Prison expansions boom to meet flood of inmates

By: Janice Tibbetts, National Post

 

OTTAWA — Prison expansion to make room for an expected inmate influx is moving ahead in Canada, with the federal government rolling out plans in recent days to spend $105-million on new cells at three prisons in Western Canada and one in Nova Scotia as part of a major building spree in the next few years.

 

The announcement of 600 new beds is the first stage of an expansive plan to build 2,700 new spots within three years to accommodate a projected 25% increase in prisoners being jailed as a result of Conservatives’ tough-on-crime legislation, which is expected to put more people in jail and keep them there longer.

 

“We knew this was going to happen. The writing was on the wall,” said Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society, a prisoner-rights group.

 

There are currently almost 14,000 federal prisoners serving sentences of two years or more in 57 federal penitentiaries.

 

Correctional Service of Canada spokeswoman Melissa Hart said the service anticipates a 3,400 increase in prisoners over the next three years as a result of one piece of legislation alone — the Truth in Sentencing Act.

 

The new law, which took effect in February, ends two-for-one sentencing credits for time already served in custody.

 

“There will be an increase in shared cell accommodation and the addition of over 2,700 spaces across our penitentiaries over the next three years to handle this population growth,” she said in an email, confirming numbers released last spring by Don Head, the commissioner of corrections.

 

Head also said in a June news release that the service is “working on a long-term plan that takes into account the need to replace some penitentiaries that have stood the test of time for many decades and no longer meet the requirements of a modern correctional system.”

 

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, in a report the same month, estimated the Truth in Sentencing Act would add 4,000 new prisoners to the system over five years.

 

Other Tory promises that would increase the number of federal prisoners include imposing mandatory incarceration for drug-related crimes, curtailing the use of conditional sentences, and ending automatic statutory release after serving two-thirds of a sentence. Their impact on the prison system has not been released.

 

The government, which is expected to roll out further plans for prison expansion in the coming months, also will not publicly divulge which prisons will be overhauled.

 

The Kingston-Whig Standard, however, recently published a list of 35 prisons that are on board for retrofits.

 

The prison service also plans to double-bunk more offenders to cope with the increase in offenders, a practice that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has said is legal, constitutional and “not a big deal.”

 

Mr. Jones said he fears that double bunking prisoners will explode in the next couple of years because the new cells will not be ready to house new offenders already entering the system.

 

“What concerns us is that it takes time to build and that the expansion of the population is going to run ahead of the construction,” said Mr. Jones. “When you crowd, you amplify the kind of problems that are associated with capacity, and we already have serious problems dealing with mental illness and self-harm, so as we get tighter in those confined conditions, concerns are always paramount.”

 

Ottawa doctoral candidate Justin Piche, a strong critic of federal prison policy to incarcerate more offenders, said that Canadians deserve answers on which prisons will be expanded, to ensure that the government is not engaging in “penal patronage” by building in Conservative ridings.

 

Piche noted that two of the four prisons announced for expansion — Springhill in Nova Scotia and Drumheller in Alberta — are 43 years old and he questioned why the government would overhaul the rusting facilities instead of putting its money into newer institutions.

 

A government-sponsored task force, in a 2007 report on the future of the prison system, recommended the government should shut down old prisons and build new ones.

 

Mr. Hart said that “construction will take place at institutions in locations where we expect the greatest increases in offender population.”

 

Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced two weeks ago that the building boom will kick off by adding 192 new spots by 2012 to the medium-security Springhill Institution, which currently houses 400 offenders.

 

At the other end of the country, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day announced this week that government will break ground on a new $15-million unit on the prison grounds of Mission Institution in British Columbia.

 

In Alberta, Conservative MPKevin Sorenson outlined plans to add 100 new beds at Drumheller Institution and another 100 at Bowden Institution, at a total cost of $50-million.

 

Government spending estimates, released earlier this year, show the prison system’s tab for capital expenditures this fiscal year will increase 43 per cent over last year, to $329.4-million.