Prison official contradicts his own department
Eastern Ontario Agri-News / Martha Tanner / May 2010
The arguments to close Canada's prison farms by Correctional Services Canada (CSC) are so full of holes you could drive a tractor through them. However, if CSC has its way, there won't be any tractors left to worry about.
At the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Ross Toller, CSC's Regional Deputy Commissioner for Ontario, stated that closing the prison farms is a matter of public safety, because less than one per cent of the inmates who participate in the prisons' agribusiness programs find work in agriculture. "It is very intuitive and very well understood that if you gain employment, the likelihood of recidivism is less," he told the committee.
However, when pressed by committee members, Toller was unable to provide any statistics about other employment that prison farm participants may have found or on recidivism rates. He could not even provide the committee members with the name of the strategic review document that purportedly recommends the closure of Canada's six remaining prison farms.
