During the 1980s, we saw many news items out of the United States around judges dismissing criminal charges on the grounds of human and constitutional rights violations. Many of these cases before the courts involved serious charges carrying substantial penalties. The din grew louder as media attention focused on what seemed an increasing number of incidents where potentially guilty parties walked free. However, one retired American judge whose credentials I failed to note at the time pointed out that if all concerned with the pursuit of justice, in particular police officers and prosecuting attorneys, did their jobs properly then these circumstances would not arise as frequently.
Perhaps the American ‘tough on crime’ impetus into the 1990s was in part a backlash to what were often seen as miscarriages. Federal and state governments became intent on correcting flaws in a system that too often appeared to favour the guilty. Prison populations grew, new facilities were built, and some jurisdictions privatized their penal systems; California passed its three strikes law in 1994.
Eventually, the United States had the distinction of having 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.
With a new century came an awareness in the U.S. that this lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality didn’t measure up, and was quite probably doing more harm than good. What was going to happen to all the ex-cons after their release back into the community? Doug Sanders’ January 24, 2004 article in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, “600,000 ex-cons add up to a U.S. headache”, referenced President George Bush’s January 20 State of the Union Address where he remarked on the challenges facing U.S. society by moving that many ex-offenders back onto the streets in just 2004.
With time, governments realized the mounting costs were not offset by measurable benefits. One spokesperson for a southern U.S. State suggested a few years ago that it might be confronting a choice between financing prisons and paying for schools. Still later, California began quietly releasing some prisoners to reduce crowding, and the financial liability on the public purse.
The Washington Post published statistics in September of this year referencing America’s emptying prisons, noting the U.S. federal prison population dropped this year – the first time in decades the number of people behind bars had shrunk. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder highlighted the decline as a breakthrough for criminal justice reform.
The newspaper listed a number of indicators:
The cost of incarceration in the United States is 2010 was $80 billions of dollars.
Growth in the number of prisoners since 1980 was 800%, while the general U.S. population increased by about 33%.
The prison population had declined by 4800 at the end of fiscal 2014, to about 215,000 federal inmates.
The last decline in prison numbers was in 1980.
A further decline of 10,000 prisoners was expected in fiscal 2016, the equivalent of six full federal prisons.
Is it any wonder so many American law makers looked askance at Canada when the current federal government here launched its own tough on crime agenda. Why would we do something that had been tried and failed elsewhere? And not just from the United States are we hearing this. Legislators and law enforcement in Great Britain and Australia echoed the Americans. Others, like the Swedes, were more diplomatic when speaking of their own policies.
Canada’s prison population began to climb in 2007 in spite of falling crime rates. Why do intelligent men and women follow a course they know will meet with failure, and which will be costly to the fabric of our society, financially and socially? Further, these same intelligent men and women continue to ignore what they have before them, pushing forward a program contrary to good governance. Not only that, intent on squeezing budget surpluses out of limited revenue at the expense of programming and oversight, we can look forward to a surfeit of ex-offenders ill prepared to reintegrate successfully into our communities.
Why would intelligent men and women do this? Well, here’s a thought. This has nothing to do with safer communities, restorative justice, social order, or right and wrong. Rather, let’s look at this as pandering to an uninformed and mean-spirited support base by pillorying an easy target.
Thanks to Mssrs. Harper, et al, we’ll pay dearly for this.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator is mandated under Part III of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to serve as an Ombudsman for federal offenders. Perhaps as long as two years ago, the OCI reported that a prison term, particularly a lengthy prison term, could knock ten years off the life of an offender. CSC’s own resources tend to support this. Lifestyle plays a role of course, but so too does the availability and delivery of health care within federal institutions.
Referring again to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, Chapter 86, Section (1), The Service shall provide every inmate with, (a) essential health care, and, (b) reasonable access to non-essential mental health care that will contribute to the inmate’s rehabilitation and successful reintegration into the community. Also, Section (2), The provision of health care under SubSection (1) shall conform to professionally accepted standards.
In addition, Correctional Service of Canada’s Commissioner’s Directive 800 – Health Services, provides specifics which on paper do meet CSC’s argument that federal inmates receive the same levels of care as the rest of us, although there are exceptions such as dental care where what’s approved matches services available to persons in the community living on social assistance. Two of the big BUT’s are that delivery is uneven and inconsistent across the Service, and inmates must access health care personnel via non-health care staff members.
To cite only a couple of examples from Brennan Guigue’s (Rahim) own experience, many years ago he put in a request to see the dentist at Kingston Penitentiary. This wasn’t an emergency but he had concerns that needed an examination. It was seven months until he was in that dentist’s chair. Later, at Cowansville Institution in Quebec, he was taken to the local hospital for an x-ray of a shoulder on January 9 of 2014. The x-ray had been ordered by a doctor at Port-Cartier Institution in September of 2012. That’s not a typo…..2012! The injury had occurred months earlier, but his complaints had been ignored. This is a typical response, perhaps systemic, and can be attributed to any number of reasons like liability issues, budget factors (health care is a budget line item subject to performance bonus considerations), or explanations best left to speculation.
In any case, and understandably, the results of that x-ray wouldn’t be available to him until he saw the Cowansville Institution’s doctor. He’d asked for an appointment when he first arrived there in December of 2013, but that appointment was set for April…..as long as he wasn’t transferred to yet another prison.
An inmate in western Canada with whom I’ve corresponded discovered a lump is his groin in the fall of 2012. He was in pain and his requests for help were ignored. By January of 2013, he had his lawyer call the director/warden of his institution to persuade the system to act. It was cancer, he had surgery, but the delay puts him at risk for further tumors. As well, he had to initiate a court action in order to get proper pain relief.
Yet another inmate I’ve had contact with was asking for counseling as part of his preparation for reintegration into the community. He was turned down in more than one institution. He was released on parole and sent to one of the CCC (Community Correctional Centre) half-way houses which are operated by CSC in a number of cities. While there, the staff suggested he needed counseling, and set up a date weeks down the road, but the parolee was returned to prison for a minor infraction before the process could begin. He asked again for counseling while in custody, and again was told he didn’t need it. When his parole was reinstated to the same CCC half-way house, the staff there once more set up a far off date for counseling because, according to them, it was a necessary part of his reintroduction to the community. Once more, he was sent back to prison for a minor parole infraction, and once more he was told that he didn’t need counseling.
So, how does something like this happen? Well, consider that this counseling is covered under the provincial health care system when the inmate is in the half-way house, but CSC pays when that same person is in an institution. Confusing? Well, yes, if someone is trying to get on the right course, and after all, CSC is charged under the CCRA with helping offenders reintegrate.
The pressure on the prison health care system is about to get considerably worse. A disproportionately high number of prisoners are HIV+ or are infected with Hep C, or both. As expensive as the HIV anti-retrovirals are, there are a number of effective new drugs either available or awaiting approval to treat Hep C, and these can cost many tens of thousands of dollars. CSC will be squeezed by requests for treatment on the one hand, and calls for fiscal restraint on the other.
The bottom line here is simple. The next time you hear about prison inmates being treated to free and extensive health care, don’t be too quick to sign up. It could cost you your life!