WITH INMATE TIDE LOOMING, HALF OF PRISONS TO EXPAND

29 penitentiaries to be revamped: official

About half of Canada's 57 federal penitentiaries will be renovated and
expanded in the next four years to cope with an influx of new
prisoners expected as a result of the Harper government's sentencing
laws, says the commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada.

Don Head told Postmedia News that although the list is not finalized,
in the "ballpark" of 29 prisons will be revamped nationwide.

The Harper government is expected to spend an additional $2.1 billion
by 2014 to accommodate almost 4,500 new inmates expected in federal
prisons.

However, it has never confirmed how many prisons will be revamped,
although senior Conservatives in recent months have announced $261
million in spending to build 1,100 new beds at 10 penitentiaries in
British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Head spoke to Postmedia News after a House of Commons committee
meeting Tuesday, where he outlined a blueprint for prison expansion,
which he said will involve a "multifaceted" approach of building cells
and double-bunking more inmates, a practice critics say breeds prison
violence.

Head reiterated to the government operations committee that he expects
two new prison-sentencing laws will add 3,700 new inmates to the
system by 2014, bringing the total of federal prisoners to almost
19,000, once normal growth is taken into account.

"The primary impact of the legislation will be a significant and
sustained increase in the federal offender population over time," he
told the committee.

The Truth in Sentencing Act, which eliminates a two-for-one credit
that judges impose to take into account pre-trial custody, is expected
to account for 3,500 new offenders in the federal system, who would
have previously spent time in provincial jails, which handle inmates
who are serving sentences of less than two years. Head said the prison
system will hire more than 4,000 new staffers to handle the extra strain.

The federal government's $2-billion spending estimate, released
earlier this year by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, is
significantly less than the additional $5 billion that parliamentary
budget watchdog Kevin Page predicts it will cost the prison system to
cope with one new piece of legislation alone.

Head told the committee Tuesday that Page did not have access to the
necessary government documents to draw accurate conclusions because
many of them fall under the excluded category of "cabinet
confidences," and were therefore blocked from release.

Page, appointed by the Harper government as an independent analyst of
government spending, has said he was stonewalled in his probe of
prison spending.