Custom «Structure of Canadian Prisons and Parole» Essay Paper

In accordance with the structure of Canadian prisons, most federal offenders partially undergo their terms in prisons. The rest of the time is devoted to serving in their communities under the supervision of the Correctional Service of Canada. Such a strategy is designed with the conviction of the fact that most prisoners are prone to become complient with the law citizens after taking part in the social programs of supervised release. It has been implemented with the strong confidence that society is protected when the criminals are being controlled in terms of helping them to change to some extent. The aim of convictions is to give the prisoners supervision and possibilities to implement their contribution in the community. Though, the offenders are required to be released only in the case they are regarded not to be dangerous and have completed more than 60 per cent of their term. Another possible variant of being exposed to release is the unlikliness to commit crimes. Undoubtedly, if the prisoners overstep the boundaries while being on the release, they go back to prison (Correctional Service Canada, 2010).

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The Corrections and Conditional Release Act contains the authority to give parole. Under the CCRA, the National Parole Board “has exclusive jurisdiction and absolute discretion to grant, deny, terminate or revoke parole for inmates in federal, territorial, and many provincial institutions, except for cases under the jurisdiction of provincial parole boards” (Correctional Service Canada, 2010). The NPB with the help of CSC forms recommendations and reports. Therfore, CSC of Canada control the process of granting a prisoner parole withing having been ascertained that he/she will keep to the condition of a certain release. Correctional Service is considered to be the Canadian agency on the federal level that is responsible for the processes of rehabilitation of criminals sentenced to more than two years.

The Prisoner Processing Centre aims at holding protesters who were sentenced during the Group of Twenty and serves for providing a process of large numbers of arrests. The PPC planning took place in 2009 when it was confirmed by the government that Toronto would accept and host the G20. The Unit Cammanders of the PPC were responsible for the list of items. Namely, they were in charge concerning issues about offender’s care and supervision, prisoner’s transportation, and the operations of custody management and courthouse security (McNeilly, 2012).

The PPC is regarded to be a formation of 15 “stages” and 11buildings that serve as the offices, which includes staging point and prisoners’ holding areas. According to the data gathered in PPC, prisoners are divided into male and female groups and are locked up separately in the cells awaiting for the booking procedure. Therefore, after they are booked by the court officer, they are placed to the booking trailer in order to be booked by the staff ergeant whose duty is to remind their rights. The criminals are going through a sertain set of other procedures, namely they are “live-scanned, a level 3 strip search conducted, and a RICI file created in the electronic system” (McNeilly, 2012). The prisoners, who were not charged with criminal violation of the law, omit thid procedure.

PPC presupposes planning of hospital assistance that is created for the sake of injured prisoners and officers. Food supply is provided by staff of the Court Services. The offenders are fed every 6 hours. Court Services deal with the logging property; they are responsible for “filling out both the medication log and the prescribed form” (McNeilly, 2012). Property is considered to be returnable when it has been removed from the offender that he/she will get back in the release case from custody. This property is placed in the separate plastic property bags due to the items. The prosedures of removing and returning are fixed with the camera recording.

The cells, in accordance with the PPC planning, are not intentionally designated for male, female or young prisoner. Once, the offender emerges, the cells are divided in the appropriate way. Nevertheless, policy states that male and female offenders should be separated as well as young prisoners. It is considered so in theory, though in praxis, because of the prisons’ overcrowding it occurs that young offenders may be mixed with adults. However, males and females are obviously required to be locked up separately. Despite all the appropriate conditions in the cells, some of them do not contain toilets; it is another reason for keeping prisoners out of their cells for long periods of time (McNeilly, 2012).

Although conditional release processes in Canada give prisoners a chance to change their attitude toward society, the public safety is a question of the greatest value. Nevertheless, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act is under the constant review of the members of a House of Commons Justice Committee. In Canadian confederation, the first Penitentiary Act was created by the Parliament in the year 1868. Originally, the Ticket-of-Leave system comprises systematically organized methods of supervising early release that has been resembled in the contemporary situation with the parole giving processes. Nonetheless, it contained some problems in terms of influence from the political side into affairs connected with the granting parole or different types of releases (Evans, 1999).

From the historical angle, “in 1959, the parliament repealed the Ticket-of-Leave Act and enacted the Parole Act, which gave the National Parole Board exclusive jurisdiction and authority to grant, deny, terminate or revoke all forms of conditional release programs” (Evans, 1999). This Act cotained several reasons under which a prisoner could get parole. Among them, the rehabilitation of the criminal, offender’s reaching the maximum benefit from the sentence, and the absence of any possible risk toward the community. Due to the relevant predespositions, “the committee recommended that parole be expanded and led to the new approaches to conditional release: day parole, which consolidated various forms of temporary absence programs, and mandatory supervision, which called for release as a result of earned or statutory remissions” (Evans, 1999).

