Why doesn't Carney want prison inmates to read books?

This will significantly damage their prospects for life after prison.

In 2022, a visitor to Alcatraz Island’s museum takes a photo of one of the bookshelves from the old prison library. Even a prison as cruel and vindictive as Alcatraz gave their inmates access to a library where they could read books, magazines, and educational resources. This is a basic standard that all inmates across the globe are entitled to under international law. | Copyright © Dietmar Rabich, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Prime Minister Carney’s austerity budget has found a new victim at Correctional Service Canada (CSC), the agency responsible for both the imprisonment and rehabilitation of criminal offenders sentenced to at least two years in prison.

Obviously, this is a very important government responsibility, one which should not have corners cut in its execution. Nonetheless, Carney has demanded that CSC reduce their budget by CAD$132.2 million over the next two years. Considering basic inflation of our currency, reducing the budget without even receiving inflation-adjustments will have significant implications for the quality of our correctional system.

And by their very nature, arbitrary budget cuts will result in arbitrary service cuts. In what can only be described as an April Fools’ joke in horrible taste, the CBC reports that on April 1^st CSC will lay off all the librarians who work with inmates in prison libraries. This move will save merely a pittance, CAD$2.4 million, and it will also severely damage the rehabilitative capacity of our correctional system.

For those unaware, the librarians who work in prison libraries are the will and the way for inmates who seek to be a better version of themselves. While mainstream discourse has grown cynical of the concept of rehabilitation, the truth is that it is a necessity.

Prison inmates, for all the rights we strip them of, are still people, deserving of basic dignity. Being incarcerated away from society is the punishment, but depriving them of any intellectual stimulation constitutes psychological torture. They need some form of interaction with other people, and something to focus their time on to stay productive.

Eventually, a large majority of these inmates will be returning to wider society, and it is important to make sure these people are prepared to live a normal life among their fellow citizens and not find themselves back in prison. We as a community need to ensure that they can be properly reintegrated into our social fabric. Rehabilitation is as much for their sake as it is for our own.

When a prison inmate wants to find a book suitable for their reading level and interests, they go to the prison’s librarian, just the same as any of us would go to our public library. And when they need legal information for their own personal proceedings, prison librarians can help them find what matters to their case.

Most importantly, when an inmate is looking to pursue higher education, a librarian is often essential to helping set up program applications and correspondence learning arrangements; prison education programs are shown by studies to reduce recidivism, and also boost employment opportunities once they’re free. While the above resources may all technically be available without a librarian, they are essentially indecipherable without a librarian to guide you through relevant material.

That is what makes it absurd that a spokesperson from CSC told Radio-Canada in the above CBC piece that “many institutions already operate according to a modern library model without a dedicated librarian on site.” That is not a modern library mode, it is a stupid library model!

Could you imagine going to a public library, and there’s no librarian? Nobody to order books or organize the stacks, nobody to give you guidance on what will be useful to you and how to use it, just a custodian to sweep the floors and hit the lights? It’s an absurdity, and if prison inmates deserve libraries—which they do—they certainly deserve a library with a librarian!

The claim that inmates can simply use “digital resources” wilfully ignores the fact that inmates suffer from restricted access to digital resources compared to paper resources, typically requiring supervision at limited times compared to the prison library’s overall hours. Indeed, inmates typically require their prison librarian to be their advocate in brokering access to these resources.

When you consider the significant damage this will do to inmates in their rehabilitative process, damaging their capacity to reenter society upon the conclusion of their sentence, the fact that this will only “save” CAD$2.4 million makes the whole concept pathetic. Is the federal government, which deals with billions and billions of dollars, going to notice a fragment of a percentage going towards prison rehabilitation programs?

No, of course not. This is not a policy crafted out of fiscal responsibility, it is a policy crafted out of spite and vindictiveness. It is a policy so cruel that it violates the United Nations “Mandela Rules”, the basic standard for treatment of prisoners, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

There is no justification for what the Carney Liberals are doing here. They must reverse course immediately, and ensure all inmates in correctional services have fulsome access to a well-stocked library, staffed by a trained librarian eager to assist them.