What a complete crock of shit. The US has about six times (yes, 6 times) the inmate population we do (per capita). I'd like to know exactly what Harper is going to do to increase our prison population by a factor of 6.

Why are you still campaigning? You know the election is over, so there's no need for your constant posting of BS mis-information.


The government has tried to do that. Corcan is the division of Corrections Canada that employs inmates and makes products. They have several industries, namely clothing, printing and furniture manufacturing.

The problem is they compete with regular hard-working Canadians. They have come under fire (rightfully so) because they can make products for much less than other companies can since their labour costs are basically nil. They have gotten into trouble with many local firms near prisons for unfair business practices.

This is why Corcan will typically only make things for government internal use (print shops make government forms, for example) or for non-profit organizations. But they try to keep a low profile while doing it.

^
yep, most of the "classroom tables" and other furniture in the military is all make by inmates. that shit is fuckin heavy as fuck and made to last lol.

i used to side hardcore with harsh punishments. raised as a kid i was subject to asian style punishment, so i know corporal punishment works, but to a degree, after that, it's just excessive and only makes people hate/fear, make you better at being bad/sneaky. you have to reason with them.

but u know what, after meeting some ex-"convicts" and visiting some prisons, and what i learnt in criminology, and then SEEING it applied in the real world, man, rehabilitation is the "right" way. a lot of these convicts, you wouldn't even be able to tell what they did. even talking to "murderers" in prison, some of them, they really just fucked up real fucking bad. wrong place wrong time. im sure most of you guys have been in a situation where if a gun magically appeared in your hand, someone would be shot.

of course there are exceptions, people that no matter what cannot adapt to our social environment and/or be productive or stay out of trouble/harm other people.

you really gotta see what rehabilitation can do to some of these "bad" people. they become good useful contributing citizens.

really, if you're gonna lock someone up and punish them really hard forever, you might as well shoot them in the back of the head. if they ever come out, they'll only be a train wreck and cause more trouble (either intentionally or unintentionally), or have some sorta fucking hatred toward everyone and their country/govt.

a prisoner costs us 65,000+ dollars per year to keep locked up, that's fucking more than most of you make, and maybe more than some of your parents make.

think about it hard, how would you like it if you went to PRISON for having some weed on you. or cuz you struck out 3 times doing retarded little things?

these things only come with age and experience. i used to be all about executions and super harsh punishments. only when you're older and you look back at your own life and the lives of the people you love, and realise, it could have easily been you in prison. that's not cool man.


anyways the people being released are probably people that would get a tiny slap on the wrist if they were convicted in canada, they're not gonna release serial killers and rapists.

ur response has nothing to do with my quote... population size per capita??? ... the hell does that have to do with the policy leaning towards a failed example

Reading comprehension much? I clearly stated that the US locks up about 6 times as many inmates as we do per capita (over 700 per 100,000 people vs about 115 per 100,000 for Canada).

Canada has a LONG WAY to go before even being remotely as bad as the US for locking people up.

^Mandatory minimums is a pretty big step in that direction though.

It's not like the jobs that they'd let inmates have are desirable cushy jobs. The general public has options for jobs,the inmates for the term of thier stay will not.

our prisons ARE already overcrowded. But yeah the reason california doc has perhaps the most inmates out of many of the states is because:

-california has way more population than other states
-3 strikes law puts people in jail for life
-strict felony laws on weed and gang activity + gigantic gang population = tons of inmates
-california doc is notorious for its prison gangs. When you're in a prison gang and you kill someone or commit a crime while in prison, they have the right to extend your sentence. So you got some people going in on a 2 year violation serving life lol

so no i don't think it will ever get nearly as bad here in bc. Especially since the population of canada = the pouplation of california

I think the Mandatory Minimums is a HUGE step away from rehabilitation and towards a vendictive justice system (which is what they have in the states).

