Build more prisons now!

[Mr.Canada]

The current Canadian prison system is currently overcrowded as we speak. It takes approximately 10 years to build a prison, if the system is overcrowded now how bad will it be 10 years from now?

People keep saying that crime is down. This may be true on a per capita basis, which is what is always being quoted but when you look at the raw numbers, they're increasing because our population is increasing.

The practice requires approval from headquarters because it contradicts a 2001 prison service directive that “single occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method of housing offenders.”

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/Minister+downplays+prison+double+bunking/2986001/story.html#ixzz1002WUL1p

Many Federal Pens are applying to C.C. in order to allow to double bunk cons, which directly goes against what the government pledged in 2001. They said that single occupancy cells is the way to keep convicts calm. A guy doing life isn't going to want to share a cell so what's to stop him from killing his cellie? He or she is already doing Life and has nothing to lose. Double bunking creates tension in a prison.

People are double and triple bunked when awaiting trial in a detention centre(DC), sometimes for years and the amount of violence within those places is very high.

“We know, for reasons of sanity and personal safety, you need some respite, you need some privacy and that doesn’t happen when you’re in double-bunk situations,” he said.

“As double-bunking goes up, you see increased incidents of institutional violence. Correctional centres when they are filled over capacity, tend to be very noisy and very chaotic. You end up with institutions that look less like correctional centres and more like warehouses.”

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/Minister+downplays+prison+double+bunking/2986001/story.html#ixzz1002wB4Wa

It took massive amounts of violence at the Don Jail for years on end for them to finally start to build a new facility for Toronto. At the Don triple celling people in cells originally made for one person was making extreme violence an everyday occurrence until they finally shut it down. People would fight just so they could go to the hole(Ad seg) and be in a cell by themselves.

The government needs to start building more Federal Pens now. They take ~10 years to build just one, so it only makes sense to build them. Crime won't be going away anytime soon.

Edited September 19, 2010 by Mr.Canada

[wyly]

The current Canadian prison system is currently overcrowded as we speak. It takes approximately 10 years to build a prison, if the system is overcrowded now how bad will it be 10 years from now?

People keep saying that crime is down. This may be true on a per capita basis, which is what is always being quoted but when you look at the raw numbers, they're increasing because our population is increasing.

Many Federal Pens are applying to C.C. in order to allow to double bunk cons, which directly goes against what the government pledged in 2001. They said that single occupancy cells is the way to keep convicts calm. A guy doing life isn't going to want to share a cell so what's to stop him from killing his cellie? He or she is already doing Life and has nothing to lose. Double bunking creates tension in a prison.

People are double and triple bunked when awaiting trial in a detention centre(DC), sometimes for years and the amount of violence within those places is very high.

It took massive amounts of violence at the Don Jail for years on end for them to finally start to build a new facility for Toronto. At the Don triple celling people in cells originally made for one person was making extreme violence an everyday occurrence until they finally shut it down. People would fight just so they could go to the hole(Ad seg) and be in a cell by themselves.

The government needs to start building more Federal Pens now. They take ~10 years to build just one, so it only makes sense to build them. Crime won't be going away anytime soon.

it's reasonable to allow the inmates to have a cell to themselves cells are incredibly small even for one person even animals require a minimum amount of personal space before they become agitated...

prisons don't take 10 yrs to build, a new one where I used to live went up in about a year.

[punked]

Lets just look at non-violent crimes instead.

[with_distinction]

Yeah, all you baby boomers are going to be filling up the prisons.

Let us copy the USA style of having a copious amount of prisons, seems to be working well for them.

[eyeball]

Lets just look at non-violent crimes instead.

Don't forget trimming the criminal code.

[wyly]

Don't forget trimming the criminal code.

maybe we should look at the entire criminal code, are we sending people to prison for crimes that shouldn't be crimes like drug use....are we sending people to prison for non violent crimes that can be better dealt with in other ways?...

[Mr.Canada]

prisons don't take 10 yrs to build, a new one where I used to live went up in about a year.

I call BS on this. I'm talking about Federal institutions ala Millhaven in Ontario. It took a lot longer to build Millhaven then 1 year.

Hell, the new Maplehurst Provincial facility in Otario which houses over 1000 people took well over 5 years to build.

I'm talking from planning, purchasing the land to shovels in the ground.

If they aren't going to build new prisons then we need to expand the current ones we have as they have said they've planned to do. But I'd like to see the dollar figure and weigh it against the security factors vs building a new prison.

[maple_leafs182]

I got a better idea then building prisons to house more inmates, let's legalize all drugs.

[Shakeyhands]

People keep saying that crime is down. This may be true on a per capita basis, which is what is always being quoted but when you look at the raw numbers, they're increasing because our population is increasing.

Ummmm... so it's staying about the same or decreasing then... ok.

