Prisons have revolutionized globally, and prisons in Canada have been part of this shift. This shift relates to the design, structure, inmates’ composition, and objectives. It is prudent to assess the past as it can significantly help to explain why the present appears as it seems and what we can expect in the future given these circumstances. This essay aims to investigate how the foundational history of prisons in Canada shapes these prisons’ current and future states. The paper will focus on lectures 2 and 3 to lay down the foundational history of prisons in Canada. Regarding the future, this work will base its future prediction of prisons in Canada on lecture 11. Also, the essay will touch on the current occurrences in prisons and the effectiveness of prison reforms in Canada.
The initial purpose of prisons was to act as a temporary holding area for wrongdoers waiting for their punishment. Authorities also used prisons to inflict bodily pain on the wrongdoers. Correctional Service of Canada (2014) posits that people who disobeyed the law were punished severely in their older beginnings, frequently before others. Some were flogged or marked on the body with burning hot metal. Others were placed in pillories or stocks and left out in public for long periods. Convicts were sometimes just taken or expelled to other regions. However, this approach to correction began to shift during the 1900s when countries like England and the US propounded more sophisticated strategies for correction. Their ideas spilled over to other regions and played a considerable role in influencing the design of establishing prisons in Canada.
In the early days of Canada, municipal jails and lockups were the most popular establishments that temporarily held persons who were pending a trial or execution. Areas like Nova Scotia borrowed from the English workhouses and employed the same; the wrongdoers were employed in several tasks. These workhouses later proved ineffective as they could not differentiate the juvenile prisoners from the adult ones. Besides, there was gross mismanagement of these workhouses, making them unproductive. Such failures forced Canada to embrace new ideas, especially those from America. The early prison models borrowed heavily from the American system, particularly the Quaker model from Pennsylvania and the Auburn model. These models purposed to replace the corporal punishment system. Separation, work, solitary imprisonment, and the quiet system are all used to transform and rehabilitate people under the Quaker model. Canada’s first penitentiary was Kingston Penitentiary- founded in 1835. The Kingston Penitentiary was founded to solve the crowding of persons in jails. Also, it was established to deal with the increasing fear of crime among the public. This prison’s modeling was structured to empower prisoners through education and correcting them to be fit for society. Being a subscriber of the Auburn model, some of this penitentiary’s characteristics included a zero-tolerance approach to handling inmates, absolute hush, rigorous labor, and lock-step walking. The Kingston Penitentiary ran for 30 years as a provincial penitentiary until 1867. After this, all penitentiaries were under the federal government. Although the penitentiary had an excellent plan of doing away with punishment, there were reported cases of excessive use of corporal punishment and inefficacy in reshaping the prisoners as planned earlier.
Currently, the prison standards in Canada are better than before though there is still work to do. Unlike before, cases of abusive corporal punishment and injury have subsided owing to the oversight authority established by the government. The reason behind this also relates to the competency of the wardens. Wardens undergo specialized training to equip them with the necessary skills to handle inmates. Prisoners enjoy some benefits and are allowed to study and work while serving their terms. The composition of prisoners is highly diversified based on their demographic factors. The male prisoners outweigh the women prisoners. Due to immigration, there is high racial differentiation among prisoners. Besides, new health concerns have attracted little attention in the past. Cases of mental health issues are increasingly becoming popular in prisons, yet the system is inadequately prepared to handle such. It is possible to deduce that the current prison system is serving its purpose of reforming and rehabilitating rather than simply punishing.
Based on the recent happenings in the prison system, there is a high likelihood that the population of prisoners will likely rise, which will most likely create pressure in prisons. The number of prisoners is growing exponentially while prison facilities are increasing arithmetically. This fact implies that the prisons are soon getting to maximum capacity and will no longer be able to manage all the prisoners. The authorities are likely to explore decarceration strategies to ease prison population pressure. Decarceration is a deliberate process of limiting the number of persons set for imprisonment. This practice is part of Canadian values that believe in not sending people to prisons. It is a practice with historical backing, as Alberta practiced it around the 1990s (Webster, 2014). Alberta employed this strategy as a political solution to cut its spending. Similarly, the current and future regimes can adopt the same since the fiscal crisis is still a prime concern in the prisons system. We expect to see more court-based solutions and more people on probation and parole to avoid prison overcrowding (Department of Justice Canada, 2018).
Further, we expect improved standards in prisons. There is a high probability that prisoners will face minimal to less abuse following the rise of human rights movements. These lobby groups influence policy change and will most definitely induce the authorities to initiate reforms that promote the wellbeing of the prisoners. The trends have a better platform, primarily through social media, to advance their agenda and can easily shape policy. Currently, prisoners stay in moderately good conditions and are allowed some time for their hobbies and visits. We can expect the frequency of visits to go up and prisoners to stay in even better conditions in the future. We even anticipate the abolishment of solitary confinement as some find it inhuman. Nonetheless, the improvement of these factors will largely depend on the availability of government funds. Unless the government privatizes the prisons, little to no change may fail. Due to increased diversity in prison, various health concerns come up, one of which relates to the mental wellbeing of inmates. Thus, we expect the authorities to consider mental health treatments among its prisoners.
