PORN, DRUGS AND HARD TIMES

It's no surprise that inmates in Canada's prisons routinely possess
contraband such as drugs, knives and alcohol. But how about Play Stations,
Nintendos and G strings? It's all revealed in a just released report by MP
Randy White.

Randy has long been a critic of Corrections Canada and his latest
revelations are outrageous.

Using a smuggled cell phone, inmate Rivo D'Onofrio organized a cocaine
smuggling operation from Costa Rica to Miami.

Another inmate in Ontario's Don Jail ran an international fraudulent
telemarketing scheme while he was supposedly being rehabilitated. Inmates
at the Hamilton Community Correctional Centre used prison phones to ring up
more than $800 worth of calls to sex chat lines. Reach out and touch
someone, indeed.

There's more. Corrections Canada pays for tattoo parlors, needles exchanges
and sex change operations. Which is to say, you pay. Prison guards, who are
not allowed to wear protective vests, must deal with inmates armed with
home made knives, zip guns and contaminated needles. An Alberta judge
actually ruled that an inmate was justified in carrying a concealed knife
for personal protection while incarcerated.

Arrows and tennis balls full of drugs are routinely sent flying over
institutional walls.

Magazine subscriptions in Canadian prisons include Hustler, Barely Legal,
Porn Stars and dozens of other pornographic publications. If this is
rehabilitation, what exactly are we preparing these people for?

It gets worse.

Convicted murderer Anthony Laidlaw was bored at Ferndale Institution. So he
stole $500 from the prison canteen and went for a walk.

Laidlaw got a room at a nearby hotel, a bunch of liquor and a hooker. Three
days later he was broke so he turned himself in. How's that for hard time?

Barbeques, pitch and putt, tennis, baseball and other recreational
activities are readily available. These are supposed to normalize the
environment and keep inmates occupied. But escapes, riots, damage to public
property, stabbings and assaulting staff are still common.

One inmate actually escaped from the Regina Correctional Facility by
telling guards he was someone else who was scheduled to be discharged. They
opened up the doors and he walked away. Sounds like a Canadian version of
The Great Escape, doesn't it?

Given that very few criminals are ever sent to prison we should assume that
only the worst of the worst are actually confined. Yet it appears many
prisons are being run like youth summer camps.

There's an on-going gag in Trailer Park Boys where Ricky keeps explaining
that jail isn't so bad. He notes there's lots of dope, you can get drunk
every night and there's always a party on the weekend.

Trailer Park Boys is a low budget sit-com.

But based on what's happening in Canada's prisons, one could be forgiven
for thinking it's a documentary.

John Martin is a Criminologist at the University College of the Fraser Valley.