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The Pros And Cons Of Detention Centers

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My name is Megan Forsyth and I am a grade ten student at Earl of March Secondary School. In my civics class, we have recently been exploring municipal and provincial problems through reading articles from the Ottawa Citizen. Most interesting to me was an article chronicling the current issues at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. The article, by Anne London Weinstein, states that the detention centre has longstanding systemic problems as well as atrocious conditions calling for the need of a judge to conduct a full public enquiry. While I understand the residents of the detention centre are criminals, the inhumanity with which they are treated horrified me to an extreme degree. And therefore I strongly agree with the opinions expressed in …show more content…

The most important of which would be to improve inmates’ access to rehabilitation programs which would help them to properly reintegrate into society. In recent years, justice policy in Canada has become characterized by a “tough on crime” attitude, meaning more criminal offences and longer periods of incarceration. The result of this approach is a prison system not equipped to act as a place for rehabilitation that is nothing more than human warehouses for incarcerated inmates. This also contributes to prison overcrowding which causes a lack of resources for the provision of rehabilitative programs, which have been proven to be effective. Despite this, only 25% of Canadian prisoners participate in programs that target criminogenic needs. Also, a lack of rehabilitation programs causes an increase in the recidivism rate, which is at 40.6% in Canada. The result is a terrible cycle, but it does have a solution; successful reintegration of offenders means that fewer will appear again before criminal courts, return to prison, and contribute to prison overcrowding, generally increasing the costs of the criminal justice system. By implementing more rehabilitation programs into the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, overcrowding and costs will decrease, allowing for resources to be put to better use improving the conditions and treatment of its

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