Fri, Sep 10/04
A palace and a prison

The Post was on again this week about Canada's criminals being "pampered." This is noteworthy both as a cliché (their "Canada's pampered criminals" editorial ran less than 14 months ago) and as a marked shift in focus — it was not so long ago that they waxed editorial on the deplorable state of Canada's prison system from the prisoner's perspective (though I'll be damned if Google can pick up any scent of it). The gist of it, as I remember, was that Corrections Canada seems too often to house its convicts in inappropriate situations running the gamut from the far-too-luxurious to the third world squalid, and ends up spitting out a bunch of A1 class act recidivists, to borrow a term, as a result.

You don't have to like criminals to consider that record a poor reflection on (and service to) our society, but Canadians are obviously deeply conflicted about just what they want prisons to do. What they emphatically do not want them to do, apparently, is to provide any creature comforts. Certainly, as the case of the "spa day" (or "introduction to cuticular care," if you believe Corrections Canada) that came to light this week showed, the playing of harps and the serving of tea to inmates crosses that thin line.

And maybe it does. Some things — pornography, for instance — have no place in prison environments no matter whether you think prisons should be designed to rehabilitate or to punish. Porn never rehabilitated anyone, and being deprived of it is punishment for most sane men. You will notice, however, that little-to-none of the outrage over the "spa day," which cost the Canadian taxpayer nothing, has anything to do with whether or not it was sound rehabilitative practice. Instead, honest people are simply admitting that they think prisoners should, by definition, live a life of institutionalized deprivation — which is fair enough.

Dishonest people, however, are behaving much along lines I have written about before on my little website here. I can hardly fault the Canadian Professional Police Association for being rabidly anti-inmate, but I can fault them for resorting to snide rhetorical questions (a phenomenon identified here) as a means of not admitting it:

"It's the way Corrections Canada thinks; it's the culture. They say they are about rehabilitation. Well, is the spa day about therapy? Is the barbecue about therapy? This is the big issue."

Steve Sullivan of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, meanwhile, though his organization doubtless does much good, unwittingly exposed the hysteria (as identified here) that partially underlies his movement and (especially) its fervent supporters:

"Which of the violent offenders were there is irrelevant. I know a lot of victims who could use a day like that, a spa day to relieve stress. The victims of violence are under a tremendous amount of stress. Having to take your holidays so you can attend the trial of the person who killed your child can be quite stressful."

Did you catch that? He says it doesn't matter which offenders were at the spa day, but then sees fit to point out that it's stressful when someone kills your child. (It's a sophistic dare, essentially: "Go ahead, disagree with me. Tell me how much you hate people whose children have been killed.")

The Post paraphrases the two positions as "demanding the government rein in a corrections culture that they say places inmates ahead of victims." But that's ridiculous — Corrections Canada has no responsibility to victims of crime. It "contributes to the protection of society by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens." It does so poorly, by all accounts, but it's unreasonable to expect prisons to fashion their inmates' lives in direct correlation to the lives of their victims. If some lunatic chopped off my right arm I might very well want to return the favour, but prisons exist to provide a sober, civilized counterbalance to that sort of retributive justice.

Schadenfreude isn't a crime; nor is bloodlust; but they are poor reflections on character nonetheless. Denial of freedom is punishment, by definition, and rehabilitation is a worthy and useful goal. Corrections Canada clearly has problems, but it's their performance they need to address, not their mission. If harps and tea made good parolees, then I'd say "pinkies out." That said, though I doubt the "spa days" do any concrete harm, the fact that Corrections Canada can offer no coherent reasoning for the program means they are likely doing little if any concrete good.