Ottawa’s plan to crack down on mentally ill offenders could accomplish the opposite of its intent, critics say – pushing more people with mental illness into a prison system unable to treat them, and putting seriously ill patients in makeshift, less secure accommodation in overflowing forensic hospital wings.
Full story here.
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
September 25, 2012 – Globe and Mail
The federal government is being sued for not providing clean needles to inmates in prisons – something the former inmate and advocacy groups behind the suit argue not only violates offenders’ right to health care but makes a public health problem worse.
I was confused about Correctional Service Canada’s budget and sent the department a bunch of questions (and annoying follow-up questions). These are the responses I got to the latest barrage, received around 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 23 – about 10 days after I sent them.
Long story short, the answers are non-answers.
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Monday, August 20 – Globe and Mail
Corrections Canada faces years of big budget cuts even as its resources are stretched increasingly thin.
The federal agency must trim $295-million in spending by 2015 as part of the Conservative government’s deficit-reduction program. This is the first time the agency has had to cut its budget, year to year, since 2006.
Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Thursday, July 12 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he has no problem with the number of federal inmates sharing cells built for one.
And even as he reiterated his commitment to building 2,700 new cells in existing prison facilities, he said those additional units aren’t meant to alleviate the pressures caused by double-bunking – because there’s no need.
Photo by Kevin Van Paassen/Globe and Mail
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Inmates in Canada’s federal prisons have been sleeping in trailers, interview rooms, family visiting spaces and gymnasiums, while the percentage of prisoners sharing cells built for one has nearly doubled in under three years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The documents, obtained from access to information requests, suggest a penal system stretched to capacity. Canada’s prison population has been rising since 2005 after years of steady decline, growing 7 per cent between March 31, 2011 and May 1, 2012.
Part of the latest increase can be attributed to the government’s tough-on-crime agenda. At the same time, the government will lose 1,000 beds after it closes aging penal facilities such as Kingston Penitentiary and Leclerc Institution in Laval, Que., but says it will more than make up the difference with new units.
CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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Canada’s federal prisons are getting more crowded, more tense and more polarized between young and old inmates – and that’s contributing to an increase in violence and deaths behind bars, says Ottawa’s prison watchdog.
As new rules send more people to prison for longer periods of time, correctional investigator Howard Sapers argues, it’s putting a greater strain not only on Canada’s aging prison infrastructure but also on its inmates.
“The indicators that we look at in terms of getting a measure of institutional violence are all going in the same direction,” Mr. Sapers said. “And they’re all going up.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews argues that’s not so.
“I haven’t seen that statistic,” he said. “There isn’t as much prisoner-on-prisoner violence that used to exist eight or nine years ago, before we put in policies that restricted some of the movement of prisoners.”
