HARD TIME IN ONTARIO, AMERICAN-STYLE

From Superjails To Boot Camps, The Tories Have Imported U.S.-Style Justice
To Ontario, And Are Pushing Hard For The Rest Of Canada To Follow Suit.

Just as the Empire State building stands as a pure expression of Art Deco,
so the Maplehurst Correctional Complex embodies the ideals of the new
American school of prison architecture.

Maplehurst is not, however, an American prison. Located just west of
Toronto, it was built under the direction of the Conservative government of
Ontario. And it is more than just an embodiment of the latest American
theories of imprisonment: It is also a symbol of the rise of American-style
"tough-on-crime" policies in this country.

Maplehurst is the first of Ontario's new "superjails," a handful of
enormous institutions that will ultimately replace 31 old jails. The
$89-million project was built onto an existing facility, but the superjails
to follow will be completely new. All will share a design that is pure
Americana.

That design is the product of the American prison boom of the last 20
years. In fact, so many U.S. prisons have been built in the last two
decades that a distinctive school of prison architecture has emerged, one
in which stone walls, guard towers and fortress-like cell blocks are
replaced by squat, two-storey concrete buildings whose bland facades are
punctuated only by occasional, narrow windows. Seen from a distance, they
could be industrial parks. Only the profusion of video cameras and fencing
topped with razor wire betray their purpose.

Maplehurst is the first Canadian jail done in this bland new style. With
its innocuous government-of-Ontario logos, Maplehurst could pass for a
Transportation ministry office.

But the dull face of American-style prisons belies the cunning of the
interior design. Lockups such as Maplehurst are designed to break down the
prison population into small groups whose movements can be controlled more
by electronics than by muscle, making the institutions cheaper and safer to
operate than old pens such as Sing Sing or the Kingston Penitentiary.
Peripheral walls are no longer necessary because inmates never come close
to the perimeter of the prison. Instead, they live in isolated complexes
within the prison, rarely seeing the light of day.

At Maplehurst, these complexes are called "pods." Guards work at a command
post that sits like the hub of a wheel, at the centre of six spoke-like
sections, or "wedges."

At the back of each wedge are two levels, each containing eight cells,
housing 32 prisoners in all. Every 12-foot-by-seven-foot cell holds two
bunks and a desk. In the middle of the wedge is a common area with
immovable tables and chairs and a TV, along with showers and sinks.
Virtually everything a prisoner can see or touch -- desks, seats, toilets,
tables, doors, floors, walls, and ceilings -- is made of concrete or
stainless steel.

The pods are designed so guards can see directly into each cell from the
command post. In the words of Rob Sampson, Ontario's minister of
corrections, "there's nowhere to hide."

It is the final realization of a plan devised two centuries ago by
philosopher Jeremy Bentham: the "panopticon," a prison where inmates would
be constantly watched from a single command post, penitent sinners under
the unblinking eye of the Lord.

More prosaically, the design saves money. Not only does it take fewer
guards to watch over the inmates, but guards are no longer needed as
turn-keys: Instead, a skeleton staff can simply open doors electronically
from their command post.

Inevitably, the pod design and reduced staff mean guard interaction with
inmates is severely curtailed. This is hardly a loss in the eyes of Mr.
Sampson. In some prisons, "the correctional officer needs to be more of a
buddy than a person in charge of a unit," he says. But what prisoners
really need is "a crash course in recognizing authority and what authority
means," he argues.

The Conservatives have introduced guards' uniforms almost identical to
those of the OPP, and have given guards military-style ranks, which
prisoners must use when addressing them. Respect for authority, Mr. Sampson
says, can't be taught "by having the correctional officers walking around
in jeans and T-shirts and bringing them down to the same level as the
individuals who are there."

For the prisoners at Maplehurst, the pod is their whole world. Visits,
classes, programs -- all take place within the pod. Even court appearances
can be done from jail, via video conferencing.

Prisoners are never allowed outside, even for exercise. In each pod, one
wedge functions as a yard, with a concrete floor and walls two storeys
high. This barely complies with a United Nations convention requiring that
prisoners be given outdoor exercise: At one end of the wedge, there's a
small gap covered by wire mesh between the roof and the outer wall. If a
prisoner looks through the gap, he can see the sky, but nothing else.

Even in Pelican Bay State Prison, a maximum-security prison in California,
inmates have access to an outdoor yard. Only when they are "locked down" --
held in their cells as punishment -- is exercise restricted to an indoor
courtyard. And that yard, while a little smaller than Maplehurst's, is more
open to the sky.

The comparison is all the more striking since the Ontario prison holds only
people awaiting trial and those sentenced to less than two years, whereas
Pelican Bay was built to house the state's "worst of the worst." By
contrast, the most common offence of provincial inmates is break-and-enter,
followed by theft and possession of stolen property.

