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A very good article on the current state of affairs. Shared in accordance with the Fair dealing provisions of the Copyright Act.
Canada’s last military prison costs $2M a year. About half the time, it has no prisoners
By Patrick Cain
National Online Journalist, News Global News
One night at the end of April, just before midnight, three soldiers arrived at the military’s internal prison at the south end of the sprawling base in Edmonton and went to work.
There’s always a list of things for the guards on the night shift to do, explains the prison’s commanding officer. Maj. Paul King – patrolling the building, for example, or stripping and waxing the floors.
Really it’s supposed to be five soldiers, King explains – four guards of junior ranks and an NCO to supervise – but some are away on courses, and some positions aren’t filled.
If there had been a prisoner, they would also have had to check on him regularly. But there wasn’t one, and hadn’t been for ten days, since the last one finished his sentence and left.
The Edmonton detention barracks, a small 25-cell prison run on very rigid military lines – when there are inmates – is falling steadily into disuse. On just over half the days since January 2017, it has had no prisoners at all.
However, it still has a staff of 30: a commanding officer, deputy commanding officer, a sergeant-major with the title of ‘chief disciplinarian,’ an administrative staff and enough guards to run the jail 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, on a system of four six-hour shifts a day.
Running the institution costs about $2 million a year.
For 2016, that works out to about $2,280 per inmate/day, or about ten times the cost of civilian maximum-security custody. In 2015, when there were fewer inmates, it came to $3,900 per inmate/day. (By contrast, Ontario charges the federal government $237.13 per inmate/day to confine immigration detainees in its maximum-security jails.)
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