Rehabilitation must drive prison planning

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The word ‘security’ with reference to prisons refers, for most people, to the physical confinement of their inmates. It means that the confinement must be stringent, tight, especially when the talk is of ‘high’ security. Put another way, though, it refers to the small amount of freedom allowed.

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

When the two needs are combined, it is a large institution that has to be planned for, because at the forefront of the minds of governmental planners is societal control. But societal control requires that inmates have limited space and restricted freedom. Only thus 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 larger space than the proposed combined facility allows. The root of the problem is the secondary role that rehabilitation tends to play. It is a point also made by Minister 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.

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 this Government’s plans for the new prison.

HORACE LEVY