NO PLANS FOR NEW PRISONS DESPITE ELECTION PROMISES

Government To Renovate, Upgrade The Existing Facilities

OTTAWA -- The Harper government has no long-term plans to build new
prisons to house an anticipated influx of offenders convicted under
the Conservatives' tough-on-crime initiatives, despite setting aside
up to $245 million for at least one extra penitentiary immediately
after coming to power two years ago.

According to a Correctional Service of Canada capital plan, existing
prisons, which are aging and already full, would be renovated and
expanded to meet increasing demands over the next decade if need be,
but "at this time there are no major prisons envisaged."

The Correctional Service acknowledges, however, that "with the
implementation for various government initiatives in tackling crime,
an increase in the offender population may result."

The information was provided recently upon request to New Democrat MP
Charlie Angus, who was seeking written details from Public Safety
Minister Stockwell Day on the impact of federal anti-crime measures
on Canada's penitentiaries.

The Conservatives ran on a platform of putting more criminals in
prison and keeping them there longer.

Criminologist Neil Boyd said he does not think the government needs
to build any new facilities because its new laws, to date, will not
have much of an impact on the number of people sent to prison.

Canada's 54 federal penitentiaries, for prisoners serving sentences
of two years or more, housed 13,200 offenders in 2006-2007, at a cost
of about $82,000 each. Most facilities are more than 40 years old and
already are operating near capacity.

The government's key initiative, which passed in February, would
increase automatic prison terms for a variety of gun-related crimes,
building on gun-control laws passed more than a decade ago by the
former Liberal government.

Day estimated two years ago that the gun bill would put about 300-400
more prisoners annually in federal penitentiaries.

Boyd thinks the real numbers will be less than that, given that the
bill that eventually cleared the Commons was not as tough as the one
the Conservatives originally proposed.

"I'm not sure it will have any impact," said Boyd, a criminologist at
Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. "Nothing they have done to date
is going to dramatically increase prison populations."

Boyd said the only initiative that will make a significant difference
- -- a proposal to impose minimum mandatory sentences for drug-related
crimes -- has still not passed in Parliament. The opposition parties
have pledged to block the bill. Currently, anyone convicted of
possessing, producing or trafficking illicit drugs receives a
sentence chosen by a judge rather than a mandatory prison term.

"The key issue is the drug bill," said Boyd. "You're going to have a
huge number of people caught up in that, in the tens of thousands,
caught up in that."

In the U.S., for instance, a big increase in the prison population in
the last 20 years is almost totally driven by people serving time for
drug crimes, he said.

Two years ago, in their first federal budget, the Conservatives said
that a new medium-security institution and additional
maximum-security space could be needed to house extra prisoners
captured by a host of tougher sentences proposed in the government's
election platform. At the time, Day pegged the price at somewhere
between $220- to $245-million over five years.

The Correctional Service has not ruled out the possibility of new
prisons in the future. A panel of experts, who recently reviewed the
federal prison system, recommended building new "regional complexes"
instead of renovating and expanding outdated facilities.