John Howard Canada is creating a series of podcasts in which former prisoners talk about their experience in prison and re-entering the community. “Voices Inside and Out” talks with people who’ve actually walked through those gates; their personal stories and...
Read More900 words; 4 minute read. The annual performance monitoring report of the Parole Board of Canada is one of the best regular sources of data about criminal justice in Canada – a field where our data are generally quite weak....
Read MoreThis post is 800 words and can be read in about 4 minutes. The new head of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has been given a huge mandate for change in that organization, which operates Canada’s federal prisons and...
Read MoreThis post is about 600 words and can be read in 3 minutes. Canada’s jail and prison system is expensive. Here are some facts: Total spending and comparisons Total (federal, provincial and municipal) public spending on criminal justice in Canada...
Read MoreThis post is about 700 words and takes 3 minutes to read. About a year ago, a website called intersectionalanalyst.com published a piece on Canada’s prison system. The website describes itself as “Making sense of complex social problems through information...
Read MoreThis post is 700 words and will take 3 minutes to read. Suicide rates among people in prison are dramatically higher than those in the general population, although this varies greatly among countries. This is the conclusion of a recent...
Read MoreAnn Walmsley’s book, The Prison Book Club, is about her experience with a book club that began at Collins Bay Institution and then extended to several other federal prisons Book clubs have become integral parts of many prisons in several...
Read MoreReliable information on Canadian prisons and jails is hard to come by. You would think that an institution that deals with many thousands of people each year plus their families and friends, almost always involving a high degree of anxiety,...
Read MoreI.M. GRENADA “Well?” My question pounces with all the subtlety of the Spanish Inquisition. Its target, my 62 year-old cell-dwelling neighbour, Gaton (name changed to protect identity), had just returned from 2 hours and 40 minutes of cerebral ping pong...
Read MorePrisoners have a lot of useful things to say, even if they are rarely asked, about how to improve the criminal justice system. Here’s a slightly edited version of a good recent example: October 19, 2017 (Algonquin Territory / Ottawa)...
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