Super-Jail Blues
Future of Native treatment up in air with closing of Burch Correctional

HighGrader Magazine March/April 1999
by Charlie Angus
The biggest shake-up in the history of Ontario's jail system is well underway. Twenty-four jails across the province are on the chopping block, with the majority being closed to make way for the creation of three new super-jails.
To date, only three have actually closed (Haileybury, Cobourg and L'Orignal near Hawkesbury). The other 21 are still awaiting the building of the new super-jails near Penetanguishine, Lindsay and the retrofitting of Maplehurst into a 1600-bed facility. The super-jails are slated to come onstream over the next year. Their clientele will come from the widespread closure of smaller local jails.
Ross Virgo is with the Ministry of Corrections. He says the switch over to super-jails is reflective of "how correctional building design has evolved and become more efficient over time." According to Virgo, the large octagonal design of the super-jails will be much safer and cheaper to operate.
"The design we're looking at is intended to enable the supervision of large numbers of inmates with fewer correctional staff. The modular octagonal design allows for clear sight lines into all inmate occupied areas of the institution from few vantage points."
Backing the government's direction is the high per diem cost ($124 a day) of maintaining prisoners in many of Ontario's older jails.
One of those jails set to close is Burch Correctional Facility in Brantford. The prison sits on 400 acres and can accommodate 364 inmates in a low security setting. Until recently the prison boasted a large operational farm.
A local Citizens Action Committee has been formed to try and save the jail and its array of treatment programs. They dispute the argument that their operation is too old, expensive or inefficient.
Jim Fraser, a guard at Burch, speaks for the committee. "The jail is being run at only half capacity right now. We believe this is being done to make Burch appear more expensive than it really is. Burch is a 1970's style institution. It's thoroughly modern in every way. If it was run at capacity this would be a very economic jail to operate."
Fraser maintains that the real issue at stake is what will happen to Burch's treatment facilities.
"At Burch we are very treatment oriented. Inmates either go to school or they have to be involved in a work program. Our adult training centre is being shut down. The teaching of trades is all being shut down."
Presently Burch offers school courses run by the Board of Education for upgrading and employment retraining.
Ross Virgo maintains that within the new super-jail structure, treatment programs will be available. But everything will take place within the confines of the 200 bed "pod" units.
Says Virgo, "Moving inmates from Point A to Point B is one of the most expensive activities of the correctional environment. By eliminating that movement you make things more efficient. There will be program areas right in the living unit. There will be health care and visiting units right in the living areas."
Part of this move to greater efficiency has meant the closing down of prison farms across the province. Virgo explains, ""Ultimately it was pretty clear they were costing us more to operate than they were saving. The cultural skills that were being learned were dubious."
Fraser disagrees. "We produced crops, pork and beef that we shipped to institutions across the province. It taught inmates life skills they didn't know existed. But now the Ministry is moving away from self-reliance and handing it over to private suppliers. What it does is idle prisoners and this is counter-productive to rehabilitation."
The efficiency of the super-jails hinges on a one-size-fits-all notion of prison management. Instead of having separate institutions for low, medium and high security inmates, the various pods fulfill the different functions under one roof. In the place of separate treatment facilities such as the award-winning Ontario Corrections Institute (OCI), programming is broken up throughout the system.
Bill Sparks of the John Howard Society doesn't believe this approach will work.
"The problem with these multi-functional prisons is that the maximum security philosophy always prevails. You develop tensions between each segmented population and they become resentful of the other."
Sparks worries that unique programming, like that offered at OCI, will be lost.
"I'm worried that we're taking truly effective treatment programs and breaking it up in a system where maximum security will be the prevailing attitude. In these jails, the people in treatment programs get put upon and slurred by other inmates and staff because it looks like they're getting too many of the resources. Maximum security guards end up looking upon the treatment guards as undermining the efforts at stability."
Sparks believes that the pod system will be too unwieldy for treatment programs to be administered.
"Each of these pods in the super jail is supposed to house 200 inmates. If one of these pods is to be used as a treatment centre what happens when you have less than 200 inmates? How will you be able to administer the programming among competing groups? It becomes a question of whether you have adequate room for group meetings or whether one group is seen to be getting more support than another group. It can lead to further segmented populations competing for scarce resources."
One of these competing groups will be native prisoners. Burch is recognized as a provincial leader in dealing with Natives. Burch deals with Native prisoners from across southwestern Ontario. Located close to the Six Nations Reserve, upwards of 35% of the inmates are Native.
Says Fraser, "These people are in our neighbourhood. We're looking after our own here."
Presently native treatment programming is being run by the native operated Pinetree Native Centre. Fraser believes this programming could be lost in the shift to Maplehurst. "What is going to happen when these prisoners are moved into a larger operation?"
Burch isn't the only native-oriented facility facing the axe. The Native Treatment Centre in the Sault a joint venture with the Federal government is also on the chopping block. Although pressure from the Feds may put this closure on ice.
Virgo maintains that programming for Natives will remain in place where the populations warrant it. "In our institutions where there are a high concentration of Native prisoners we have programs geared to their needs. They are carried out within the context of the regular correctional environment. If there's a sweat lodge or a sweet grass ceremony it will be accommodated within these new environments."
Fraser is doubtful. "To build a Native sweat lodge you need large outdoor spaces. I just can't see how they're going to light large bonfires at Maplehurst which is in downtown Milton."
Fraser believes the fight to close Burch is far from over. "This is an election year," he says, "I'm sure that smarter heads can prevail."
The issue of jails has been one of the Tories' "hot buttons" since being elected. But Fraser believes that the average voter needs to understand the effect of programming offered in smaller institutions.
"In order to cut costs the Ministry will be cutting programming. It does cost money to offer programs to prisoners but we have to ask ourselves what are the real costs of holding people in a warehouse and then releasing them back into society."

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