[Shakeyhands]

The government needs to start building more Federal Pens now. They take ~10 years to build just one, so it only makes sense to build them. Crime won't be going away anytime soon.

Hell, the new Maplehurst Provincial facility in Otario which houses over 1000 people took well over 5 years to build.

Ummmm.......... so which is it?

[Mr.Canada]

Ummmm... so it's staying about the same or decreasing then... ok.

You seem to be missing the point. The last new Federal Pen opened in Ontario was in 1971. Our Population has exploded since then to many times what it was in 1971.

Lets say the crime rate stayed the same and was 10:100,000 in 1971 until present(2010). Due to population growth we're going to have a higher total number of criminals today to lock up.

If the population was 5 million in 1971 and in 2010 it's 15 million it doesn't take a genius to see that there are more 100k's in 15 million then in 5 million.

Math is hard.

[charter.rights]

I do believe Mr. C's daddy must have done time at the big house. Of course that may be where Mr. C gets his interests in gays and pedophilia. By now he should certainly have a big collection of videos...if we are to believe him...

Edited September 23, 2010 by charter.rights

[eyeball]

I got a better idea then building prisons to house more inmates, let's legalize all drugs.

Of course it needs to be said - it's been estimated that as many as 50% of incarcerated people in Canada were born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

It figures a drug that actually causes babies to become criminals by damaging their brains before they're even born is sold by the very same governments that are expected to build and run all the prisons that hold them. That's always seemed perverse to me.

[eyeball]

I got a better idea then building prisons to house more inmates, let's legalize all drugs.

Of course it needs to be said - a high percentage of Canada's incarcerated people were born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

It figures a drug that actually causes babies to become criminals by damaging their brains before they're even born is sold by the very same governments that are expected to build and run all the prisons that hold them once they grow up. That's always seemed perverse to me.

Edited September 23, 2010 by eyeball

[Mr.Canada]

I do believe Mr. C's daddy must have done time at the big house.

I've done time, not my "daddy". I've spent about 5 years of my life behind bars in my younger days. I've said it here before I guess you missed it. This is how I know what it's like, I've been locked up in my late teens to mid 20's. It was overcrowded back then I can only imagine it's even worse now and from what I've heard and read, it is.

Edited September 23, 2010 by Mr.Canada

[charter.rights]

I've done time, not my "daddy". I've spent about 5 years of my life behind bars in my younger days. I've said it here before I guess you missed it. This is how I know what it's like, I've been locked up in my late teens to mid 20's. It was overcrowded back then I can only imagine it's even worse now and from what I've heard and read, it is.

Of course...did you pull your pants down then too?

[pcml]

Of course...did you pull your pants down then too?

These new prisons are for ""un reported crimes""

That means cannabis crimes

Although harper gets "high with a little help from his friends"

He has targeted cannabis users as the scourge of the nation

I will do all I can to see him gone

[Wilber]

Of course it needs to be said - a high percentage of Canada's incarcerated people were born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

It figures a drug that actually causes babies to become criminals by damaging their brains before they're even born is sold by the very same governments that are expected to build and run all the prisons that hold them once they grow up. That's always seemed perverse to me.

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you propose we ban alcohol but legalize other drugs because they are good and alcohol is bad? Do we legalize all drugs and ignore any crimes committed by people who have been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome or any other abnormality caused by drugs? Your parent was a drunk or a druggie so you get a free pass. What?

[Wilber]

These new prisons are for ""un reported crimes""

That means cannabis crimes

Although harper gets "high with a little help from his friends"

He has targeted cannabis users as the scourge of the nation

I will do all I can to see him gone

In BC if you now blow over .05 you get a three day suspension and fines up the ying yang. Get caught driving stoned and you get the same old 24 hr suspension and no other consequences. Poor druggies.

[RNG]

I was a hang-em high type of guy and then a terrible thing happened to me. Facts hit me in the face. The US has more than 1% of it's population behind bars. The war on drugs. The three strikes rule. And is it working? I'm very "right wing" economically. A term not used in Canada so much, but I consider myself a Libertarian. But Harper has lost it IMO. This "more hard time-hard on crime" stuff is ideology and vote buying. And it is a stupid expense for Canada. The NDP suck, and as a good ex-Alberta oilpatch worker I can't vote Liberal. Hope there's a decent independent in my riding.

Reason for edit: Punctuation.

Edited September 26, 2010 by RNG

[dre]

Canada problem is not that we dont have enough prisons its OVER-CRIMINALIZATION.

We need to revamp the criminal code, and stop clogging up our courts and jails with petty criminals and soft drug offenses.

Once we do that we can close a lot of the prisons, never mind building new ones.

