Pubdate: Fri, 14 Dec 2007
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Author: Michael Harris
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

IT'S TIME TO FIX PRISONS

"Life inside Canadian penitentiaries should mirror Canadian society, 
and the core concept should be the same: Earn your own way."

With these words, yesterday's report by Rob Sampson on Canada's 
federal prison system sets the stage for the first meaningful reform 
of a public institution that has lost its way.

 From the day in the early 1970s when Liberal solicitor general Jean 
Paul Goyer announced that the rehabilitation of prisoners rather than 
the safety of the public would be the key mission of the Correctional 
Service of Canada (CSC), the inmates began to run the show.

That change in the corporate culture of CSC ushered in what we have 
today -- a prison system awash in drugs, devoid of discipline, where 
guards are abused and prisoners rarely rehabilitated.

Sampson recommends that we begin prison reform at the root -- by 
amending the legislation under which CSC conducts its business. He 
and his panel want to redraft the Corrections and Conditional Release 
Act (CCRA), to include a new section defining inmates' 
responsibilities while in prison. That is tremendously important.

The current legislation, passed in 1992, is prescriptive about what 
we must do for inmates. The proposed changes to the CCRA would be 
clear about inmate accountability. The panellists felt that the 
CCRA's existing principles "do not meet current and future 
challenges" facing the prison system and they are right.

Based on this crucial retooling of the CCRA, Sampson is recommending 
some basic changes in how CSC does its business. Statutory release, 
the practice of automatically paroling inmates after they have served 
two-thirds of their sentence, should end. So should accelerated 
parole review, the practice of releasing certain inmates after they 
serve one-sixth of their sentence.

In keeping with the principle of prisoner accountability, which 
should be added to the CCRA, inmates will have to earn their parole.

To help inmates, 70% of whom have no meaningful work history or 
education, Sampson is recommending work programs inside the prison.

The Sampson panel also wants CSC to eliminate drugs from Canada's 
prisons. As it is, 70% of federal inmates regularly use drugs and 
CSC's "zero tolerance" of drugs is purely rhetorical.

Since substance abuse is part of the criminogenic profile of the vast 
majority of federal inmates, looking the other way on drug use inside 
our prisons is equal to allowing criminal lifestyles to continue. 
That's why the Sampson panel wants to use technology, more drug 
detector dogs, thorough personal searches, and better perimeter 
security to keep the drugs out. If all else fails, and the drugs keep 
showing up inside, Sampson is recommending non-contact visits. That 
is a long overdue recognition of the fact that most drugs that come 
into federal prisoners are walked in through the front door by visitors.

So here is where we are: The Harper government has the chance to make 
prisoners as accountable for their actions while in prison as the 
current legislation details the system's duties to inmates. The 
government has a chance to give work skills to inmates who currently 
enjoy three-hour work days and all too often leave prison with no 
skills to sell. The government has a chance to protect the public by 
making parole discretionary and earned instead of automatic. Finally, 
the government has a chance to rid federal prisoners of access to an 
illicit product that is crippling them -- drugs.

It's a long way from porn and pizza parties. Could we be too far from 
that kind of prison system?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom