We need to answer the right questions before building a new prison

In December 2021, the Government of New Brunswick announced its intention to build a new prison to add to the carceral system of the province. Last month, we learned that the cost of that project has reached the staggering sum of 66 million dollars, more than double the original estimate of 32 million dollars (Daily Gleaner, April 6, 2024) – with no guarantee, of course, that this will be the final price tag.  The prohibitive cost of a prison is only one aspect of its questionable existence.

Provincial prisons serve two main purposes: 1) Incarcerating persons remanded to detention while awaiting trial or during trial, and 2) Incarcerating persons serving their prison sentence following a guilty verdict in court.

Here I wish to address the issue of remand in New Brunswick.

Persons remanded to prison have not yet been declared guilty of a crime, let alone sentenced following a guilty verdict. They are incarcerated because they are deemed by the court to be at risk of not showing up to trial when required or of committing an offence while awaiting trial.  Their stay in prison can be counted in days, weeks, months, or years, depending on each individual case.

Here is what one learns when looking at the available prison statistics for New Brunswick.  During 2001-2002, a total 1,337 persons were sent to prison on remand; less than 20 years later – 2018-2019 – that total was 2,557. This is a near doubling (91 per cent) of the number of people remanded to prison, year to year. That steadily increasing trend stands in sharp contrast with the number of persons incarcerated to serve a sentence in those same prisons. That number remained relatively stable at around 2,500 annual total for the same period of time.  While there were almost two persons sent to prison to serve an actual sentence for every person sent to prison on remand just over 20 years ago, the increased use of the remand provision by the courts now brings that ratio at one-to-one.

This is all more troubling when one realizes that this happened during a time when the population of New Brunswick remained steady at approximately 750,000 (with a 3 per cent increase occurring in the last few years prior to 2020). Furthermore, the crime rate declined by more than one third (37.5 per cent) between 2001 and 2014, after which an increase followed that has not reached the peak of the early 2000s.  So, the crime rate variations cannot explain the higher number of persons remanded to prison.

The sharp increase in the use of remand between 2001-2002 and 2018-2019 is only one aspect of the troubling use of prisons in New Brunswick that must be addressed fully and openly prior to the addition of a new prison to the carceral system of the province.

Jean Sauvageau is a professor of criminology at St. Thomas University and a member of the Coalition Against Prison Expansion NB (CAPE NB).

A version of this commentary appeared in the Telegraph-Journal on May 26, 2024.