[dre]

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you propose we ban alcohol but legalize other drugs because they are good and alcohol is bad? Do we legalize all drugs and ignore any crimes committed by people who have been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome or any other abnormality caused by drugs? Your parent was a drunk or a druggie so you get a free pass. What?

What we need to do is create an intelligent and evidence based criminal code, as opposed to blindly growing the prison industry, and we have to abandon policies that dont work, like prostitution, and most drug laws.

[Wilber]

Canada problem is not that we dont have enough prisons its OVER-CRIMINALIZATION.

We need to revamp the criminal code, and stop clogging up our courts and jails with petty criminals and soft drug offenses.

Once we do that we can close a lot of the prisons, never mind building new ones.

Individuals who have to steal a million dollars worth of property annually to feed a drug habit are not "petty" criminals. They cost society a fortune. One way or another, they need to be stopped and if they won't take treatment voluntarily, they need to be incarcerated until they will.

[RNG]

Individuals who have to steal a million dollars worth of property annually to feed a drug habit are not "petty" criminals. They cost society a fortune. One way or another, they need to be stopped and if they won't take treatment voluntarily, they need to be incarcerated until they will.

That was my belief forever. But look at the facts. Especially the US war on drugs. What a travesty. The money spent on incarceration could be spent on treatment. Look at the literature. Criminologist after criminologist has proven this. It don't work.

The best would be to decriminalize all drug use. Legalize it, tax it, regulate it and offer help to the addicts. And if they choose to OD and kill themselves, cool, I'm a Darwin fan.

Arguments that prohibitive drug laws are ineffective

Stephen Rolles, writing in the British Medical Journal, argues:

Consensus is growing within the drugs field and beyond that the prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems, such as adulterated drugs and the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C infection among injecting drug users, but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market. These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market, corruption of law enforcement and governments.

These conclusions have been reached by a succession of committees and reports including, in the United Kingdom alone, the Police Foundation, the Home Affairs Select Committee, The prime minister’s Strategy Unit, the Royal Society of Arts, and the UK Drug Policy Consortium. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has also acknowledged the many "unintended negative consequences" of drug enforcement.[15]

The editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr Fiona Godlee, gave her personal support to Rolles' call for decriminalisation, and the arguments drew particular support from Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who said we should be treating drugs "as a health issue rather than criminalising people" and "this could drastically reduce crime and improve health".

Danny Kushlik, head of external affairs at Transform, said the intervention of senior medical professionals was significant. "Sir Ian's statement is yet another nail in prohibition's coffin," he said. "The Hippocratic oath says: 'First, do no harm'. Physicians are duty bound to speak out if the outcomes show that prohibition causes more harm than it reduces."

Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, made comments in a report in the profession's magazine, in which he said that drug-related crime costs the UK economy about £13bn a year and that there was growing evidence that decriminalisation could free up police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.[16]

A report sponsored by the New York County Lawyers' Association, one of the largest local bar associations in the United States, argues on the subject of US drug policy:

Notwithstanding the vast public resources expended on the enforcement of penal statutes against users and distributors of controlled substances, contemporary drug policy appears to have failed, even on its own terms, in a number of notable respects. These include: minimal reduction in the consumption of controlled substances; failure to reduce violent crime; failure to markedly reduce drug importation, distribution and street-level drug sales; failure to reduce the widespread availability of drugs to potential users; failure to deter individuals from becoming involved in the drug trade; failure to impact upon the huge profits and financial opportunity available to individual "entrepreneurs" and organized underworld organizations through engaging in the illicit drug trade; the expenditure of great amounts of increasingly limited public resources in pursuit of a cost-intensive "penal" or "law-enforcement" based policy; failure to provide meaningful treatment and other assistance to substance abusers and their families; and failure to provide meaningful alternative economic opportunities to those attracted to the drug trade for lack of other available avenues for financial advancement.[17]

Moreover, a growing body of evidence and opinion suggests that contemporary drug policy, as pursued in recent decades, may be counterproductive and even harmful to the society whose public safety it seeks to protect. This conclusion becomes more readily apparent when one distinguishes the harms suffered by society and its members directly attributable to the pharmacological effects of drug use upon human behavior, from those harms resulting from policies attempting to eradicate drug use.[18]

With aid of these distinctions, we see that present drug policy appears to contribute to the increase of violence in our communities. It does so by permitting and indeed, causing the drug trade to remain a lucrative source of economic opportunity for street dealers, drug kingpins and all those willing to engage in the often violent, illicit, black market trade.

