Milgaard Inquiry

Since the Inquiry is on hiatus at the moment, I thought that I would expand this discussion to include the prison system in general. I would like to recommend readings by two well-known media men in Ottawa with very different opinions on penal reform.

Firstly, there is Dan Gardner, senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. If you haven't discovered Gardner yet, I suggest that you RUN not walk to the Google search engine, and find everything that you can by this brilliant and controversial reporter. Or if you're lazy, like me, just click on some of the links below to access Dan's articles.

Gardner has written extensively, comparing the American and Canadian penitentiaries. He believes that tougher penalties for criminals simply result in tougher convicts, who are more apt to create problems both within the prison system and upon release. He thinks that Canada has a more compassionate prison system than the United States, but that both could improve by giving prisoners more responsibility, and treating them with basic human decency and respect.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Michael Harris, best-selling author, columnist for the Ottawa Sun, and talk show host on CFRA radio. Michael is equally concerned with the justice system but his empathy lies more with victims of crime than with perpetrators. (On a note related to wrongful convictions, Michael is the author of Justice Denied: The Law versus Donald Marshall. Altogether, Harris' books have been responsible for instigating four separate royal commissions of inquiry!)

According to Harris, inmates have taken over the prisons, and top-level bureaucrats and guards are too afraid or corrupt to speak out about it. He depicts scenarios that sound much like the TV show OZ where prisons are subdivided into various groups composed of different gangs. Violence is common and drug abuse is rife.

That's not the way Gardner sees it. In a 2002 article entitled Inside the supermax Pelican Bay, Gardner declares, "There is serious violence in Canadian prisons, just as there is in prisons everywhere. But relative to other prison systems, Ingstrup (former Corrections Commissioner) says, the violence here is 'very, very low.' It also seems to be declining. During the past decade, there has been a gradual, modest drop in what the Correctional Service of Canada calls 'major security incidents,' including major assaults, fights, escapes and other disruptions."

So which is it? How are we lay people to know who to believe? The Milgaard Inquiry is all about the flaws in the system that doomed an innocent person to spending 23 years in jail. Yet problems within the justice system go way beyond convicting innocent people. There is a malignancy at the core of our prisons in Canada, and the situation is even worse in the United States.

Giving people stricter sentences and incarcerating more of them is not the answer. Gardner notes that many prisoners are illiterate and drug addicted, and come from backgrounds of poverty or abuse. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that race is also a big factor in incarceration; a disproportionate number of blacks are imprisoned in the US. That role is played out by Native Americans in Canada. Gardner advocates a humane and rehabilitative model, much like the ones that are employed in Europe. He is an outspoken supporter of legalization of marijuana because many people in the United States, who are involved in this "victimless" crime, get locked up in prison. They go in at an early age and become demoralized when they receive life sentences. If they're already in for jail, what's preventing them from committing another crime? The only thing that drug dealers learn inside is how to become better criminals, and keeping drugs and prostitution illegal enables organized crime to flourish.

Those are the opinions of two well-reputed investigative journalists in Ottawa, as I understand them. Whose ideas do you support? Jump on the Milgaard Message Board and let us know. Or make your own comments at the end of this blog. I'm looking forward to hearing them.

Sigrid Mac

- "Inside the supermax Pelican Bay" By Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen. April 28, 2002 Sunday Final Edition