harper tries to sneak through american style prisons

Tory plans for U.S.-style prisons slammed in report
Last Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009 | 7:58 AM ET Comments2Recommend13
CBC News
The Conservative government plans to bring in an American-style prison system that will cost billions of taxpayer dollars and do little to improve public safety, according to a report to be released Thursday in Ottawa.

The 235-page report, A Flawed Compass, is a scathing review of the government's plan, which it calls "immoral, unethical and illegal."

University of British Columbia law professor Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart, who recently retired after decades as head of the John Howard Society of Canada, prepared the report.

A panel led by Rob Sampson, a former corrections minister in Ontario's Mike Harris government, drafted the government plan, which is being implemented by the Correctional Service.

In addition to constructing super prisons and implementing work programs, the program will eliminate gradual release and deny inmates rights that are now entrenched in the constitution.

By stressing punishment rather than rehabilitation, the plan ignores lessons of the past, which led to the prison riots and killings that dominated Canadian news in the early 1970s, said Jackson.

"My greatest fear is with this road map's agenda and its underlying philosophy, we will enter a new period of turmoil and violence in Canadian prisons," he said.

"I do fear that prisons will become more abusive, prisoners will become more frustrated and that we could go back to a time not only when the rule of law was absent but a culture of violence is the dominant way in which prisoners express their frustrations."

The plan attempts to emulate the American "get tough" system, which incarcerated hundreds of thousands of people and has left some states on the verge of bankruptcy, said Stewart.

He called the plan "an ideological rant. All their recommendations are just that they believe in something.… There's no evidence for anything they recommend, there's no research, no background."

The federal road map flies in the face of the Correctional Service's own research of what works to rehabilitate prisoners and ensure community safety, said Stewart.

"The fact is that you cannot hurt a person and make them into a good citizen at the same time."

The government has already allocated hundreds of millions to the plan, even though it has had no input from either Parliament or the public, according to the report.