Keeping federal prisoners in a maximum security penitentiary now averages nearly $222,000 per year per inmate, making Canada’s prison system one of the most expensive in the world, according to new documents.
The figures were outlined in a Correctional Service Canada (CSC) report submitted to the Senate national finance committee, which was first obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
In the document, CSC blames fixed costs for the ever-increasing price of housing inmates in maximum security facilities.
“The combination of higher costs with fewer offenders to allocate these costs led to an increase in the annual cost,” reads the report.
The annual expense per maximum security prisoner has risen from $174,939 in 2019 to the current $221,993 cost—a 27 percent increase.
Maximum security facilities are not the only prisons facing rising costs. Medium-security facility annual expenses increased 22 percent from $111,242 per prisoner in 2019 to $135,676 currently while minimum security costs rose 39 percent over the same period from $92,877 to $128,889 per inmate.
Costs at women’s prisons were up 27 percent from 2019, rising from $222,942 per inmate to $284,158.
“Women inmates require different levels of management and intervention as their risks and needs differ,” said the report.
The agency indicated the figures presented in its report came from dividing the CSC’s overall operating expenses by the average number of offenders.
CSC Assistant Commissioner Tony Matson told an Oct. 31 finance committee hearing that even if cells sat empty, wardens had fixed costs that could not be cut.
“We have a large component of our funding that is fixed in nature,” Mr. Matson said. “But there is a significant amount that changes based on the number of offenders in population and it also changes with inflationary pressures.”
CSC spent $3.2 billion last year. It estimates it has 16,382 cells in its prison system compared to 13,054 inmates in custody last year. It also employs 11,052 prison guards.
The Correctional Investigator, in its 2019 annual report to Parliament, described the Canadian system as expensive.
“With a staff-to-inmate ratio of one to one, the Correctional Service of Canada is among the highest resourced correctional systems in the world,” said the report. “Since 2008, the Correctional Service added approximately 1,200 correctional officer positions to its roster. Its total staff complement has increased by [more than] 2,500 employees, 80 percent of which were front line staff.”
The report noted that four out of every 10 prisons in Canada have “more full time employees than inmates.”
“In some institutions the number of correctional officers alone exceeds the number of inmates,” the Correctional Investigator report noted. “There are approximately 2,000 prison cells now sitting vacant across the country.”
