I am sure there must be some certain satisfaction for someone who has been the victim of serious crime, to know that the criminal is behind bars in some terrible place like the Kingston Penitentiary. I get that. But to think that human beings live in these conditions, year in and year out, is for me quite unimaginable. The prison tour left us all feeling terribly sad and the tour was guided in a rather light story-telling style as if we were visiting something from the Middle Ages. How might one ever come out of a Canadian prison ready to be a decent and productive person in our society? On top of that I believe that being a corrections officer in one of these maximum-security prisons must take a toll on a person’s wellness. On our tour we met a prison warden who said that cells in Canadian prisons pretty much look the same no matter the prison. This is a grim reality. Moreover, our criminal justice system incarcerates and exceptionally high number of indigenous people. I am sure that some of those who are on the inside meet up with care and compassion. Thank God for those folks.
But can we not imagine a better way? Can we not look to other countries who have made significant prison reform and who are experiencing such low rates of recidivism that they are closing prisons? We certainly know a lot more about human behavior today than when this prison was built more than 100 years ago.