• About
  • Join/Donate
  • Contact
Saturday, April 10, 2021
  • Login
No Result
View All Result
The Brief
NB MEDIA CO-OP
Share a story
  • New Brunswick
  • Canada
  • World
  • Environment
  • Indigenous
  • Labour
  • Gender
  • Politics
  • Arts & Culture
  • Videos
  • COVID-19
  • New Brunswick
  • Canada
  • World
  • Environment
  • Indigenous
  • Labour
  • Gender
  • Politics
  • Arts & Culture
  • Videos
  • COVID-19
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
dorchester-prison-farms
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

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,...

Negotiations deadlocked between province and general labour and trades workers
Labour

Negotiations deadlocked between province and general labour and trades workers

October 24, 2019

On Oct. 22, the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board declared a deadlock in negotiations between Canadian Union of Public...

New Brunswick approves J.D. Irving gypsum mine in Upham despite local concerns
Environment

New Brunswick approves J.D. Irving gypsum mine in Upham despite local concerns

October 24, 2019

The New Brunswick government has given a conditional approval to a J.D. Irving-owned gypsum mine near the Hammond River in...

What if we had had electoral reform?
*Opinion*

What if we had had electoral reform?

October 22, 2019

Last night’s election results showed a majority of Canadians preferred a minority government, with wide speculation that “progressive” voters throughout...

Load More

Recommended

Tertulia – Caroline Ennis on the 1979 Tobique Women’s March [video]

Tertulia – Caroline Ennis on the 1979 Tobique Women’s March [video]

4 days ago
New Brunswick tenants protest rent hikes and evictions

New Brunswick tenants protest rent hikes and evictions

2 days ago
Rural communities raise concerns about New Brunswick’s local government green paper

Rural communities raise concerns about New Brunswick’s local government green paper

3 days ago
UNB Departments of History and Classics statement against anti-Asian racism

UNB Departments of History and Classics statement against anti-Asian racism

2 days 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