Maplehurst is, then, a comparatively tough facility -- a description the
government would probably approve of. The Tories have gone to great lengths
to make the new jails sound harsh: Last spring, the province devoted a page
in its press release announcing Maplehurst's opening to statistics such as
the total length of razor wire used (300 metres) and the number of security
systems (21). We are also told that the jail, at 1,500 beds, is "the
largest correctional facility in Canada." An earlier press release lauds
Maplehurst's "advanced maximum-security technology" and repeats the words
"safe" and "secure" 11 times in a single page. Words such as rehabilitation
or reintegration rarely appear.

"Jails should be punishment," Mr. Sampson told the Citizen. Asked about the
century-old dictum of Sir Alexander Paterson, England's commissioner of
prisons, that "men come to prison as a punishment, not for punishment," Mr.
Sampson says he disagrees. Just taking away a prisoner's liberty is not
enough; convicts must also be subjected to a harsher environment. "Because
I think that's what people expect," he says. "People don't expect us to be
locking inmates up in the Waldorf-Astoria."

Under the Constitution, the federal government has the greatest influence
on the criminal justice system: The provinces administer most courts and
run jails for young offenders and adults awaiting trial or sentenced to
less than two years. But the federal government controls the Criminal Code
and other key pieces of legislation and handles prisoners sentenced to more
than two years.

Within Ontario's limited bailiwick, the Tories have done all they can to
Americanize the justice system, with the superjails serving as the
centrepiece of their reforms. Other measures include:

Parole: New regulatory and administrative changes have made it much more
difficult for an offender to be released by the provincial parole board.
The rate of successful requests for parole has been cut in half, a trend
the government cites as proof "Ontario's tough parole standards are
working," although it has not shown released offenders are now less likely
to commit new crimes.

The Prisoner Work Program: In addition to increasing the number of
prisoners doing work in the community, the government issued inmates with
bright orange coveralls and now identifies them as prisoners on large signs
near their work area.

Boot camps: Despite extensive research showing that American boot camps
have consistently failed, the province opened a "strict discipline"
facility for young offenders near Barrie. The government has cited a recent
independent consultant's study as evidence its boot camp works. In reality,
the report said no such thing (the study will be detailed later in this
series). Still, the government is planning more boot camps, for adults as
well as young offenders.

But the Tories have not been content to limit their get-tough crusade to
their provincial jurisdiction. They have also been lobbying hard for the
federal government to follow their lead. In open letters to various federal
ministers, Mr. Sampson has attacked the federal prison system for its
"glorified country clubs," with their "golf courses, horse stables, and
eat-in kitchens." He has also repeatedly demanded the abolition of the
federal statutory-release law, under which a prisoner is usually freed
after serving two-thirds of his or her sentence.

Ontario has also urged that the sentencing system be replaced with
"mandatory sentencing guidelines" that would set "consistent minimum
sentences" across the board (currently, minimum sentences apply only to a
few specific crimes, such as murder).

Guidelines such as these, which would eliminate much or all of the
discretion Canadian judges have traditionally exercised, are at the heart
of the American model.

The Ontario Tories have been particularly vociferous in their attacks on
federal young-offenders policy. Their demands include having 16- and
17-year-olds automatically tried and sentenced as adults if they are
charged with serious crimes; imposing mandatory jail time for youths who
use or threaten to use a weapon; setting higher maximum sentences for young
offenders; and restricting the use of alternative measures to first-time,
non-violent young offenders.

The rationale for such changes, according to David Young, Ontario's
attorney general, is deterrence. "We'd like to send a message to ... all
young people that if they commit serious crimes there will be serious
consequences."

Mr. Sampson also wants the federal government to create a new power to
detain some violent sex offenders even after their sentences have expired.
Under the current system, a person can be deemed a "dangerous offender"
only at the start of his sentence. "At the end of those sentences," Mr.
Sampson says, "if it's been deemed that they are still a risk to society in
that category, we need to have the courage to say society's rights trump
their individual rights and they should stay."

Mr. Sampson's proposal would be a major step toward imprisoning people not
for crimes they have committed, but for those the authorities believe they
will commit. And it might not end with sex offenders. Asked whether this
policy could be extended to others, Mr. Sampson said, "I think we need ...
to start with sexual predators."

Again, the minister is following the lead of the U.S., where 16 states,
using similar provisions, have kept about 900 people in prison past the end
of their sentences.

Ontario's Conservatives have been so vehement in pushing crime reforms they
have overshadowed the federal tough-on-crime party, the Canadian Alliance.

But it was the Alliance, in its former guise as the Reform party, that
first embraced American crime policies. In the Alliance view, our
communities are becoming more dangerous because of a weak Criminal Code,
liberal judges, and prisons so luxurious that time spent inside them is, in
the words of a recent fundraising letter, "a vacation." In response to
these perceived failings, some of the party's MPs have proposed exotic
ideas, such as caning young offenders or building prisons in the far North.

Officially, however, the party has adhered closely to orthodox American
policies. Its 2000 election platform called for:

- - Automatic "dangerous offender" status for anyone convicted of a third
serious or violent crime. Since "dangerous offender" status almost always
means indefinite detention, this would effectively be an American-style
"three-strikes-and-you're-out" law.

