• About
  • Join / Donate
  • Contact
Monday, October 2, 2023
  • Login
No Result
View All Result
The Brief
NB MEDIA CO-OP
Share a story
  • Articles en français
  • New Brunswick
  • Canada
  • World
  • Environment
  • Indigenous
  • Labour
  • Gender
  • Politics
  • Culture
  • Videos
  • NB debrief
  • Articles en français
  • New Brunswick
  • Canada
  • World
  • Environment
  • Indigenous
  • Labour
  • Gender
  • Politics
  • Culture
  • Videos
  • NB debrief
No Result
View All Result
NB MEDIA CO-OP
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment

Momentum growing to reopen Dorchester prison farm: advocates

by Najat Abdou-McFarland
August 10, 2016
Reading Time: 2min read

Advocates want the Dorchester Penitentiary’s prison farm to reopen. Photo from Start the Farms Dorchester 2016.

Start the Farms Dorchester 2016 is a New Brunswick-based group hoping to reopen the prison farm at Dorchester Penitentiary, a Canadian federal corrections facility located in the village of Dorchester.

Start the Farms Dorchester 2016 is an advocacy group that is promoting awareness of the positive benefits of the Dorchester prison farm. Prison farms in Kingston, Ontario, Joyceville and Collins Bay, are being considered for re-opening after being closed in 2010 by the former federal government.

Start the Farms 2016 is hopeful the drive to re-open Ontario prison farms will bring about change in New Brunswick.

Dorchester grounds
Dorchester Penitentiary grounds. Photo from Start the Farms Dorchester 2016 Facebook page.

When it was running, the Dorchester farm facility maintained several operations simultaneously. These operations included green houses, honey bee colonies, an egg hatchery, a dairy herd, a beef herd, a piggery, a butcher shop and a distillery for making milk and juice out of their own harvest.

According to Mel Goodland, farmer and former mayor of Dorchester, it was quite a loss to the community when it closed. The facility employed several farm people from the community and the facility regularly donated some of their produce to several community functions.

For 20 years, Vince Zelazny has been involved in the Alternatives to Violence Program at the Dorchester Correctional Facility. Alternatives to Violence is a rehabilitative program to facilitate better relations between inmates.

Zelazny heard several positive comments about the farm from inmates during his time at the prison. The inmates told him that the prison farm helped them to achieve some of their program goals and allowed them to live a more productive lifestyle. Likewise, Goodland has seen firsthand some of these beneficial effects through the interaction he has had on the prison farm.

Community-focused researcher and scholar, Hilary Lyons, has laid out the benefits of empowering, stimulating and self-fulfilling labour in correctional facilities. In general, growing one’s own food allows one to have agency over the nurturing, preparation and consumption of the food in their diet. This is particularly true for inmates who are working to achieve positive control over their lives.

She and others promote rehabilitative labour. What Lyons and others envision is dramatically different from exploitative farm labour, which reproduces existing inequalities and divisions, and fails to equip inmates with usable skills post-release.

Rehabilitative labour benefits include therapeutic effects such as work satisfaction and stress release from working outdoors and developing a positive connection with other living creatures and plants. Rehabilitative labour also involves a personal work ethic of responsibility and diligence and provides inmates with work-ready skills such as problem-solving and teamwork. All of these benefits are in addition to specific vocational skills in farming and animal care.

As for the possible role the Dorchester prison farm might play in the regional economy, Goodland affirmed that there was no competition conflict with other agribusinesses in the region In the past, the majority of the produce was used to supply other correctional facilities in Atlantic Canada. He has received interest from other agribusiness stakeholders in the region in becoming involved in the Dorchester prison farm should it reopen again. He and other interested parties who have spearheaded this initiative are waiting to hear the results from two feasibility studies in Ontario.

Goodland, Zelazny, and advocates are hoping the momentum to reopen the farms will take seed as Canadians learn more about the potential of these types of farms to rehabilitate inmates’ inner and outer lives.

Tags: DorchesterNajat Abdou-McFarlandprisonprison farmslider
ShareTweetSend

Related Posts

Canada’s criminal legal system is unjust: Senator Kim Pate [video]
New Brunswick

Canada’s criminal legal system is unjust: Senator Kim Pate [video]

February 16, 2023

Independent Senator Kim Pate says that Canada’s criminal legal system is unjust, discriminatory and biased against Indigenous people and people...

‘We need to push back’: El Jones calls for prison abolition as province pushes ahead with $32M jail
New Brunswick

‘We need to push back’: El Jones calls for prison abolition as province pushes ahead with $32M jail

January 6, 2023

As the New Brunswick government pressed ahead last fall with its controversial plan for a $32-million jail in Fredericton, poet, activist...

Martha Paynter on how prisons violate bodily autonomy [video]
Health

Martha Paynter on how prisons violate bodily autonomy [video]

December 4, 2022

On November 30, Martha Paynter spoke about her book, Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada, reading from...

The flip to low-carbon mobility – A letter from New Brunswick’s future #19
*Opinion*

The flip to low-carbon mobility – A letter from New Brunswick’s future #19

October 25, 2019

October 25, 2030 (Fredericton, New Brunswick) Dear friends, What a difference a decade can make! At the end of 2019,...

Load More

Recommended

Artist rendering of the scale of the open pit, tailings, and tailing dam proposed for the Upper Nashwaak superimposed on the Village of Stanley.

COMMENTARY: Sisson circus mine games

6 days ago
Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick slams province for ‘centralization’ under Aboriginal Affairs [video]

Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick slams province for ‘centralization’ under Aboriginal Affairs [video]

2 days ago
Protesters hold signs which say, "Take back the night."

STATEMENT: Support against changes to Policy 713

6 days ago

STATEMENT: Striking CUPE workers in Saint John reject city’s offer

5 hours ago
NB Media Co-op

© 2019 NB Media Co-op. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Join / Donate
  • Contact
  • Share a Story
  • Calendar
  • Archives

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • About
  • Join / Donate
  • Contact
  • Share a Story
  • COVID-19
  • Videos
  • New Brunswick
  • Canada
  • World
  • Arts & Culture
  • Environment
  • Indigenous
  • Labour
  • Politics
  • Rural

© 2019 NB Media Co-op. All rights reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In