While I get the idea behind the concept, and I can empathize with the people who are upset at the loss of the program, if it can be replaced by something that will have more far reaching effects, then why not change things up?
Despite a fair amount of protest, cattle from Canada's sixth and final prison farm have departed for new pastures as part of a plan to phase out an inmate rehabilitation program by March 2011. By early afternoon Monday, the last of the cows were loaded and hauled away under police escort from an institution in Kingston, Ontario to a livestock exchange where they were to go up for auction.
About 300 prisoners worked at the farms where they learned to take care of animals, harvest crops, cut meat, pasteurize milk and sort eggs. The products were then sent to nearby prisons and leftovers were donated to local food banks. It's a great concept, there's no arguing that. Convicts gain not only work experience and needed social skills, but they also learn the value of teamwork. In reality though, along with those facts there were drawbacks, namely feasibility. The federal government says it recorded $7.5 million in revenues from the six farms in 2007-08. Not bad... but expenses were $11.6 million, leaving CSC Correctional Service Canada) with nearly $4 million in operational costs for the farms.
That's a lot of cash to encourage social skills if you ask me. If it could be better spent on alternative employment programs, which the government says it will ensure are in place, then why not go that route?
"Most of our offenders are released into urban areas," pointed out a CSC spokesperson earlier this week amidst protests. "While we recognize that the skills they got from farming were valuable in terms of punctuality, the sense of responsibility, caring for others and the many skills that they got, we also think that the other programs that are already in place give them... concrete experience and paper qualifications recognized by the provinces to be able to get work."
In fact, in the last five years just one federal offender has been noted to have found work in the agricultural sector and it's not even clear if that individual had even been in the prison farm program.
Nobody likes to hear stories of closures, but given the facts in this instance, I think it's best we MOOve on to greener and more productive pastures. Pardon the pun.
