TORIES AIM TO FORCE INMATES TO WORK IN JAIL

'Too many ways right now for people to avoid that,' Day says

Joseph Brean, National Post Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day
said yesterday that a new Conservative government would require
prison inmates to work during their incarceration.

"We'd like to see people being required to work if they are in jail.
There are too many ways right now for people to avoid that," Mr. Day
told CTV's Question Period.

"We're not looking at this in a punitive way. We want to see people,
if they're going to be in jail for a number of years, let's get them
in a training program, an apprentice program, maybe work towards a
journeyman's certificate, some type of occupational standard that,
when they finally are released from prison, they have some way of
taking care of themselves, rather than doing that illegally."

But Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of
Canada, an advocacy group for inmate reintegration, said this
proposal, and the government's wider approach to crime, represents "a
triumph of good politics over good policy."

"Idleness is the very worst thing inside a prison," Mr. Jones said.
"If you teach a guy to make postal bags, that's great, but once he
gets out, where's he going to use that?"

He cited an inmate farming project at Collins Bay Institution in
Kingston as an example of a program that, while well-intentioned,
leaves inmates with little in the way of marketable job skills.

"If you're going to teach people in prison to work, then you have to
teach them a skill they can use outside," he said. In an information
economy, he said that means teaching with computers, which are
regarded as security threats. And with many inmates poorly educated
to begin with, he said the best work programs are often basic
education, which is more expensive than simple work programs.

In describing the government's pre-election crime and justice agenda,
Mr. Day pledged a shift toward "increased accountability" for offenders.

"For the last 13 years or so under the previous Liberal regime, all
of the focus on rights seemed to be on the rights of the people who
were breaking the law, and certainly even offenders have rights, and
we want to protect those, but we've clearly shifted over the last
21/2 years or so to the rights of victims, and the rights of
law-abiding citizens.

"That's why you'll see more initiatives related to the ombudsman for
victims, which is a position that we put in place, you're going to
see the possibilities raised for increased accountability and
responsibility within the prison system," he said.

He also said that, while some types of crimes are statistically down,
many serious ones are on the rise.

These include "attempted homicide among youth, attempted homicide in
general, violent repeat offenders, the types of crime that really
worry people, and really cause concern, whether it's the seniors who
are worried about their homes being invaded, whether it's the very
worrisome increase in growop operations, which brings in serious
drug-related crime, marijuana-related but also cocaine and crystal meth.

"Identity theft is up, cyber-crime is up. So there are some types of
crime that have gone down, but in the serious areas that really
bother people, even areas of property crime, we're seeing increases,"
Mr. Day said. "That's what we're going after."

He cited a new one-year proposal to equip 30 paroled offenders in
Ontario with global-positioning system bracelets as one promising new
tactic, and also a pledged reform of youth criminal justice.