Also, the move of the Federal Government to shut down programs like Insite, making harm reduction strategies that actually work basically illegal encourages criminal behavior and is a testament towards their shift towards a "War on Drugs" / "Tough on Crime" approach.

This approach is about vengence though rather then justice and imprisons more people, longer, in a situation that teaches them to be better criminals rather then better citizens.

^ I don't see a problem with mandatory sentencing and I don't believe it's going to suddenly increase our prison population drastically. Mandatory minimums only apply to certain types of offences, usually related to organized criminal activity. They are also going to apply to sexual offences like child molestation. I don't see how anyone can be opposed to keeping these individuals behind bars for a minimum time.

My favorite quote comes from a well-known criminal lawyer in Toronto who's also strongly opposed to mandatory minimumns.

Wow, treating everyone alike is "unfair". As opposed to having individuals who can afford high-power attorneys getting reduced sentences or no sentence at all, simply because they have more money and resources?

Of course a criminal lawyer would be against this - it greatly reduces their possible income. I mean, why would someone pay you a fortune in counsel if you're going to get a standard sentence anyway?

And they should take some of the power away from judges. Judges don't know enough about the accused to determine if they're a good person who made a mistake or a habitual criminal. Accused rarely speak in court and the lawyer makes a prepared statement about them and their life. Of course they're going to really sell their client.

Parole officers and persons inside correctional facilities are far better to determine a course of action for an inmate since they see them everyday and see what type of person they really are. They can then make recommendations to the parole board based on what they actually witness about a person's behaviour, not what some slick lawyer tells the judge about them.

You can get day parole in as little as 1/6th of your sentence and full parole in 1/3rd. So if you're a "good person" who made a mistake, a mandatory sentence won't mean much to you since you'll likely be out in 1/6th of your time anyway.


And I don't get your idea that everyone who goes to prison ends up becoming some sort of "super criminal". That only applies to people who are habitual, not people who made a mistake (who would spend little of their time in prison anyway).

I have 0 problem with mandatory minimums with their current limitations (especially to child molestation, as they have some of the lowest rehibilitation rates and frankly I'm for locking them up for life when that's the case).

I do have issues when they start being expanded out of their origionaly intended limits. If you look at the civil forfiture laws, which were initially intended to claim the products of orginized crime but are now being used to impound the vehicles of drunk drivers and speeders (though in that instance I support it), we have started to form a history of applying the same crime strategies we use to combat organized crime, to other criminals.

In law, once precidence is established, it's terribly difficult to unroot and I'm concerned that minimums will begin to be applied particularly towards drug users for charges of possession. If it expands to this extent judges will lose their flexability towards sentencing into rehab programs.

again.... you failed to understand

Im speaking of policy reflecting a failed system


you're saying "Well it may be a failed system but we have a long way to go before it becomes a problem"


lol WUT?

last year, our school has "corrections canada" reps come in, who worked in some of the prisons in the lower mainland. (one security head, one rehab head and one guard)
we asked them about how many inmates each prison can hold.
what they all responded with was that they saw an increase in inmates coming in, not a rapid increase but a noticeable one.
they also said that they have never had a problem with inmate population, but they believe that vacant cells are disappearing.
in addition, they said that their rehab programs are relatively successful despite what many think, and that they rarely see returning inmates.

this is just what i've been told

My psych prof told me that we should't rely on info like that, and that stats will always trump hearsay. Kinda like saying how 10% of the brain is used but it's false.

maybe someone with a psych major can trump up. There should be alot of those on RS.

ya not many of us believed it cuz we initially heard different stuff from our law teacher.
but who knows what's going on in those facilities.

Mandatory sentencing on things like possesion of guns I agree with, not so much other things.

that's what sucks about californias 3 strikes law. the third strike could be something so minor, yet send you to jail

Ya, I remember when I was in college in the late 90's and my prof was talking about the guy who's third strike was stealing a slice of pizza from a bunch of kids. He got 25 years for that, not sure if it was succesfully appealed or not.

