The battle may be lost, but the war is not over as far as Dianne Dowling is concerned.
About 18 months ago, Dowling and the group Save Our Prison Farms embarked on a national campaign to keep Canada’s six prison farms from being phased out.
That campaign, which was backed by writer Margaret Atwood, culminated with two days of major protests at Frontenac Institution in Kingston, Ontario, when hundreds of demonstrators showed up to protest the removal of 300 cattle from the century-old prison farm.
A peaceful blockade by protesters prevented cattle trucks from entering the institution on Sunday, Aug. 8. But after 24 arrests and a massive police presence, the cattle were successfully shipped out the following day and sent for auction.
Aside from an abattoir at Pittsburgh Institution in Kingston which will continue operating, Canada’s prison farms are now all but closed. The government said the farms were losing $4 million annually, and plans to replace them with programs it says are more effective.
Speaking at a recent luncheon in Toronto, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the farms were outdated.
“Of prisoners who actually work on these prison farms, less than one percent of them actually find work in an agricultural setting.”
Toews said it’s important to ensure prisoners get skills that will help them find a job when they get out of prison.
“That is the focus,” he said, adding that the skills being taught on prison farms are not useful in the broader employment environment.
“I believe that is not a productive use of government money or, more importantly, it is not a productive use of the convicts who are incarcerated for a period of time.”
The government needs to provide job skills that could help prisoners re-integrate into society upon their release in “a wholesome fashion,” he said.
Dowling however, maintains the farms were shut down to make way for U.S.-style privatization of Canada’s prisons as part of the government’s plan to reform the prison system, and says the campaign will now focus on that issue.
“The campaign turns to talking about the Conservative government’s broader prison agenda—the super-prison boondoggle and their efforts to put more people in jail longer and to monitor them by more technology, fewer humans, and so on,” she says.
The government has yet to release a final cost for new prisons and tougher sentencing that would keep prisoners in jail longer but one initiative—the elimination of the two-for-one credit for time served pre-trial—will cost between $7 billion and $10 billion over the next five years, according to Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.
That two-for-one credit was widely criticized for giving some offenders an unjustifiably short sentence for violent crimes or crimes that causes lasting damage to victims.
The elimination of the two-for-one credit means prisons will receive an extra 3,400 offenders over the next three years, according to Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).
To handle the growth in inmate populations, CSC will add 2,700 spaces across penitentiaries and increase shared cell accommodation through double-bunking.
Double-bunking has been criticized by some corrections experts who say it adds to overcrowding and raises tension among prisoners.
Toews, however, has said that double-bunking, which allows two prisoners in a cell designed for one, “is not a big deal.”
“It’s an absolutely important aspect of facilities, it’s constitutional, it’s legal,” he said in Ottawa in May. “Many western democracies do that. There’s nothing inappropriate about that.”
Dowling is also critical of CSC’s plan to install cutting edge electronic surveillance systems such as heart monitors in cell doors to save guards having to physically check whether the prisoner is in his cell.
She says such systems dehumanizes prisoners and wants to see smaller prisons where prisoners have maximum human contact.
Rehabilitation was one of the strong points of the prison farms, she adds, and worries that under the new system, the program won’t be replaced with anything nearly as effective. She’s also concerned that the six farms were closed “to clear the deck for the possibility of super-prisons” on the prime agricultural land.
But CSC spokesperson Christelle Chartrand says that while it hasn’t been decided yet what will happen with the land, using it for prison expansion is not a consideration.
“For now, most of the land has been leased to local farmers. About the expansions of the units I can tell you that all of these will be built within existing institutions and will not be using the farm land.”
Toews has denied that Canada is moving toward a U.S.-style prison system, and Chartrand says there are no plans to privatize Canada’s prisons.
“We’re not even looking into that,” she says.
About 18 months ago, Dowling and the group Save Our Prison Farms embarked on a national campaign to keep Canada’s six prison farms from being phased out.
That campaign, which was backed by writer Margaret Atwood, culminated with two days of major protests at Frontenac Institution in Kingston, Ontario, when hundreds of demonstrators showed up to protest the removal of 300 cattle from the century-old prison farm.
A peaceful blockade by protesters prevented cattle trucks from entering the institution on Sunday, Aug. 8. But after 24 arrests and a massive police presence, the cattle were successfully shipped out the following day and sent for auction.
Aside from an abattoir at Pittsburgh Institution in Kingston which will continue operating, Canada’s prison farms are now all but closed. The government said the farms were losing $4 million annually, and plans to replace them with programs it says are more effective.
Speaking at a recent luncheon in Toronto, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the farms were outdated.
“Of prisoners who actually work on these prison farms, less than one percent of them actually find work in an agricultural setting.”
Toews said it’s important to ensure prisoners get skills that will help them find a job when they get out of prison.
“That is the focus,” he said, adding that the skills being taught on prison farms are not useful in the broader employment environment.
“I believe that is not a productive use of government money or, more importantly, it is not a productive use of the convicts who are incarcerated for a period of time.”
The government needs to provide job skills that could help prisoners re-integrate into society upon their release in “a wholesome fashion,” he said.
Dowling however, maintains the farms were shut down to make way for U.S.-style privatization of Canada’s prisons as part of the government’s plan to reform the prison system, and says the campaign will now focus on that issue.
“The campaign turns to talking about the Conservative government’s broader prison agenda—the super-prison boondoggle and their efforts to put more people in jail longer and to monitor them by more technology, fewer humans, and so on,” she says.
The government has yet to release a final cost for new prisons and tougher sentencing that would keep prisoners in jail longer but one initiative—the elimination of the two-for-one credit for time served pre-trial—will cost between $7 billion and $10 billion over the next five years, according to Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.
That two-for-one credit was widely criticized for giving some offenders an unjustifiably short sentence for violent crimes or crimes that causes lasting damage to victims.
The elimination of the two-for-one credit means prisons will receive an extra 3,400 offenders over the next three years, according to Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).
To handle the growth in inmate populations, CSC will add 2,700 spaces across penitentiaries and increase shared cell accommodation through double-bunking.
Double-bunking has been criticized by some corrections experts who say it adds to overcrowding and raises tension among prisoners.
Toews, however, has said that double-bunking, which allows two prisoners in a cell designed for one, “is not a big deal.”
“It’s an absolutely important aspect of facilities, it’s constitutional, it’s legal,” he said in Ottawa in May. “Many western democracies do that. There’s nothing inappropriate about that.”
Dowling is also critical of CSC’s plan to install cutting edge electronic surveillance systems such as heart monitors in cell doors to save guards having to physically check whether the prisoner is in his cell.
She says such systems dehumanizes prisoners and wants to see smaller prisons where prisoners have maximum human contact.
Rehabilitation was one of the strong points of the prison farms, she adds, and worries that under the new system, the program won’t be replaced with anything nearly as effective. She’s also concerned that the six farms were closed “to clear the deck for the possibility of super-prisons” on the prime agricultural land.
But CSC spokesperson Christelle Chartrand says that while it hasn’t been decided yet what will happen with the land, using it for prison expansion is not a consideration.
“For now, most of the land has been leased to local farmers. About the expansions of the units I can tell you that all of these will be built within existing institutions and will not be using the farm land.”
Toews has denied that Canada is moving toward a U.S.-style prison system, and Chartrand says there are no plans to privatize Canada’s prisons.
“We’re not even looking into that,” she says.
