‘Serious challenges’ ahead for crowded prisons
About one in five inmates double-bunked, and many consider it ‘demoralizing and degrading’
Even though prison watchdogs have condemned the practice, double-bunking of federal inmates in cells designed for one person will continue across Canada over the next five years, according to briefing documents prepared for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney.
The Correctional Service of Canada acknowledges it faces “serious challenges” as it tries to accommodate a growing prison population with aging infrastructure in need of repair.
Corrections officials have projected that the federal inmate population — currently about 15,000 — will grow by about 1,050 between last year and 2018.
Accommodating these inmates will require “temporary use of double-bunking,” as well as interregional transfers of inmates, the documents say. The agency is also building “new living units” in existing men’s and women’s institu- tions, which it hopes will add more than 2,700 spaces.
But Howard Sapers, Canada’s correctional investigator, thinks the government’s inmate growth projections are a bit low. In the previous five years, the prison population grew by about 1,450.
“There’s nothing to indicate the rate of growth is slowing,” he said, adding that we still likely haven’t seen the full effect of legislative and policy changes, such as the elimination of accelerated parole reviews and mandatory minimum sentences.
Compounding the problem is last year’s closure of the Kingston Penitentiary and a nearby psychiatric facility, plus the Leclerc Institution in Quebec. While the closures were fast-tracked, the expansion of other facilities has not been, Sapers said.
About 20 per cent of inmates are double-bunked, Sapers’s most recent annual report said.
“Inmate views of double-bunking are almost equally negative and pessimistic,” he wrote. “Being locked up in a space about the size of an average bathroom with another person inevitably means diminished privacy and dignity, and increases the potential for tension and violence. Inmates describe the experience … as demoralizing and degrading.”
The minister’s briefing documents say the closures of Kingston and Leclerc will create more of a squeeze, but “good management practices will mitigate any per- ceived increase in risk.”
The average annual cost of keeping an offender in prison is $117,364 compared with $31,101 for supervision in the community, the documents say.