Letter of the Day | Two prisons, not one, for security and rehabilitation

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The word ‘security’, for most people, refers to the physical confinement of their inmates. It means that the confinement must be stringent and tight, especially when the talk is of a high-security facility. Put another way, it refers to the limited amount of movement, space and freedom allowed.

This is of considerable importance when, as Minister Cuthbert-Flynn notes, cost is given primary attention in contemplating a new facility. Cost is determined by the amount of space or freedom allocated to each inmate, and space should be determined by both inmate rehabilitation need and societal control need.

When the two needs are combined, it is a large institution that is planned for, because in the forefront of the minds of governmental planners is societal control. But societal control requires, for the inmate, limited space and very restricted freedom. Only in this way is control exercised.

The problem is that the limited space imposed on all inmates usually does not meet the need for rehabilitation, the goal to which planners are also committed. This requires more space than the proposed combined facility allows. The root of the problem is the very secondary way in which rehabilitation tends to be treated. It is a point made also by Minister Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn.

“Too often, the public conversation has focused solely on the cost of constructing a new correctional facility. Far less attention has been given to the economic, social, and human cost of continuing to rely on infrastructure inherited from another century, facilities never intended to meet modern correctional standards, support rehabilitation, or serve communities that have since grown around them,” she said.

If, then, inmate space or freedom is the criterion that should determine what the new high-security prison must look like and cost, it should really be two separate institutions. One institution will be small, strict and relatively costly. It will provide only the limited space needed to control those against whose predation our society has to be protected. The other institution will be large, more free and far less costly. It will rehabilitate inmates to come back into society as healthy contributing members.

Tamarind Farm is an example of the space that real rehab calls for. When this is neglected for the nearly 4,000 inmates in the combined facility, the very function of a ‘place of correction’ is frustrated. Let us hope that Cuthbert-Flynn’s insight will guide the Government’s decision in its plans for the new prison.

HORACE LEVY