Lecture 21: Corrections 3—

Incarceration
“…few fictional accounts of life behind bars accurately portray the
boredom, despair, and loneliness that inmates experience, as well as the
bleak living conditions.”
--Ruddell (2020: 259).
Development of the Modern
Prison in Canada
Punishing the body
• As mentioned, before the nineteenth century, jails were
predominately used for holding people awaiting trial/punishment

• Before that time, punishments tended to focus on harming the

body—corporal and capital punishment
Rise of the Prison as a form of punishment
The rise of the modern prison is based on two models:
• Pennsylvania Model (1829)
• Strong Quaker influence
• Prisoners kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day (reading the bible)
• Talking forbidden
• “…the long periods of isolation and harsh conditions of confinement resulted in a high
proportion of prisoners developing mental health problems” (Ruddell, 2020: 260).
• Auburn Model (1819-1823)—reform came from undertaking hard labour in silence
Rise of Prisons in Canada
• Kingston Penitentiary
• Completed in 1835
• Based more on the Auburn model
• Prison believed to be a deterrent and as
a way to reform prisoners through hard
work
• Moral re-education was the focus
The movement towards modern reform
• Late 19th Century: a slow shift toward eliminating many of
the initially punitive practices:
• Separation of youth offenders
• Then, in the 20th Century…
• 1935 Federal government moved towards the “Medical Model”:
Inmates were believed to be ill and were to be “treated” then
“cured”…
• Archambault report (1938)—provided the basis for postwar
incarceration
• Separation of offenders with mental health issues
• Reduced use of corporal punishment
• This report’s major conclusion: the goal of prison is NOT ONLY to
protect society, but also to rehabilitate and reform offenders
Post World War 2 Corrections
• Following World War II, a rehabilitative model emerged, which
emphasized:
• Vocational training
• Education
• Therapy
• Extension of probation services

• The construction of prisons rapidly grew…

Questioning the Medical/Rehabilitation Paradigm
• 1960s/1970s the rehabilitative model was being
routinely criticized, and many people were calling for
a return to the punishment model

• Martinson (1974) paper entitled Nothing works

argued that the rehabilitation model had failed to
achieve its goal of reducing crime and recidivism

• Thus, the rise of penal populism, which is basically

were politicians in a democratic society feel pressure
to give the voters what they want (and they want a
more punitive system)
So…since the emergence of prisons in Canada,
there have been three main operating styles:

• Custodial (punishment) Model (<1935)

• Rehabilitation/Medical Model (post World War 2 to the early

1970s)

• Then came the Reintegration Model (post early 1970s)

Canada’s Incarceration Rate Relative to Other Western European Countries (2019)

Source: World Prison

Population List online
(retrieved February 12,
2019
at https://www.prisonst
udies.org/highest-to-
lowest/prison-
population-total).
Canada’s Imprisonment Rate(s)
Total, Federal, and Provincial Adult Imprisonment Rates per
100,000 Residents (1951-2014)

Source:

https://www.justice.gc.c
a/eng/rp-pr/jr/vea-
avp/p14.html
Presently, there are 216 correctional facilities across
Canada
• 173 provincial/territorial institutions
• 43 federal institutions (Goff, 2020: 359)
Canada’s Incarceration Rate Relative to Other Western European Countries (2019)

Source: World Prison

Population List online
(retrieved February 12,
2019
at https://www.prisonst
udies.org/highest-to-
lowest/prison-
population-total).
USA is off
the
scale…
 Imprisonment
of Maori in
New Zealand

Reported
and
Recorded
Offences:
declining
from the
mid-1990s
Source:
Office of the
Correctional
Investigator
of Canada
So what drives increasing incarceration rates?
Don’t rising rate of crime influence rates of imprisonment?

Not necessarily…

“Neil and Carmichael (2015) examined the provincial use of incarceration and found that as
the size of the Indigenous and visible minority populations increased, so did the use of
custody—which supports the conflict perspective… where populations that are seen as
threatening are harshly controlled by the justice system.” (Ruddell, 2020: 207)

As Neil and Carmichael (2015: 327) conclude on the racism issue:

“…it appears that minority threat theory is relevant in the Canadian context despite
views that the society is less racist. Our findings show that as minority representation
grows in Canadian provinces, prison admissions rise in tandem.”

Where Indigenous populations are high, Indigenous rates of imprisonment tend to be well
above average or extremely high…
“The largest numbers of Aboriginal people
lived in Ontario and the western provinces
(Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and
British Columbia). Aboriginal people made
up the largest shares of the population of
Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.”
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-
enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-
x2011001-eng.cfm

Saskatchewan’s rate of imprisonment 2017/2018:

(207 adults per 100,000 population)—most
prisoners are Indigenous
So what drives increasing incarceration rates? (cont.)

