Con Game: The Truth about Canada's Prisons.

by Michael Harris 

Some think that prisons should primarily be places where people suffer while others think they are places where people should be helped to change. As one should expect under these circumstances, a system that tries to please both camps satisfies neither.

One can just as easily find `evidence' that prisoners or guards are either the victims or the villains. It is not hard to make a seemingly convincing case either way. But what value does a one-sided story contribute to our understanding of corrections in Canada?

Con Game is not a triumph of `investigative journalism'. There are few, if any, facts in Con Game that have not been in the public domain for years. What is different about Con Game, compared to numerous other books on corrections that never make the best sellers list, is the raw anger and harsh agenda that seem to drive it. The value of what might have been interesting descriptions of prisons and analysis of the basic conflicts that characterize them is lost in the temper and detail of the book.

The title of the book should make one suspicious right away. Premised on the `con game' metaphor the central thesis of the book is that the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) along with the Treasury Board of Canada, the Prime Minister, Parliamentary Committees, Royal Commissions, Special investigation reports, most academics who specialized in correctional research and community groups have, over many years, `conned' the public. But don't fear, Michael Harris is here to tell us `the truth'.

Harris dismisses the conclusions of the 1996 report of the Commission of Inquiry into Events at the Prison for Women as being `a highly subjective indictment of CSC policies'. The Commissioner was Madam Justice Louise Arbour--then an appeals court Judge in Ontario and subsequently appointed by the United Nations as Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, and now a Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada. Her accomplishments have led twenty three Universities to confer on her honorary doctorate degrees. This is a person with impeccable credentials and an international reputation for rigour, objectivity and fairness. Her inquiry took months to conduct. Prisoners, guards, prison administrators and many others were called to testify under oath in exhaustive hearings. All this is dismissed as `highly subjective' while Harris's quotes from unnamed prison guards are presented as `the truth'. His arrogance is breathtaking.

Harris makes much of what he refers to as `true' recidivism rates that are hidden from the public--even though he uses the same sources (CSC statistics and research) for much of the `true' data. He makes no attempt to reconcile how seemingly contradictory statistics can coincide. He simply chooses the ones he likes and sneers at the rest.

It doesn't help that CSC reports on `recidivism' are really only recidivism indicators--even though they consistently explain the limitations of their data. But Harris exploits this language shortcut and parlays it into a conspiracy to `con' the public. The fact is that no one can say if a person re-offends until he or she dies. Waiting fifty years for `true' data is not very useful. Even if the data were useful, no means exists to collect it. So CSC looks at its own recidivism--those who leave and return to their system. This does not give `true' recidivism data but it does give you very reliable indicators of recidivism that, most importantly, show how well the system is working comparatively from year to year. What is important to know is that this reliable data shows a continuous positive trend over the last 20 years as gradual release programs have been improved. But Harris asks you to accept instead his hodgepodge collection of alarming but largely irrelevant or unreliable data that would never give reliable comparisons.

Woven throughout the book is an angry ideology that makes the book erratic and contradictory. Long passages that describe institutions, sensational cases and policies in relatively neutral language are interspersed with odd analyses or flashes that sound like rants. The book describes the problems of aboriginal people in the prison system in some detail and the attempts of CSC to hire more aboriginal staff and make some prisons more sensitive to aboriginal culture. Inexplicably he refers to this as `an apparently enlightened view that could equally be viewed as passing the buck'. Really? Old Kingston Penitentiary is described as foolishly soft (even sneering at supposed `room service' for those held in segregation in Kingston Penitentiary) and also described as a place characterized by constant fear and horror. So what is life like in KP--a joke or a horror?

The person who takes the overall blame for the `con game' is Ole Ingstrup who was the Commissioner between 1988 and 1992 and then again from 1996 through 2001. Harris suggests that Ingstrup virtually single-handedly turned the correctional system on its head to implement his personal ideology. He tries to build the absurd case that Ingstrup promoted the model of reintegrative corrections apparently without either Parliament or the community really knowing what he was doing and without other policy or operational staff in his and other government departments having either a say or support for the ideas.

Ingstrup had the unusual distinction of being appointed Commissioner of CSC twice. Are we to believe that on neither occasion the Federal Government had noticed his views or, on the second appointment, had seen the Mission Statement he developed? Do we think that the legislation that controls the prison system was passed without parliament understanding what it said? It is in his attacks on Ingstrup that the book most clearly seems to move from being the mouthpiece of the disgruntled guard to one that reads like a conspiracy theory. What seemed rash and intemperate now simply drives off the deep end.

Ingstrup made his mistakes, of course, and created enemies particularly among those who wanted to keep the status quo. More importantly, however, Ingstrup was committed to evidenced-based corrections. He promoted a research department that few correctional jurisdictions in the world could dream of having. Harris would know just by visiting the CSC website of the extensive research findings and papers that have influenced the direction of CSC policy and practices over the years. It should be obvious to even the most relentless critic that the basis for reintegrative corrections is not `Danish' or new or unorthodox or the work of one man.

If you like conspiracy theories and hold the belief that the only thing that `works' in criminal justice is punishment then you will like the book and feel vindicated by it. But, if you suspect that deterrence-based theories are grossly overrated, that policy in corrections should be evidence--based, and that good and bad are not the exclusive characteristics of guards, prisoners or managers, you will be offended and frustrated by the book.

CSC is deserving of criticism and I have criticized many of their polices for many years. But compared to Harris's perspective CSC looks positively visionary and I find myself begrudgingly defending them. Responsible criticism needs objectivity and constructive alternatives. Con Game provides neither.

Graham Stewart is Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada, Kingston.

gstewart@johnhoward. a