Having inmates sit around in prison is such an inefficient waste of manpower. If I had my way there'd be forced labor factories where inmates would need to work to eat, producing goods that would be used by everyone. If they refused, they wouldn't be fed and could die if they wanted to. The more serious the crime, the longer the work sentence!

So who's producing those goods that the the prisoners would make now? I bet those people would complain big time. Producing goods that people would buy is not that easy.

Most people don't understand locking up criminals won't work. In the end they will come out eventually. A good approach is to rehabilitate them to society so they will be a useful mean to society. Of course I am not saying everyone gets a slap on the wrist or whatnot but we need to weight the benefits of both sides.

Honestly imo, this would save us a lot of money....should be used for convicted rapists, murderers, molesters, drunk drivers.

http://www.timberwolf-uk.com/images/ShredderWorking.jpg


It would save us a whole of tax money.

I know a lot of people want to think of things in simple terms like this. But ^ kind of thinking doesn't solve the crime problem. This kind of thinking actually makes it worse.

Frankly, as long as our penal system's focus is punishment, and not rehabilitation, the crime problems are not likely to change much. When we start to address Crime as a social and medical issue, and inject some compassion and forgiveness into the system we start to see far better results. Portugal's shifting approach to drug and drug related crime really does demonstrate this well.

Additionally the BIGGEST factors in preventing crime are education and community/family involvement. If we work on improving our education system and ensuring that all children in our country have equal access to it and what ever support they need, then we can take a bite out of crime before it happens. But the other, bigger step is supporting families with children who are starting to display dangerous behavior at a young age, and proving alternative activities for youth that are actually appealing to them (I know a lot of community programs are well meaning but I think too many of them miss the mark).

Majin> I did my degree in Psych but I only took one course psych involving criminal behavior. I do remember that rehabilitation rates are higher in productive programs (so in prisons that do have work programs, such as the prison farms program I mentioned earlier) and prisons that have education and drug rehab programs. Typically this is all most successful in minimum security institutions (both because you have a less violent population and because their time there is so short that they always have it in sight, they know what they do impacts that greatly).

Larger, Max Security prisons actually tend to force criminals to become better criminals to protect themselves. This is one of the reasons I object to the larger prison facilities that Harper wants to build. In smaller facilities, this can be mitigated to a degree but the larger the population, the harder it gets to be to do this.

^sending inmates to work is rehabilitation. I know of a few prisons right now where you can get an education. (cant speak for all of them)

Work isn't punishment. Idle hands are bad for people that tend to do crime. If I wasn't in the garage working on my cars, I'd probably be out stealing solar panels or other industrial equipment, lol.

edit: I work with two ex convicts. One did 10 years. I'm not a specialist, but he isn't blaming Harper. He's actually thankful Harper's administration for keeping his job outside of prison.

It depends HUGELY on the approach to work.

If it's 'do menial, mindless labour or you starve' that's a punishment.

If it's ' You have the option to do something constructive with your time that will teach you skills that will get you a job when you're out of here ' that's rehabilitation.

The work must be something the prisoner can take pride in for it to have the effect that is desired. This is why I mourn the loss of the prison farm program as farming is something that can be extremely rewarding in this effect. When you work hard making something grow you can measure the impact of your efforts every day.

And yes, here in BC at least we used to have a very good penal education system. When I was younger I worked as a nanny for a woman who taught grade 12 English/Math to prisoners and while the job was stressful she really loved it. I'm not sure if this is still the case or what the state of the education system is there now but I hope it's still intact, it's a big and wonderful tool to preventing relapses.

I think we both agree that education is a good thing, but you really have a sour attitude toward hard work and what it can lead to.

I work in the Oil Industry, 12 hour days, 2 weeks straight, and make $450/day.

Prisoners doing labor jobs is 'training' for a great career path outside of prison, being Canada is starving for Tradespeople right now.

I'm guessing you are one of the many vancouverites that work in the service/consumer industry?