that penology contains no moral component whatsoever. They are, or the most logical ones are, pure utilitarians who believe that punishment has no inherent place in a justice system. If we had a pill for perfect deterrence, one that could eliminate criminal tendencies with 100% effectiveness and no ill effects or pain, they would argue that the ethical thing to do would be to give it to all convicts, even serial murderers and child rapists, and turn them loose to reintegrate with society, preferably with their identities protected. And on the other side, we have the moralists, people who do believe in punishment even where it has no necessary utilitarian or deterrent value at all. They believe that the function of a criminal justice system is to provide justice, in the schoolyard, eye-for-an-eye sense of the term. These people would want prisons, and perhaps other miserable and dire punishments, even if we had a deterrence pill.
The camps don’t challenge each other ideologically very often. It goes unstated that the overwhelming majority of those who actually administer criminal sentencing don’t really believe in punishment—this is fairly obvious, for example, from their shiny-happy trade literature. And it goes unstated that people like Vic Toews are, in a sense, beyond evidentiary arguments like Page’s. Toews is pursuing “truth in sentencing” and applying the statutes of the land, which are based on an idea of punishment favoured by much of the citizenry (and by the framers and re-framers of our Criminal Code) but by few among the bureaucracy or the polite social elite. Toews’ bill may be stupid or insane, but his basic claim to be pursing an abandoned or betrayed “truth” is serious, and it is even half-supported by some critics, who agree that two-for-one remand credit is a substantially unlawful kludge.
I suppose a law-and-order conservative, somebody who has a moralist ideology when it comes to crime and punishment, can’t very well complain about the inspired passion for austerity displayed by critics of Truth in Sentencing. But when the Globe picked up its unsigned-editorial stick and gave Toews a broadly justified hiding with it on Wednesday, I wondered about the lede:

It is unfathomable that the Canadian government would be preparing to more than double annual spending on the country’s jails at a time when almost all other government departments are being held in check, or cut. Never mind deficit reduction. Never mind health care or education. Never mind the environment. Only one thing matters: to be seen as tough on crime.

When Canadian justice went on a liberalization binge between about 1965 and 1985, nobody thought it was necessary to provide an accurate accounting of every penny of the cost of the new measures. And while we’re on the subject, Page’s report notes, in passing, that the cost per individual federal inmate in our corrections system grew by about 50% in nominal dollars between 2001 and 2009. Where were the complaints about this extravagance, the demands that we be shown where the money was going? I must say it is funny how every newspaper columnist suddenly masters the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as soon as a Conservative government wants to “be seen as tough on crime”.
(And, frankly, I’m not sure why the “seen as” is in that sentence, since Truth in Sentencing really would lengthen criminal sentences for virtually everybody that is held in pre-trial custody and eventually convicted. Can it be argued that this is not genuine toughness on crime?)
Anti-moralist utilitarians betray their own cause when they fail to count the social costs or benefits of a change to criminal justice. Surely, according to either ideology, formal line items in the federal budget should really be marginal considerations compared to whether the measures in question lead to a safer society and less fear. For the moralists, of course, the bar is even higher: the measures must also be just in themselves. The utilitarians, for their part, have a pretty strong case that we need not consider morality or Old Testament-y justice at all.* (This is basically how the emergent field of law-and-economics approaches criminal justice.)
*But then again, you can’t be a half-utilitarian: it’s not fair to fake it because you’re concealing a specious, one-sided romantic concern for the welfare of criminals. If you are going to scream for efficient deterrence as the ultimate penological standard and insist on evidence, you must be prepared to be held to the judgment of the evidence even where it supports apparently unjust or objectionable procedures.
(In the U.S., for example, I would say a consensus is forming around the proposition that capital punishment might save a large, even double-digit number of potential murder victims for each execution; but there have, on statistical grounds, just not been enough executions since Gregg v. Georgia to warrant much confidence in the relevant interstate comparisons. In other words, the jury is still out until the sample grows. So what if the large deterrent effect is upheld over time? Will reality-based liberals in Canada circa 2060 A.D. acknowledge their forebears’ mistake and bring back the noose?)

Truth in sentencing must come with truth in spending...

Sentencing law could double prison costs

OTTAWA — The Conservative government’s tough-on-crime agenda is also tough on taxpayers, with the cost of running prisons potentially set to more than double, says Parliament’s spending watchdog.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page says the Truth in Sentencing Act could raise total prison costs to $9.5 billion a year in 2015-2016 from $4.4 billion this year. It could also require the construction of as many as a dozen new prisons.

With that kind of price tag, Page isn’t sure taxpayers can afford it.

"It’s a lot of money in a period of time we’re generating deficits," he said Tuesday after releasing his report into the costs of the Act.

The law — just one of the government’s anti-crime initiatives — limits the credit a judge can allow for time served. Page said it will add about 159 days to average sentences, bringing the average time in federal custody to 722 days from 563.

But the numbers are much higher in the provincial system.

"If you look at average head counts, they are twice as big in the provincial system — 26,000 every year versus 13,000 at the federal level," he said.

"The provinces and the territories carry the weight of the correctional services system in Canada so the impact is going to be enormous on the provinces and territories."

Page estimates the provincial share of prison costs will jump to 56 per cent in 2015-16 from 49 per cent this fiscal year.

