Prison Overcrowding In Canada Case Study

As many Canadians focus their time on social media, they have yet to acknowledge major issues in our country let alone our international community. Throughout the years, prison environments have improved in many ways but with incarceration rates on the rise since the late 1880s, there has been concerns. A critical matter today in Canada is prison overcrowding. Many prisons around the country have exceeded its facilities maximum capacity, consequently the prisoner population is accumulating. With this increasing inmate population, there is a decline in correctional spending (Howard 1996). In Canada, 21,704 adults are in provincial/territorial custody, and 15,141 in federal custody adding to 36,845 adults in custody throughout the country. (Statistics

(Brosnahan 2013) The spending cost for prisons have been discussed, the following was said “The federal government has undertaken a plan to spend $600 million on 2,700 new cells in prisons across Canada, but that will take several years. At the same time, the government has announced cuts to the budget of the correctional service” (Brosnahan 2013). Consequently, because the correctional budgets are cut, construction for expansion of prisons is the temporary solution. Similarly, due to the decrease in budget it requires more correctional staff to overlook those inmates. The corrections system is not able to hire more staff because of the lower budget, making it more dangerous inside penitentiaries to stay under control. With this increase in prisoners, penitentiaries have a risk of constant increase in violence among inmates and even staff. (Brosnahan 2013) As stated above the environment within the penitentiary is critical as well as the security of correctional staff and offenders. Due to the simple fact of having overpopulated prisons, everyone’s safety is at risk. Also making it difficult for frontline staff to keep order, security and healthy environment while still trying to keep the rights of prisoners in mind at all times.

Within Canada, overcrowding has been on the rise. Nonetheless, overcrowding is found in all prisons. From the federal level to the provincial/territorial

(Winterdyk & Weinrath 2013). As a result, overcrowding prisons gradually became the norm. Many are curious as to why overcrowding in penitentiaries happened in the first place. Although times have changed since the late 1800s, crimes were different from than compared to now. Likewise, our list of offences now is much larger than before. For instance, the industrial revolution had an up rise in the early 1900s. Technology was beginning, and many goods are used now were invented for example a Toyota car. This adaptation caused an increase in property crimes adding to the list of offences. Another example would be Fur Trades in Canada, many knew the values of fur and would steal fur from others. Furthermore, the Canadian Government has used the “tough on crime” approach, which has led to serve time for minor crimes and in many cases serving less than a year. Correctional Service Canada has low spending cost and in addition, the cost of housing an inmate in federal prison is $298 per day; at the provincial/territorial level it costs $196 per day. I believe this increase in crime rates and multiple offences contributes to overcrowding in prisons. As times are constantly changing, and with technology growing at a rapid rate and an increase in drug use, these factors contribute to increasing populations within