WHAT ONTARIO WON'T TELL YOU ABOUT ITS JAILS

The Provincial Government Says The Corrections System Needs To Be
Overhauled Because Many Offenders Commit Crimes After Being Released.
There's Just One Problem: They Don't Really Know.

Ontario's Conservative government has repeatedly claimed the provincial
corrections system must be completely overhauled because it does not work.

The central piece of evidence cited by provincial ministers in support of
this claim is the rate at which provincial offenders commit new crimes
after being released: the recidivism rate. "Sadly, 70 per cent to 80 per
cent of inmates re-offend after completing their sentence," said a
government press release issued in 2001 to announce the opening of the
first of Ontario's new superjails.

For years, that figure -- "70 per cent to 80 per cent" -- has been
commonplace in government statements about provincial corrections. In fact,
it has so often been cited as the sole evidence of the need for tough
changes that it can fairly be described as the foundation on which the
government of Ontario built its American-influenced corrections policy.

But that foundation is hollow. The Citizen has learned that the "70 to 80
per cent" figure so often repeated by the government is meaningless.

Last June, the Citizen asked Corrections Minister Rob Sampson's office for
the source of the figure and received the following response from the
minister: "I was astounded that recidivism data was not being collected
systematically by the ministry and have advised ministry staff to develop a
process for this. Recidivism is an important part in our review of the
effectiveness of our correctional system."

If the "70 to 80 per cent" figure did not come from recidivism data, what
was its source? The minister did not say.

Last summer, the Citizen again asked the minister's office to identify the
source of the figure and further asked if Ontario tracked re-offending
using other numbers or methods.

One such method is "re-admission" data -- essentially a count of how many
offenders entering Ontario's jails have been there before.

The federal prison system began collecting re-admission data as a proxy for
true recidivism data in 1995.

The minister's press secretary e-mailed a response. Again, the source of
the oft-quoted numbers was not identified. The press secretary did note
that, with regard to re-admission data, "we do not track this in a
significant way. Your request highlights an area that we are working on
though and will be making an announcement this fall about, that is our work
in the area of recidivism."

This admission is striking given that Conservative ministers had for years
insisted not only that they knew Ontario's recidivism rate but that the
rate was so awful a crackdown was in order. As far back as the Harris
government's first term in office, Bob Runciman, then the solicitor
general, pointed to the alleged recidivism rate as proof that the "the
system is failing."

Mr. Sampson made the same argument using the same number many times. In an
interview with the Citizen last March, Mr. Sampson claimed Ontario's jails
were "producing 80-per-cent recidivism." On other occasions, he has claimed
Ontario's jails are "delivering re-offending rates of 70 or 80 per cent."

Aside from misinforming the public, the government's use of a groundless
figure casts doubts on its correctional policies: The Conservatives' many
reforms to the provincial jails -- all of them in the American
tough-on-crime mould -- were based on a fiction.

Seven weeks ago, the government released performance measures it will use
to judge both publicly and privately operated jails. One of the key
performance measures is "re-offending rates," the benchmark being what the
government says is Ontario's "current re-offending rate." That rate is 57
per cent.

Where did this number come from? Finally, the government is clear. It
defines re-offending as "a return to provincial correctional supervision on
a subsequent conviction." That includes those sent back to a provincial
jail and those given a non-custodial sentence (probation or a conditional
sentence.)

The federal prison system tracks offenders in a similar way, by counting
incoming federal prisoners who have been in federal prisons before. The
current re-offending rate of federal prisoners is 14 per cent. That's down
sharply from 1995/1996, the first year this data was collected, when the
re-offending rate was 38 per cent.

However, there are problems even with Ontario's new re-offending figure
because, unlike the federal number, it is not based on a count of all
incoming provincial offenders. It is drawn only from one sample of
provincial inmates released in 1997. It is also skewed because inmates in
the sample group were all serving sentences of six months or more -- and
since the average sentence in a provincial jail is about three months, the
sample tilts toward more serious offenders than the average in the jails.
And more serious offenders may be more likely to commit new crimes after
release.

That aside, the new provincial re-offending number is at least based on
something. And that is more than can be said for the "70 to 80 per cent"
claim that is the hollow foundation for Ontario's correctional reforms.