Study: Crime bill could create chaos in prisons

Canada’s omnibus crime bill will lead to more physical and mental “degradation” among prisoners and risks their reintegration back into society, warns an article in Canada’s leading medical journal.

Bill C-10 — the Conservative government’s Safe Streets and Communities Act, which increases mandatory minimum sentences and changes eligibility for conditional sentences — will inevitably produce more prisoners serving longer prison sentences, Adelina Iftene and Allan Manson, of the faculty of law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., write in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The fallout will be increases in already overcrowded prisons, “more stress, more volatility and the likelihood of more violence,” as well as increased spread of hepatitis, HIV and other infectious diseases, Manson said in an interview.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has said the bill would not lead to an “inordinate explosion” in the number of prisoners in federal prisons or provincial jails. The government has promised 2,700 new cells, “but we don’t have a time frame for those 2,700 new cells,” Manson said.

He said double-bunking—housing two prisoners in a space intended for one — already accounts for more than 20 per cent of the prison population, increasing stress and the potential for violence. As their numbers increase, fewer prisons will be able to offer the programs necessary to stabilize inmates mental status and give them a purpose, the authors write.

“The federal Office of the Correctional Investigations has predicted that penitentiaries will need to accommodate 3,400 more prisoners by 2013,” they said. “Ontario expects it will need a new prison for 1,000 prisoners at a cost of $900 million, and Quebec is anticipating spending up to $600 million on new cells.”