Con Game.(Book Review)

In his opening to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation special program On prisons in Canada (1) over a year ago, senior correspondent Brian Stewart noted: "There's nothing government does that is harder to get right than a prison system." Few people would disagree with this statement. Criminal justice advocates from across the political spectrum have argued their respective positions on the relative leniency or harshness of sentences of confinement since this particular form of punishment became dominant about two hundred years ago. (2)

Michael Harris's recent book Con Game opens with the claim that "Canada's prison system is in crisis." The March, 2002 release of Con Game--launched close to the National Police Association's 8th "National Lobby Day" on Parliament Hill (3) and tied neatly to the organization's "No More Club Fed" initiative--was largely received by the popular press as a fine work of investigative journalism. An editorial in the Vancouver Sun praised its "compelling evidence" and argued for a commission of inquiry into prisons on the basis of the book (Vancouver Sun 2002).

But Con Game has also been criticized, for example, by Ottawa Citizen senior writer Dan Gardner (4) and University of British Columbia law professor Michael Jackson (5), for blatant research weaknesses. I will add to these criticisms by challenging Harris's assertions about the role of restorative justice in the philosophy and operations of the federal corrections system. Stated plainly, he so deeply fails to appreciate the dimensions of restorative justice that he baldly misrepresents it, apparently for the convenience of his argument. To demonstrate this, a description of the essential features of restorative justice is outlined, followed by a consideration of its application potential in prisons and a review of restorative justice in the Correctional Service of Canada today.

Restorative justice and the Con Game argument

In his introduction to the book, Harris (2002: 5-6) asserts his victims' rights stance in broad claims about the failings of the Correctional Service of Canada:

 
   When I began, I expected to find a generally well-run prison system managed 
   by politicians and bureaucrats who still had a lot to learn about victims' 
   rights. What I discovered, with a few notable exceptions, was a secretive 
   and blinkered collection of administrators who ran a system where the 
   criminal was king after he was sentenced to prison. Awash with drugs and 
   alcohol, violent, and frighteningly unaccountable, Canada's prison system 
   is a place where criminal behaviour is rarely altered, true recidivism 
   rates are hidden from the public, and the so-called "restorative justice 
   model" is embraced with all the fanaticism of a cult so sure of its 
   philosophy that it is openly hostile to criticism and reform. 

The imagery evoked by these assertions could shock the conscience of any reader inexperienced in the day-to-day operations of a prison. The sub-text to this, of course, is that the system is naively coddling criminals in the vain hope that rehabilitation will reduce criminal behaviour and therefore protect society. The solution is to "get tough" on criminals, which is presumed to yield the outcome of reduced crime or, at the very least, the "bad guys" getting their just deserts. Victims would be avenged, and the rest of society could rest assured that the rights its members relinquished to the state in exchange for protection from others--the essence of the social contract--were well spent.