Anyone interested in curling up with a bit of horror reading this autumn need not shell out money for the latest Stephen King offering.
Simply settle in with the blood-chilling and horror-inducing 2009-10 report from Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator of Canada.
And it’s available free at www.oci-bec.gc.ca/rpt/index-eng.aspx.
This is not a fictional nightmare created out of a novelist’s imagination. It is a real-life nightmare being created by our government.
Read Also
Carberry field day looks for agriculture solutions
Manitoba farmers explored research solutions for resilient crops, perpetual agronomic issues and new kinds of agricultural products at a field day at the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre in Carberry on Aug. 6.
The closing of prison farms across Canada plays a bit part in this saga.
To set the scene, and not to put words in his mouth, this is a report about the consequences of a government obsessed with crime, obsessed with convincing Canadians that crime is on the rise (it is falling, in most categories) and that there is a criminal behind every bush.
Maybe the Conservatives are reacting to their crime-obsessed constituents but it is not a reality where most of us live.
The Conservative parliamentary agenda is full of legislation aimed at cracking down on criminals, creating more criminals, on getting more of them into jails, expanding the list of crimes and making sure criminals are not seen as coddled.
Plans are afoot to spend billions on new jails and some critics suspect prison farms are being closed to free up land for more prisons.
The result is that many more Canadians are being caged in ancient prisons in overcrowded cells with little rehabilitation, skills training or preparation for when they get out.
Most will get out and they will be in worse shape, angrier and less prepared to cope in the economy than they were when they went in.
Enter Sapers with his professional critique.
“As a society, we are criminalizing, incarcerating and warehousing the mentally disordered in large and alarming numbers,” he wrote.
Costs of incarceration (more than $100,000 per prisoner annually) are enormous and many are crammed double or triple into cells designed for one. Rehabilitation programs are underfunded and often inadequate.
Cancellation of the prison farm program ends one more skills teaching venue, said Sapers. While Conservatives have mocked the farm skills taught as no longer relevant, he said they taught discipline, punctuality and “pride of completing an honest day’s work.”
But beyond that, the throw-the-bums–in-jail government agenda is creating a population of angry, ready-for-trouble inmates ultimately destined for the streets.
Sapers warned the government it is approaching “an important juncture in Canadian correctional history” – dealing with more inmates, crowded prisons, inadequate education or vocational training, growing numbers of mentally disturbed and aboriginal prisoners.
Yet the government response seems to be: create more crimes, build more prisons.
It will increase taxpayer costs and do little to make Canadians safer in the long run.
A justice system based on vengeance contains the seeds of its own mayhem.
Sapers’ report offers a homegrown Canadian horror story in the making.
