Lock ’em up, but where?

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This article was published 24/10/2009 (6085 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A heavily armed tactical unit took four hours to quell a riot at the Brandon Correctional Centre earlier this month.

More than two dozen prisoners took part.

The riot came just a few weeks after inmates at Milner Ridge Correctional Centre caused a furor when they began damaging their cells.

Last January, more than 100 prisoners rioted at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, injuring six inmates.

These may seem like isolated incidents, but the tinderbox that is Canada’s prison system grows more flammable day after day, says Ken Crawford, the corrections representative with the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union.

Prisons are bursting at the seams, more inmates have mental illnesses, segregating gang members gets tougher and inmates can’t access the programs they need for rehabilitation. That all adds up to an unhealthy, unstable prison environment.

And the Harper government, critics say, is about to throw fuel on the fire with new federal crime bills that will send more people to jail for longer periods of time.

A bill eliminating the use of two-for-one credit for time served before conviction received royal assent this week. Bills that impose mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving drugs, guns, trafficking of children and financial swindling are all making their way through Parliament.

"When you look at the whole package, all of the reforms tend, in one way or another, to rely on incarceration as a response," said Howard Sapers, the chief prison watchdog at the federal Office of the Correctional Investigator.

Neither the provincial nor federal government has said how many more prisoners there will be. But Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society, said the Correctional Service of Canada estimates eliminating the two-for-one credit alone will move another 3,000 men and about 300 women into the nation’s jails.

There’s some debate over whether the bills will shift prisoners to federal jails from provincial jails as they are sentenced to terms longer than two years. Some say the province’s overcrowding stems from remand prisoners, who make up almost three out of every four people in provincial jail.

Under that rationale, eliminating two-for-one will likely cut down those numbers because there will be no incentive to delay trial.

Under the two-for-one credit rule, more time in remand meant less time in jail.

But Crawford said that is unrealistic because prisoners are held in remand for reasons beyond delaying their trials, including shortages of prosecutors and judges and serious backlogs in the courts. He believes the effect will be to increase the number of prisoners overall because remand prisoners will stay the same length of time and more people will serve lengthy jail sentences after remand.

All of this comes after a period of significant growth in prison populations. The average number of people behind bars any given day rose by 14.4 per cent, or 36,329 inmates, between 2003 and 2007, according to Statistics Canada.

 

In Manitoba, the average number of adult and youth inmates jumped 26.7 per cent, to 1,810.8 in 2007 from 1,429 in 2003. Manitoba’s rate of incarceration, the number of people in prison per 100,000 population, was 171.6 in 2007, second only to Saskatchewan at 180.7.

The national incarceration rate was about 116 in 2008.

 

As of Tuesday, Oct. 20, there were 2,158 inmates in Manitoba’s seven adult and five youth facilities. They are designed to hold only 1,662.

All but one of the seven adult jails is far over capacity. Milner Ridge was right on the button.

At the Brandon Correctional Centre, inmates are housed in the jail’s gym. Most jails have prisoners two, three, sometimes even four to a cell.

The United Nations standard is to only have one prisoner per cell.

Sapers said the situation in federal prisons is just as bad, particularly at the medium security prisons where most inmates spend most of their sentences.

He said about 10 per cent of inmates in medium security jails now live two to a cell, known as double bunking.

However Manitoba’s two federal institutions are currently under-populated. Stony Mountain had 507 inmates last week and room for 546. Rockwood, the minimum security jail, had 105 and room for 167.

Manitoba Justice Minister Dave Chomiak said he is well-aware of the problem and that the new crime bills will add to it.

He said justice ministers across Canada focused first on getting the new laws in place to improve public confidence in the justice system.

Now their focus will shift to housing all the inmates properly.

"We all said there were going to be financial implications," he said.

When justice ministers meet in Fredericton Oct. 28 and 29 for their annual meeting, he said, they plan to ask Ottawa for money to build more cells.

"I guarantee there will be an ask," said Chomiak.

Federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has hiked the federal budget for prison building by 58 per cent over the next few years. Between 2005 and 2009, Ottawa budgeted $431.2 million for prison infrastructure. Between 2010 and 2013, it plans to spend $683 million.

Officials have made it clear the money is to be spent on federal institutions but have not released details. Adding portable jail cells is an option, a possibility Chomiak is also considering for provincial jails.

