……is not a CORRECTIONAL SERVICE!

For prison guards, job security means having prisoners to guard. No prisoners, no guards. Reduce the number of prisoners, reduce the number of guards. Job security is a concern everywhere, and so it is with employees in federal and provincial institutions and the agencies that oversee them.

The federal Corrections and Conditional Release Act stipulates in Section 3.1 that, “The protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Service in the corrections process.” With the mandate and mission federal/provincial/territorial agencies have to return offenders safely to the community as contributing law-abiding citizens, Correctional Service of Canada and its provincial and territorial counterparts’ first responsibility is to make prisons redundant…..and every employee’s primary directive is to put themselves out of a job.

So why aren’t prison populations dropping in Canada? We’ve written earlier that the Dutch had closed prisons. The Washington Post reported in the summer of 2016 that the Netherlands shut 19 prisons in 2013 alone, with five more likely to close. The paper also referenced Sweden’s falling prison population, some prisons were shuttered, and an “expert who spoke to the Guardian in 2013 suggested that the humane and comfortable nature of Swedish prisons had led to a better chance of rehabilitation for prisoners.”

Again, why are there not fewer prisoners here? Federal and provincial institutions must accept who the courts send them. As a start, it is the courts and the judiciary who can best inform and educate the provincial and federal attorneys general to the benefits of alternatives to incarceration. In the meantime, our politicians seem content to allow interests with regressive agendas to lead them by the nose. No matter, the agencies that operate our prisons have both an obligation to reduce inmate numbers and the resources and authority to make that happen.

What our institutions do with men and women in their custody defines the difference between a prison industry and a correctional service. Progressive programming prioritizing the best of medical and social sciences supports positive outcomes. But, when a ‘prison population maintenance initiative’ becomes the go-to plan to satisfy employee interests for the future of their jobs, correctional services are sacrificed to corporate sustainability and stability.

A closer peek under this rock coming up next………

“Any system that allows us to turn a blind eye to hopelessness and despair, that’s not a justice system, it is an injustice system.” Barack Obama