TORY PLAN TO JAIL MORE PEOPLE WILL COST BILLIONS

Up To 23 Prisons Will Need To Be Built Because Facilities Are Full

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's tough-on-crime agenda would cost
billions of dollars in additional spending and force the government
to build new prisons as Canada moves toward a U.S. style of justice.

Experts say skyrocketing costs are a certainty, and even an analysis
by the federal government estimates that the Conservative plan to
imprison more people and keep them there longer could mean building
up to 23 new prisons because existing penitentiaries are full.

The costs of increased imprisonment are not mentioned in the latest
Conservative election platform.

Criminologist Neil Boyd described the Conservative plan as "an
extremely expensive agenda of prison building."

It costs an average of $82,000 a year to house each federal prisoner
and billions more to build and maintain additional facilities.

Mr. Boyd, a professor at Simon Fraser University, called on the
government to come clean on details of the plan, projected costs and
solid evidence that keeping people in jail for longer deters crime.

"There's no evidence it will make us a safer society and it involved
an enormous expenditure of funds," he said.

The government cost analysis, prepared by Correctional Services of
Canada during the 2004 election campaign, estimates extra prison
spending at somewhere between $5 billion and $11.5 billion over 10
years, depending on the number and types of facilities needed,
according to a document obtained by the Citizen.

But the costs could be significantly greater because that figure,
based on four Conservative election promises, does not take into
account several other key prison-related pledges that were added in
the recent campaign that vaulted the party to victory.

The new plan calls for more automatic jail terms, severely
restricting "house arrest" sentences that allow people to serve their
time in the community, ending early release after serving two-thirds
of a sentence and imposing consecutive rather than concurrent
sentences for certain serious crimes.

The government also proposes to repeal the "faint-hope" clause that
gives prisoners serving life sentences a chance at early release, and
to jail serious repeat offenders indefinitely.

The government has completed an updated cost analysis based on the
Conservatives' more expansive law-and-order agenda, but refuses to
release the spending estimates.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who has seen the new figures,
acknowledged the government's plan could strain the $1-billion-a-year
prison system, but he said it's a worthwhile price to pay.

"If there's going to be an increase in that, and it is going to make
our streets and homes and parks safer, then so be it," Mr. Day said
in an interview. "I think most citizens are prepared to see the
government spend more money if that's what it takes to give the bad
guys more time to think about what they've done."

The Conservative plan will send Canada down the same road as the
United States, which has the highest incarceration rate in the
western world, Mr. Boyd predicted.

A study prepared for the Canadian Justice Department last year noted
that the Australia Bureau of Statistics reported in 2003 that the
prison population in its Northern Territory increased 42 per cent
since the inception of mandatory sentencing.

Data also shows that the stiffened penalties have not lowered crime rates.

There are already 29 minimum mandatory sentences in Canada's Criminal
Code, half of which were imposed in 1995 gun control legislation that
increased punishment for crimes committed with firearms.