Manitoba justice critic Kelvin Goertzen said building a jail for men would be the best move for Manitoba, a position MGEU supports.

Chomiak said he’d rather spend the money on a hospital or nursing home than on a jail, but everything is an option at this point.

"We are meeting with the union to talk about the needs and requirements," he said.

Manitoba has already added 150 new beds at Milner Ridge and will add 80 to Brandon Correctional Centre by the end of 2010. Another 150 are planned for Milner Ridge.

A new 100-bed women’s prison being built to replace the aging Portage Correctional Centre will be finished in 2011.

But Crawford said even if all those new beds were available today, the prisons would still be overcrowded.

A spokesman for Van Loan would not divulge any details of the federal prison building plan except to say plans are unfolding well as they eliminate the two-for-one credit.

"The commissioner of the Correctional Services of Canada has advised the minister that space is adequate to accommodate the added demands imposed by this bill," Christopher McCluksey said in a written statement.

Sapers said he’d rather see the money spent to improve conditions in jails, get rid of double bunking and ensure prisoners can access the programming and health care they need. He said overcrowding in jails is exacerbated by the increase in inmates with mental illnesses and gang affiliations, which makes managing prisons far more difficult.

More than one in six men in prison and more than one in five women had a diagnosed mental illness in 2006, according to Statistics Canada. In 1997, that was one in 14 men and one in about eight women.

The same study showed 16 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women in federal custody had known gang affiliations, up from 12 per cent of men and seven per cent of women in 1997.

Sapers also said most inmates are not receiving the programming they need for rehabilitation.

There were 13,353 men and women in Canada’s 58 federal prison facilities in May this year, but just 3,190 of them were assigned to correctional programs.

Without programs, prisoners are unlikely to be granted parole and too often are released into the community without being rehabilitated and without much post-prison monitoring.

Sapers said most prisoners in Canada will eventually be released, and the way to keep communities safe is to rehabilitate people while they’re in prison.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

 

 

Manitoba prisons/capacity

Number of provincial jails: 12

Total capacity available: 1,662

Actual number of prisoners in provincial jails: 2,158

Number of prisoners in provincial jails on remand: 1,554 (72 per cent)

Number of prisoners serving sentences in provincial jails: 604

 

ADULT FACILITIES

Figures as of 7:30 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20

Brandon Correctional Centre

Capacity: 164

Actual number of prisoners: 229

Dauphin Correctional Centre

Capacity: 61

Actual number of prisoners: 68

Headingley Correctional Centre

Capacity: 485

Actual number of prisoners: 719

Milner Ridge Correctional Centre

Capacity: 284

Actual number of prisoners: 284

Portage Correctional Centre (Women)

Capacity: 35

Actual number of prisoners: 59

The Pas Correctional Centre

Capacity: 74

Actual number of prisoners: 114

Winnipeg Remand Centre

Capacity: 289

Actual number of prisoners: 416

 

YOUTH FACILITIES

Agassiz Youth Centre

Capacity: 100

Actual number of prisoners: 73

Brandon Youth Unit

Capacity: 6

Actual number of prisoners: 5

Lakewood Youth Unit

Capacity: 10

Actual number of prisoners: 0 

Manitoba Youth Centre

Capacity: 150

Actual number of prisoners: 189

The Pas Youth Unit

Capacity: 4

Actual number of prisoners: 2

— Manitoba Justice

 

Federal prisons in Manitoba

Stony Mountain Penitentiary (medium security)

Capacity: 546

Actual number of prisoners: 507

Rockwood Institution (minimum security)

Capacity: 167

Actual number of prisoners: 105

Provincial incarceration rates

Number of adult prisoners in provincial jails per 100,000 adults, 2007

Saskatchewan 180.7

Manitoba 171.6

Alberta 99.6

PEI 98.1

Ontario 87.6

British Columbia 75.7

Quebec 71.9

Newfoundland 68.4

New Brunswick 64.9

Nova Scotia 56.5

– Statistics Canada

 

Global prison incarceration rates

2008, per 100,000 adults

U.S. 756

Russia 629

England 153

Brazil 227

Canada 116

France 96

Germany 89

Norway 69

Japan 63

— International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College, England