Ombudsman warns Tories’ tough-on-crime policies creating prison powder keg

Being tough on criminals is a Conservative government hallmark, but the man appointed as Parliament's watchdog for the federal corrections system says the policy is creating a prison powder keg.

Overcrowding, the application of mandatory minimum sentences and a lack of rehabilitation programs are creating the kind of conditions that led to the bloody 1971 riot at Kingston Penitentiary, Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers said in a weekend speech.

The Globe and Mail reported the prison ombudsman made a broad attack on the government's policies, hammering "mass incarceration," "arbitrary and abusive conditions of detention," and making victims' rights the core of the program.

Sapers has long as been dubious about the Conservatives' approach to incarceration. His last annual report, issued in June 2012, documented the rising number of inmates, a growth in double-bunking prisoners in cells meant for one, despite plans to add 2,700 new cells, and the rising cost of the corrections system.

[ Related: Overcrowded jails cause concern inside Canadian correctional system ]

Sapers' report made more than a dozen recommendations in areas such as inmate mental health, treatment for substance abuse and better monitoring of prisoners, especially in double-bunked cells.

His speech Sunday, delivered at a Toronto church to an audience of about 150, Sapers noted the federal inmate population has risen 16.5 per cent in the last decade, although crime rates have fallen steadily in that time.

Sapers said the idea that “punishment with no apparent limits is justified stands many of the principles underlying our democracy and our criminal-justice system on their head."

The current situation has lead to a rise in violent incidents, with corrections officers forced to use restraints, pepper spray and segregation, he said, according to the Globe.

“As penitentiaries become more crowded, they also become more dangerous and unpredictable places," said Sapers, whose position was created in the wake of the four-day Kingston Pen riot that saw two inmates killed.

“To make sure that inmates are not ‘coddled’ has meant making prisons more austere, more crowded, more unsafe and ultimately less effective,” he said. “We seem to be abandoning proportionality and individualized responses in favour of retribution and reprisal.”

But the government sloughed off Sapers' criticisms.

“We make no apologies for standing up for victims’ rights, and ensuring their voices are heard in our Justice system,” Paloma Aguilar, Justice Minister Peter MacKay’s press secretary, said in an email to the Globe.

[ Related: Kingston Penitentiary’s planned closure brings spotlight on almost two centuries of history ]

The spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said the Conservatives' no-nonsense approach has produced results.

“The crime rate has declined, we have closed prisons, and Canadian families feel safer in their communities, Jean-Christophe de Le Rue told the Globe.

Canada's crime rate did indeed fall to a 46-year low in 2012, and the "crime severity index," which weights offences, also dropped by three per cent, the Globe reported last July.

But the crime rate has been falling slowly for decades since peaking in 1991, which experts attribute to a number of factors ranging from an aging population and other demographic changes, to better social and economic conditions and changes to policing.