Also, “Sprott and Doob (1998) analyzed the use of custody and found a
weak relationship between the amount of police-reported crime…and
the use of custody. Instead, the differences in the number of
admissions and the length of sentences across the provinces and
territories may be the result of factors such as public support for
offender [1] rehabilitation or [2] punishment.” (Ruddell, 2020: 207)

Thus, penal populism…

First up, does [1] rehabilitation in prison
reduce recidivism/crime rates?
5 types of treatment programs:
1 General crime prevention,
2 Violence prevention,
3 Sex offending,
4 Substance abuse programs,
5 Integrated interventions to develop skills to overcome everyday
challenges and stress (Ruddell, 2020: 268-269),

Results: programs like this have reduced recidivism by 17% (Bonta and
Andrews, 2017, cited in Ruddell, 2020: 269)

CORCAN
[2] Does increasing the severity of punishments
reduce recidivism/crime rates?

“Doob, Webster, and Gartner (2014, p. A-3), prominent Canadian

scholars, examined studies of crime control policies and observed that
“no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall
body of research literature … believes that crime rates will be
reduced…by raising the severity of sentences [LIKE IMPOSING
LONGER/HARSHER PRISON SENTENCES]”
27 March, 2019: “UCP Leader Jason Kenney
pledges $30M to get tough on crime”
“UCP Leader Jason Kenney laid out an extensive plan to combat what
he calls a "crime wave" sweeping Alberta.”
“Kenney told a news conference …that the [THEN] current NDP
government has been "soft" on crime.
He vowed to crack down on criminals who get out of jail without
serving enough time.
"The wrong people are getting parole," he said. "This is not a justice
system.””
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/kenney-
unveils-crime-strategy-1.5073795
Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie in his book Limits to Pain (1981) argues
that prisons are in fact a “pain delivery system”

Sykes (1958): The “pains of imprisonment”

1. Loss of liberty
2. Deprivation of goods and services
3. Loss of relationships
4. Loss of autonomy
5. Deprivation of security

Higher security prisons are such ”painful” places that inmates spend a
considerable amount of time and energy devoted to trying to alleviate this
pain” though the use of drugs and alcohol…
 “Hurt people hurt
Main point:
people.”—Yehuda Berg
 “Hurt people hurt people”
Many people
are hurt
(emotionally,
physically
and/or sexually) Some people lash out by
then hurting “society”
Released prisoners are (in some way)
In response, ”society”
rejected by society
hurts—punishes—these people
because they’re labeled
by sending them to prison
’criminals’ and social
outcasts, and feel “hurt” Hurt people hurt people
by society

Many prisoners feel the pains of

All victims of those who inflict harm in
prison—like other prisoners or prison
guards—then feel justified in inflicting
harm on their perpetrators (more hurt)
imprisonment and harm other
prisoners (physical assault/sexual
violence), prison guards, and/or
themselves (self-harming)
 If prisons are typically failed institutions, why does
Canada continue to increase its investment in
them?

Time
Kingston “New Brunswick Four new prisons The number of federal Presently: 216 correctional
Penitentiary Penitentiary built between 1868- correctional facilities in facilities across Canada
(1835) (1841), 1880 1961: 19 --43 federal institutions
Nova Scotia --173 provincial/territorial
Penitentiary institutions
(1844).”

The size of a prison system is not controlled by the number of committed acts
labeled as crimes but by the amount of pain that a society is willing to impose
on its citizens…
--Nils Christie (1981)
“The “tough on crime” approach taken by the former
Conservative federal government from 2006 to 2015 has been
criticized because it rejects evidence-based practices that
were demonstrated to reduce crime in favour of politically
popular strategies that were less effective or might have
even contributed to more crime (see Kelly & Puddister, 2017).
Additional problems with getting tough on crime include the
fact that imprisoning people is an expensive proposition and
that incarceration can be harmful to both the prisoner and
their families due to the disruption it has on their household
income, future employment prospects, and reputation in their
communities.” (Ruddell, 2020: 212-213)
So how have countries whose policy is driven by
research evidence (and not penal populism)
approached their use of prisons?

“Mohsin (2014) observed that Norway does not have enough prison
beds for offenders sentenced to incarceration. As a result, there were a
larger number of people who had been convicted of a crime but were
living in the community awaiting a bed to become available before
starting their sentence. This is not a new problem: Norwegian prison
officials have used waiting lists since the 1990s” (Ruddell, 2020: 207)

“In Norway” the authorities have had a “resistance to any expansion of

the prison estate…” (Pratt, 2008: 135)
Number of prison sentences in the “waitlist” prison queue 2009–17 (The Norwegian Prison Service 2018: 56)
____________________________________________________________________________________
Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Sentences 522 902 926 768 1,176 1,181 595 261 157

“When the conservative and progressive party came into office in 2013, the
government proposed more drastic means to reduce the queue… The most
controversial of these involved renting prison capacity in the Netherlands
from 2015 to 2018. The authorities discontinued this measure in 2017, when
the prison queue was drastically reduced, to what is an all-time low.”
https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/60/2/363/5529487
Summary
• Looked into the development of the modern prison in Canada (Custodial
(punishment) Model; Rehabilitation/Medical Model; Reintegration Model)
• Explored some factors that drive increasing incarceration rates (like racism,
public support for offender rehabilitation or punishment, and penal
populism)
• Delved into whether or not increasing the severity of punishments will
reduce recidivism and crime rates
• Presented the concept of “Hurt People Hurt People” and criticized the
“tough on crime” approach…
• And we touched on how countries whose policy is driven by research
evidence (and not penal populism) deal with their imprisonment of law
breakers…