NO SMALL PROBLEM IN OUR PRISONS

When 24-year-old Trevor O'Brien was convicted of robbery in 2006, he
sought to serve his sentence in a federal prison, rather than a
provincial jail, in order to access a drug treatment program.

It proved to be a life sentence. O'Brien was one of two inmates who
died following a riot at the Mountain Institution near Vancouver late
last month. He reportedly died of a drug overdose. The other fatality
was a man convicted of sex crimes on young girls. The offender was
held in the general population of the medium-security facility and
died after being assaulted during the riot.

In the aftermath of the riot, unnamed sources quoted by the Globe and
Mail questioned whether the open-area design at the prison contributed
to the riot's spread; whether there were enough officers on duty; and
whether visitors attending a "social" at the prison earlier that day
smuggled in drugs that fuelled the aggressive behaviour of inmates.

The questions will resonate with anyone who read the report of the
Correction Service of Canada Review Panel released last fall.

The report, "A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety," warned safety
was at risk because of "antiquated penitentiaries" built for a
population of inmates intermingling. As decades passed, it became
clear some sub-populations had to be physically separated. The
infrastructure doesn't always support this need.

"The panel is particularly concerned about the safety of front-line
staff and we are of the opinion that they require more tools and
training," the report reads.

Of the key areas of improvement, the panel targeted a need to keep
illicit drugs out of prisons; more structured work days for prisoners;
the construction of mega-prisons to better control security and make
the most of mental health and other services; an emphasis on offender
responsibility and accountability for their rehabilitation efforts;
and, in keeping with that, replacing statutory release with earned
early release.

"The panel has seen inconsistent institutional layouts that create
significant discrepancies in how services are delivered," the report
says. "Of significant concern is how the physical layout of certain
institutions creates environments that are very challenging for staff
to interact with inmates in a manner that gives the proper balance of
static and dynamic security. Some layouts make it difficult for CSC to
provide an overall safe environment for staff."

The panel, which visited penitentiaries across Canada, found
"vulnerabilities" in security with control towers not staffed at all
times. The result has made it easier for those on the outside to get
drugs to inmates, whether by bringing them in during visits or tucking
them inside tennis balls and bouncing them over the fence.

In the Mountain riot, the Globe reported two unarmed correctional
officers were left in charge of 40 prisoners when the trouble began.
Some inmates were armed with aluminum baseball bats taken from the
prison sports equipment room.

The president of the union representing corrections officers said
staff at other institutions had been warning of such an event for years.

And those concerns were echoed by the review panel.

Mountain Institution was built in 1962. It's one of 28 federal prisons
now more than four decades old.

The panel's solution is to construct new prisons to house not just a
few hundred inmates, but perhaps 2,000. The complex would house
various levels of inmates, from minimum to maximum security, in
separate spaces.

Regardless whether one agrees with this suggestion, the report paints
a dire picture of an aging prison system, where the crowd and demands
will only grow as the federal government's crime crackdown takes full
effect with more mandatory minimums for a growing list of offences.
These prisoners soon disappear from sight from Canadians, but for the
sake of the workers in these dangerous environments, they had better
not be out of mind.