IS IT POSSIBLE TO DESIGN A BETTER INCARCERATION?
New jails in Toronto and Edmonton show much still needs to be learned − if jails are indeed the answer
In 1972, the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre opened and the Ottawa Journal declared in a breathless headline: “Country club aura felt at modern regional jail.”
The jail was equipped with lounges with televisions, colour-co-ordinated dormitories, a library with 3,000 books and a verdant setting that apparently reminded the Journal reporter of a country club. Prisoners would be allowed temporary absences to work in the community and there would be a citizens’ committee to provide input and recommend changes. The jail was the most modern in the province and corrections minister Syl Apps and the jail’s superintendent were photographed chatting in a cell.
Jails, as it turns out, don’t take long to go from latest-and-greatest to powder keg.
In 2013, the new $594-million Toronto South Detention Centre was hailed for its high-ceilinged glass lobby, “video visitation booths” that use Skype-like technology and a sweat lodge and smudging room for indigenous prisoners. Guards watched over prisoners using “direct supervision,” mingling with prisoners in common areas.
It didn’t take long for the new jail to be dubbed a “hellhole.” Lockdowns were common. In its first two years, there were four inmate deaths and 14 suicide attempts, as well as 249 assaults between inmates and 118 assaults on staff, according to a report published in Toronto Life in February. It took about a year to open the infirmary and cost-cutting attempts, including almost eliminating face-to-toface visits with family had been “dehumanizing” to inmates, the magazine reported.
The 1,952-bed Edmonton Remand Centre, which has 1,500 security cameras and is touted as the largest and most technologically advanced in Canada, received its first inmates in April, 2013. Officials reported the first inmate death less than two months later.
The new Toronto South jail was supposed to reduce overcrowding and offer programs and services, says Justin Piché, an associate professor of criminology and an expert on the sociology of incarceration at the University of Ottawa.
Piché says he would prefer the new jail never be built for Ottawa. The government has promised to divert people out of jails, and building a bigger one isn’t going to solve the underlying problems, he said. At best, jails are an exercise in harm reduction, he argued, suggesting that bail beds and check-in centres are better alternatives, he says.
“It costs $215 a day to incarcerate someone in a human warehouse.
Incarceration in its modern form has failed in terms of meeting its objective.”
Is it possible to design a better jail, either through architecture or by creating smaller institutions? In Norway, for example, prisons typically have fewer than 50 inmates and sometimes fewer than 10, and are spread out to keep prisoners close to their families, noted the 2016 book Incarceration Nations.
“A ‘good jail’ is a contradiction in terms,” says Rose Ricciardelli, an assistant professor of sociology at Memorial University in St. John’s who researches prisons and incarceration. “You can’t have a good jail. It’s not fundamentally possible.”
The bigger question is whether it is necessary to incarcerate so many people, she says.
“Does Ottawa need a bigger jail? If we build bigger prisons, that doesn’t get at the root of the problem.”
To address pressures in our correctional system, we must both address capacity and the root causes of overcrowding. And to that end the Ministry of the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services have been working in tandem to improve the criminal justice system in its entirety. ONTARIO ATTORNEY-GENERAL YASIR NAQVI
I would say it’s good news for everybody. It’s good news for the province, it’s good news for Ottawa, it’s good news for the ministry, it’s good news for those working the jails and it’s good news for those doing time in our jail.
DENIS COLLIN, a correctional officer and president of the OPSEU local representing correctional officers at the jail
The detention facility in Ottawa has been overburdened and overcrowded for almost 20 years. This has led to deplorable conditions in that jail. I think it’s great news and long overdue. Having a larger jail with more resources, more programs and more yard is mostly good news. PAUL CHAMP, Ottawa lawyer who has represented several inmates in lawsuits against the jail