Parole and conditional release were a point of heated debates since 1987 when the Sentencing Commission of Canada raised an aspect of parole abolition. However, Canadian legislators have not ascertained the public in inevitability of parole abolishing.

The members of Community Strategic Planning Committee are regarded to be of the volunteer basis and aim to promote additional consutations. Concerning the statutory released prisoners, it proves to be a category of offenders that consists of those who have not been given parole, and though they are not considered to ve serious, they still belong to a risk supervision group. Additionally, the issues due to the offenders who are carriers of mental diseases and female offenders are regarded to be an open question and are examined in terms of finding ways to ease the gap between prison and community. “The topic of working with female offenders provided the committee with a catalog of issues and needs… of those working at the street level would provide a better picture of the needs than a purely statistical analysis could” (Evans, 2006).

Concerning the female situation in prisons, it tends out to be that the values of Canadian society are reflected in prison policy which is a “looking-glass of the society”. Thus, women are seen to be the most victimized, the poorest, illiterate and racially discriminated. “They have been physically and sexually abused by their own fathers and mothers, and then abandoned by the fathers of their children” (Hansen, 2002). Statistically, the majority of women at the time of committing their crimes were unemployed, 40 per cent were illiterate, 25 per cent were of the foreign origin, two thirds were single mothers and 80 per cent were sexually or physically abused. Besides, “when women do commit violent crimes, 62 per cent are classified as common assault and the majority of those convicted of murder have killed a spouse or partner who they reported as having physically or sexually abused them “ (Hansen, 2002).

Generally, governmental program deals with the basic needs the prisoners have to be provided with, namely basic essentials including food, cloth and shelter. Thus, the structural essense of the prisons in Canada might be judged as utopian one, to some extent. Besides, the offenders are provided with various educational programs.

Since 2006, The Conservative government embedded 41 bills on crime, among which 16 became laws. “As a result of this agenda, federal spending on prisons has increased 54% since 2006, and the federal prison budget is slated to rise another 21% this year” (Pasma, 2011). Every nation wants to deal seriously with the crime and to protect people from different manifestations of violation. The question is whether they are ready to allote incredible sums of money on making the system work. New mandatory minimum for crimes dealing with drugs menas proposed by Canadian government acertain cost as well. Additionally, a conditional sentence saves the correction system a certain sum of money. For instance, 15 conditional sentences may cost $1 million and the elimination of conditional senteces will cost the same.

But how much does the punishment cost? There is a tendency that harsh punishments are given for the crimes commited after having been released from prison. It may may happen due to the fact that prisons are regarded to serve as a sort of crime school, especially in the case when harsh offenders are locked up with those who pose little risk to the society. Statistics shows that the prisoners being locked up for long period are the representatives of Canadians with mental disorders, poor people, and Aboriginals. The vast majority of imprisoners are unemployed and poor, in accordance with the minimum subsistence level. Other features that increase chances of commiting crime by a person are the unfinished high school or absence of steady job that accounts to 70 per cent of the offenders. Therefore, the rate of imprisonments increases due to the poverty rate. For example, in the year 2008 the poverty gap was represented by $13.1 billion (Pasma, 2011).

One of the Canadian organizations that deals with providing advocacy, support and educational assistance to prisoners is the so-called PASAN. It is also aimed at working with people who have social problems, especially the representatives of this organization are specialized on the HIV/AIDS prevention. “PASAN formed in 1991 to the emerging AIDS crisis in the Canadian prison system (PASAN, 2012). PASAN is the only contemporary Canadian organization that provides HIV/AIDS prevention issues, support services and educational programs to prisoners.

PASAN organization aims at working with prisoners in terms of support counseling, advocacy, referrals, and pre-release planning for the offenders, no matter whether young or mature, who live with HIV/AIDS. PASAN staff assists the offenders in accessing appropriate medical care, and help to “arrange medical/social support upon release” (PASAN, 2012). Actually, they have worked with more than 500 prisoners that are HIV positive in various provincial and federal institutions.

Canada is famous for its reliance on privately run criminal imprisontment institutions. Moreover, a recently arosen crime bill presupposes the fact that more Canadians are going to face longer terms. There are cases of violation of the rules in terms of inhuman treatment of mentally ill female offenders. “The fact is there are still women imprisoned who are subject to long periods of segregation and uses of force despite their mental health status” (PASAN, 2012).

Despite all the horrible aspects of the structural points of prisons, there is a win-win situation in which the prisoners have exceptional opportunities (PASAN, 2012). Thus, “exceptional people” have unbelievable opportunities that the other nations do not obtain. They are able to change their attitude toward community working hard and serving within the social programs and for the community sake. Obviously, there might be a number of aspects that gives an explanation the rate of the released have been lately increasing, but the relevance of the fact lies in the results that may meet the community expectations. Namely, the nation will be cured from the violations and harsh actions, at least for a little while and a little bit in terms of changing the core of the evil.