The recognition of Canada as a country gave it the power to separate federal and provincial powers. After this, it provided a suitable ground for it to initiate reforms. Ideally, this gave the federal government the capabilities to undertake legislation regarding criminal law (Needham, 1980). Besides, this move in the late 1900s gave rise to specific reforms like early release approved for passing by wardens in 1899. Most notably, the powers led to the institution of several commissions tasked with reshaping the prisons system in Canada. Most of the reforms in the nineteenth century resulted from the federal powers. Some of the reforms that came into effect during the 1900s are establishing women-specific prisons, establishing the National Parole board, and creating the Office of Correctional Investigator (OCI), which plays an oversight role as the offenders’ ombudsman. It is possible to deduce that Canada has taken great strides in ensuring that its prison system serves its intended purpose. These reforms best demonstrate the government’s attitude towards alleviating the prison system. A significant share of these reforms has proven successful as the government has managed to implement and sustain them for a longer time. Reforms like parole have persisted for a long, and the Canadian authorities have worked to intensify it and make it more productive. Also, there are women’s prisons to date. The prison wardens are more competent, and there are fewer cases of abuse of prisoners thanks to these prison reforms. The prisoners are allowed time to engage in their hobbies like sports. They also have more time to interact with their families and friends. Married inmates enjoy conjugal visits while serving their sentences.
However, these reforms face a myriad of challenges as some fail to serve their purpose in their entirety. One of the core problems of reforms is the fiscal crisis. The government faces a budgeting gap, making it hard for it to initiate and implement prison reforms. Due to the budgetary situation, the government ops to privatizing some correctional facilities, which complicates the implementation of other reforms since the government no longer holds powers over the prisons (Griffiths, 1988). Privatization of correctional facilities appears to be the new norm worldwide. Nevertheless, there are varied views regarding this new system. Privatization occurs mainly due to population pressure making it hard for the government to handle. Although privatization seems efficient in other countries like the US, it is not for Canada (Byrne et al., 2019). Canada has previously tried privatizing correctional facilities, and it failed massively. If the fiscal crisis persists, privatization would be the only way to go, which would mean more failure in the prisons system.
Additionally, the OCI has not proven very successful in undertaking its roles. The OCI was established to ensure that the correctional facilities act in the best way to provide rehabilitation to the offenders. However, this has become hard following the financial crisis as it depends on funding from the government to perform. Dispute resolution takes a lot of time, and most cases remain unsolved, thus, rendering the whole oversight process useless. Also, the OCI is limited and can only oversight correctional facilities under the federal government. With the fast-paced popularity of privatization of prisons worldwide, Canada is set to embrace the same soon, which would weaken the OCI. The OCI will have no power to oversee private prisons, making this reform baseless unless the authorities revise it.
To sum up, this investigates how the foundational history of prisons in Canada shapes these prisons’ current and future states. Canada’s prison history heavily borrows from the American system of punishment. This approach later evolved to rehabilitation through the Canadian prisons failed to achieve this objective. The most significant issues at the moment are overcrowding and high diversification. Resultantly, we can anticipate that there will be more decarceration and attention to mental health issues. The Canadian authorities have performed considerably well in initiating reforms as they have managed to sustain them. However, some of these reforms are hard to achieve due to the financial crisis and limited power. In conclusion, we can anticipate further evolution in Canada’s prisons, and most of it is for the better.
References
Byrne, J., Kras, K. R., & Marmolejo, L. M., 2019. International perspectives on the privatization of corrections. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(2), 477-503.
Correctional Service of Canada, 2014. Corrections in Canada: a historical timeline. Correctional Service of Canada
Department of Justice Canada, 2018. What we heard – Transforming Canada’s criminal justice system: A Report on Provincial and Territorial Stakeholder Consultations. Criminal Justice System Review.
Griffiths, C. T., 1988. Canadian corrections: Policy and practice north of 49. The Prison Journal, 68(1), 51-62.
Harris Kathleen., 2018. Liberals move to end solitary confinement of federal prisoners. CBC News.
Needham, H. G., 1980. Historical Perspectives on the Federal-Provincial Split in Jurisdiction in Corrections. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 22(3), 298-306.
Webster, C. M., & Doob, A. N., 2014. Penal reform ‘Canadian style’: Fiscal responsibility and decarceration in Alberta, Canada. Punishment & Society, 16(1), 3-31.
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