Meanwhile, the effect of present policy serves to stigmatize and marginalize drug users, thereby inhibiting and undermining the efforts of many such individuals to remain or become productive, gainfully employed members of society. Furthermore, current policy has not only failed to provide adequate access to treatment for substance abuse, it has, in many ways, rendered the obtaining of such treatment, and of other medical services, more difficult and even dangerous to pursue.[19]

In response to claims that prohibition can work, as claimed by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, drawing attention to the drug policy of Sweden Henrik Tham has written that sometimes it's domestically important to stress drug policy as successful, as the case of Sweden where this notion is important, serving "the function of strengthening a threatened national identity in a situation where the traditional ‘Swedish model’ has come under increasingly hard attack from both inside and outside the country." Tham questions the success of the Swedish model - "The shift in Swedish drug policy since around 1980 [nb 1] towards a more strict model has according to the official point of view been successful by comparison with the earlier, more lenient drug policy. However, available systematic indicators show that the prevalence of drug use has increased since around 1980, that the decrease in drug incidence was particularly marked during the 1970s and that some indicators point towards an increase during the 1990s."[20]

Leif Lenke and Börje Olsson from Stockholm University have conducted research that showed how drug use have followed the youth unemployment in close correlation. They noted that unlike most of Europe, Sweden did not have widespread and lingering youth unemployment until the early 1990s financial crisis, suggesting that unattractive future prospects may contribute to the increase in drug use among the young.[21] CAN, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs, 2009 report stated that the increase in drug use have continued since the 1990s with a slight dip in the mid-2000.[22]

The professor emeritus in criminology at the University of Oslo, Nils Christie, pointed out Sweden as the hawk of international drug policy, being a welfare alibi and giving legitimacy to the US drug war. Adding that the two countries have an extraordinary influence on UNODC as the biggest donor countries.[23]

An editorial in The Economist argued:

fear [of legalisation] is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates.[24]

Antonio Maria Costa's conviction that "countries have the drug problem they deserve" if they fail to follow the 'Swedish Model' in drug control has also been criticised in Peter Cohen's work - Looking at the UN, smelling a rat.[25]

[edit] Deterrence

[edit] Arguments that prohibition discourages drug use

A 2001 Australian study of 18-29 year olds by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research suggests that prohibition deters illicit drug use.[26] 29% of those who had never used cannabis cited the illegality of the substance as their reason for never using the drug, while 19% of those who had ceased use of cannabis cited its illegality as their reason.

A mechanism by which illicit drug use is controlled is the price of drugs. Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the US ONDCP argues,

Controls and prohibitions help to keep prices higher, and higher prices help keep use rates relatively low, since drug use, especially among young people, is known to be sensitive to price. The relationship between pricing and rates of youth substance use is well-established with respect to alcohol and cigarette taxes. There is literature showing that increases in the price of cigarettes triggers declines in use.”[27]

The DEA argues "Legalization has been tried before—and failed miserably. Alaska’s experiment with legalization in the 1970s led to the state’s teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska’s residents to vote to re-criminalize marijuana in 1990."[28]

Drug Free Australia has cited the Netherlands as an example of drug policy failure because it is soft in approach.[1] They argue that the Dutch idea of going soft on cannabis dealers, thereby creating a ‘separation of markets’ from hard drug dealers has failed to stem the initiation to drugs such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines. In 1998 the Netherlands had the third highest cannabis and cocaine use in Europe.[1] According to Barry McCaffrey of US Office of Drug Control Policy, Dutch tolerance has allowed the Netherlands to become a criminal epicentre for illicit synthetic drug manufacture, particularly ecstasy, as well as the home for production and worldwide export of strains of cannabis with THC reportedly 10 times higher than normal.[29] Gil Kerlikowske has attested that, where there were once thousands of cannabis cafés there are now only several hundred.[30] Levels of cannabis use, in 2005 only marginally higher than in 1998, while other European countries have accelerated past them, are more likely, Drug Free Australia argues, the result of a growing intolerance of cannabis in the Netherlands rather than a growing tolerance.[1] Drug Free Australia has also argued that British reductions in cannabis use after softer legislation may be moreso the result of heavy UK media exposure of the stronger evidence of links between cannabis.

Portugal has basically legalized all drugs and crime rates have apparently plummeted.

[Wilber]

That was my belief forever. But look at the facts. Especially the US war on drugs. What a travesty. The money spent on incarceration could be spent on treatment. Look at the literature. Criminologist after criminologist has proven this. It don't work.

The best would be to decriminalize all drug use. Legalize it, tax it, regulate it and offer help to the addicts. And if they choose to OD and kill themselves, cool, I'm a Darwin fan.

Wonderful argument but the real problem is drug caused crime not drugs as a crime. What does it matter if an addict is stealing hundreds of thousands in property to buy heavily taxed legal drugs or illegal drugs to feed their habit? Would you accept the legal liability for producing and selling drugs like crystal meth and crack? Do you think any reputable drug company that doesn't want to get sued into oblivion will? As far as taxing pot goes, who is going to buy heavily taxed marijuana when they can grow it in a pot on their patio or deck?

OK, legalize it but if you think government is going to have a windfall, dream on.