- - New mandatory minimum sentences on crimes ranging from drug trafficking
to immigrant smuggling to stealing a firearm.

- - The abolition of statutory release.

- - The elimination of the "faint-hope clause," which allows those serving
life sentences to apply for release after 15 years.

- - The automatic revocation of parole for any breach of conditions.

- - Making prison visits "a privilege, not a right."

- - Lowering the age at which a child can be prosecuted in the youth criminal
justice system to 10.

- - Automatically trying those 14 or older as adults if they commit serious
violent crimes, crimes with a firearm, or multiple serious crimes.

- - Trying youths aged 16 or older as adults for all crimes.

The net effect of these policies would be to send more people to prison for
much longer. The prisons themselves would become, in the words of Alliance
justice critic Vic Toews, "austere."

Tough-on-crime politicians in Canada openly acknowledge the influence of
American policy on their views. In interviews with the Citizen, Mr. Toews,
Mr. Young, and Randy White, the Alliance party's solicitor-general critic,
all cited American experience and reforms in arguing for a crackdown here.

Even the language they use is borrowed from the U.S. The slogan "tough on
crime" originated in the U.S. So did the terms "zero tolerance," "truth in
sentencing," "adult time for adult crime," "boot camp," and "no-frills
prisons." Many of these phrases were invented by Newt Gingrich, Dan
Lungren, and a handful of other Republican congressmen in the early years
of the Reagan administration. Canadian get-tough politicians often use the
terms "felon" and "felony" even though neither exists in Canadian law (the
Canadian equivalent is an indictable offence). And when Mr. Sampson and
others say, as they frequently do, that prisons must be "places which no
one will want to call home," they are echoing a chorus of American
politicians, such as former South Carolina governor David Beasley, who
promised to make that state's prisons "a place to which no one would want
to return" in 1995.

The Ontario Tories also abandoned the British and Canadian tradition of
giving bills neutral titles in favour of American-style, highly partisan
rhetoric. The Tories' package of suggested amendments to the federal Youth
Criminal Justice Act, for example, is titled: "The
No-More-Free-Rides-For-Young Offenders Act." The Tories also copied the
American practice of naming laws after victims of crime: Ontario now has
"Christopher's Law" and "Brian's Law," for example.

Far more seriously, Canadian get-tough politicians are following the lead
of their American counterparts in almost completely ignoring criminological
research. Scores of criminal justice documents from the Ontario government
and the Alliance party were reviewed for this series. Not one referred to
criminological research.

Similarly, in lengthy interviews, advocates of the get-tough approach were
asked whether they knew of evidence that supported their proposals: Not
once was research cited, nor did anyone offer to later look up research.

They relied instead on personal anecdotes. Mr. Young, for example, insisted
tougher prisons effectively deter crime. Asked for evidence of this, Mr.
Young, a former lawyer, responded, "I can tell you from my practice that
... the thought of ... (serving) hard time scared people. When they thought
they were heading up to Brampton to one of the lightweight correctional
institutions, it wasn't of any concern to them."

Mr. Young also claimed mandatory-minimum sentences are an effective
deterrent. He admitted he didn't have any statistics to support his
opinion, but said, "I have spoken to victims, I've spoken to accused, so
that is certainly my view of life."

Mr. Sampson even flatly rejected criminological research on the critical
question of deterrence. Calling most such research "malarkey," Mr. Sampson
argued that "it's totally impossible to measure" deterrence because you
can't determine how many crimes may have been prevented by any given
measure. Furthermore, he considers the crime data on which such projections
are based unreliable, pointing out that this information depends on factors
such as people's willingness to report crimes. "Nuisance crimes that 10
years ago we would not consider to be (merely) a nuisance aren't even being
reported any more."

University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob was appalled at Mr. Sampson's
comments. "There are scores of studies on the impact of the severity of
punishment. None that I know of are done the way the minister replies," he
said. "Perhaps it is too optimistic to expect that a corrections minister
would know something about corrections or deterrence."

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh, also noted that the methods used to study deterrence are
accepted even by the minority of academics who support tougher sentences.

It is perhaps not surprising that populist parties such as the Alliance and
Ontario Tories have little regard for research and evidence. Randy White
has often spoken of bypassing the "bureaucrats" and the "ivory towers."

In a major speech on justice policy before the last election, former
Alliance leader Stockwell Day declared, "I believe that the real wisdom in
this country concerning the criminal justice system resides in the
law-abiding citizens who may not know the exact section number of the
(legislation) that's causing the problems ..."

John Reynolds took an even more populist tack when he spoke about his
get-tough views with a CBC interviewer in March 2000. Then the Reform
party's justice critic and, until this week, the acting leader of the
Opposition, Mr. Reynolds declared, "I don't care how many people ... knock
what I say, 'cause I can tell you when I walk into the grocery store the
day after you play this program, they're going to stop me and say, 'John,
good for you.'"