New jail would be just another hellhole
Penal pork-barrelling must stop, Justin Piché writes
Confining human beings does great harm to prisoners and their loved ones
In April 2016, Ottawa Centre MPP and thenminister of community safety and correctional services Yasir Naqvi declared that by building more cages, “I think we are failing our taxpayers, if that’s the solution we think is appropriate. I think our real challenge is how to reduce the demand for jail.”
Thirteen months later, it seems that Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government isn’t up to the challenge, as Ottawa-Orléans MPP and Ontario’s new chief of incarceration Marie France Lalonde announced that a new 725-bed “multi-purpose” human warehouse will replace the notorious Innes Road jail. It shouldn’t get built. Here’s why. In recent years, the Ontario government has signed what amount to 30-year mortgages to design, build, finance and maintain the 315bed South West Detention Centre in Windsor and the 1,650-bed Toronto South Detention Centre. By the time we’re done paying for these facilities we will have spent $1.4 billion (which amounts to $730,789 per bed), without even accounting for operational costs.
Let’s do the math – not a strong suit of the current regime at Queen’s Park.
A new jail in Ottawa could cost us at least $500 million. Factor in the average daily cost to incarcerate one person in Ontario, which in 2015-16 was $215 per day, or $78,475 per year, the 725-bed human warehouse that’s slated to replace the 585-bed Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre will likely cost taxpayers somewhere around $11 million more annually to operate than the existing facility.
If the Liberals making decisions in Toronto – with the support of its cabinet members from Ottawa — sign up for another 30-year jail mortgage, every year of the rest of my working life (I’m 35 years old) will see the province diverting close to $30 million toward a new facility.
Are you, the residents of Ottawa, prepared to accept this? Are you prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on a jail that will mostly house those on remand awaiting their day in our clogged courts, who represent more than 60 per cent of current OCDC prisoners?
Are you prepared to continue to incarcerate those criminalized for living with mental health issues, who constitute a quarter of OCDC’s prisoners? Are you prepared to prolong the mass incarceration of Indigenous Peoples? Are you prepared to pay for a facility that has 140 more beds when the average count of sentenced prisoners in provincial institutions has been declining for years?
Are you prepared to pay for the proven failure of imprisonment that sustains and deepens inequality in this city, when the Ontario government hasn’t even given recently announced measures to reduce the remand population a chance to take hold in a sustainable way?
Some who accept the inevitability and necessity of imprisonment from the left, centre and right will say that we need to replace the hellhole that’s the OCDC.
But a new jail will just become another hellhole.
There’s a massive body of criminological research and front-line experience that shows it isn’t just old jails that aren’t up to the task – it’s imprisonment itself. Confining human beings does great harm to prisoners and their loved ones, while failing to prevent victimization in the long-term. The history of carceral expansion in this country is littered with examples of new facilities being built to address horrid conditions of confinement, only to usher in new correctional crises. This penal pork barrelling needs to stop. The government is prepared to invest around $30 million more a year in Ottawa. That’s great news (unless you’re concerned about the province’s debt). This money doesn’t need to be spent on a new jail.
In the days, weeks, months and years ahead I’m confident the residents of Ottawa will come up with other proposals to allocate these funds in ways that will actually enhance our collective well-being and safety.