The 2009-10 federal budget contained no mention of the new act, Page said, and it’s not clear whether Corrections Service Canada has budgeted for it either.

Page said the holes in their accounting and refusal to co-operate made it difficult for him to carry out the study, so he cautioned his numbers are conservative estimates.

The $1.8 billion to build new prisons, for example, could be eliminated if no new facilities are built and inmates are required to double- or triple-bunk.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said CSC did co-operate and because of that he doesn’t understand Page’s estimates, especially figures suggesting around a dozen new prisons could be required.

Truth in sentencing must come with truth in spending

The federal government has not adequately explained the additional costs that will result from its criminal-law bills.

It is unfathomable that the Canadian government would be preparing to more than double annual spending on the country’s jails at a time when almost all other government departments are being held in check, or cut. Never mind deficit reduction. Never mind health care or education. Never mind the environment. Only one thing matters: to be seen as tough on crime.
If the Truth in Sentencing Act costs what Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, thinks it will, the act is reckless and ridiculous. Mr. Page’s estimate is that the costs to run the federal and provincial jails, now at $4.4-billion a year, will rise to $9.5-billion by 2015-16. Sixty per cent of the extra costs, or $3.1-billion a year, would be borne by the provinces. And that’s just one of many crime bills.
If the government didn’t know what the new law would cost, its managerial incompetence is inexcusable. If, as is more likely, it knew but didn’t say, its stealth is unjustifiable. Why would Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been promoting government-wide restraint in the name of deficit control, allow jail budgets to go wild? Why would the government not tell the truth about the Truth in Sentencing Act?
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Mr. Page “must be making this up.” But where are his detailed projections? Initially, he said the new law would cost at most $90-million over the next two years. Now he says it will be $2-billion over five years. The crime legislation may make the billion dollars spent creating a federal gun registry look like petty cash by comparison.
If Mr. Page is wildly wrong, the government should blame itself. It provided limited information to Parliament, and Correctional Services Canada failed to meet with officials from Mr. Page’s office during his review. Mr. Page said he is not aware of the government’s estimates of the costs of the bill, or its methods for calculating those costs.
Are Canadians walking the streets in fear? Of course not. Crime is falling. Even if it were rising, an expenditure of billions annually to take away the near-automatic two-for-one credit for time served before trial wouldn’t make sense. The principle is sound (the routine double credit was too rich a bonus), but any good idea needs to be weighed against other good ideas, and the best idea, at this time, is not to spend new money unless that expenditure is vital. Even in a booming economy, though, such a massive jail expansion would be the wrong way to go. Truth in Sentencing needs to be accompanied by Truth in Budgeting.

Federal prison bill to cost a billion dollars a year: report
OTTAWA—A central piece of the tough-on-crime agenda championed by the Conservative government is going to cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars a year to roll out, says a report from the parliamentary budget watchdog.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released a scathing report Tuesday morning that examined the economic impact of implementing the Truth in Sentencing Act, which limits the amount of time inmates can get for time served while in custody awaiting a trial and verdict.
The report found the increased number of inmates the new legislation will deliver to federal correctional institutions — and the need to build new and bigger prisons to house them all — will cost an additional $618 million annually in operational and maintenance costs, and another $1.8 billion over five years in construction costs.
The report says changing the law will lengthen the average prison stay for an inmate by about 159 days, which would bring the total amount of time in physical custody from 563 days to just under two years.
Longer stays mean there will be an average of 17,058 inmates at any given time compared to an average head count of 13,304 inmates in fiscal 2007/2008, which is the year Page used as a baseline for his study.
The report estimates that would require an additional 4,189 cells, which means an average of $363 million annually over the next five years to expand existing facilities and build new ones.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews disputed the figures, standing by his earlier claim that officials at Correctional Services Canada told him the initiative would cost $2 billion over five years — which is nonetheless higher than the $90 million price tag he originally disclosed.
Toews also said the federal government had no plans to build new facilities but would construct new cells inside existing buildings.
Page said he received no significant co-operation from Correctional Services Canada since he began looking into the impact of a suite of Conservative law-and-order bills at the request of Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) last October.
“There was just no disclosure and I think as a legislative budget officer we want to make sure that we don’t let these things slip by that can generate significant cost pressures going forward,” said Page, who used a probabilistic study and numbers from 2007/08 because the government did not share its methodology.
Page also noted that provinces and territories are expected to have to shell out another $5 billion to $8 billion over the next half decade to handle the increased inflow.
“If we’re changing the Criminal Code, it’s not just for the federal government,” Page said. “It actually has a huge operational and cost impact on the provinces and territories.”
Laura Blondeau, a spokeswoman for Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Rick Bartolucci, said he looks forward to reviewing the report but does not want his province to pick up the tab for a federally led initiative.
Holland called on the government to come forward with the numbers for the rest of its crime and punishment bills for Page to examine and feared the final result would be astronomical.
“If all of them are implemented, this will bankrupt Canada,” Holland said. “We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars at a time when we’re already running a $50 billion deficit.
“We’d have to cannibalize the health, education, military departments just to pay for all these new prisons and what is so offensive about it is that it was tried in the United States, it was tried in the United Kingdom and these policies were a complete failure.”