Margaret Atwood calls plan to close prison farms “dumb as a stump”
Margaret Atwood scared us into improving our recycling habits with her novels about environmental apocalypse, but the CanLit queen doesn’t confine her eco-activism to the realm of fiction. She was in Kingston this weekend to head a protest against the closure of the country’s six prison farms, where inmates currently produce much of their own daily bread. Before the marchers posted their demands on the door of the Correctional Service of Canada, Atwood rallied the crowd with a feisty speech in which she argued that, besides being a big step back from sustainability, the supposed cost-cutting measure is penny-wise and pound foolish: the farm program helps rehabilitate prisoners and equip them for a life outside prison, where they won’t continue to eat up taxpayers’ dollars. The author did serious research on Kingston Penitentiary for her 1996 book Alias Grace, so she probably knows what she’s talking about.
True to form, the ever-candid Atwood didn’t mince words in her conclusion:
[The decision] is also dumb as a stump and stupid as a box of hair and also a sack of hammers, and those who thought it up have their lights on but nobody home, and aren’t playing with a full deck. Follow them, and you’ll soon be up an aptly-named excrement-filled creek without a paddle.
Well, there you go.
• Save Our Prison Farms Rally, Kingston, Ontario, June 6 [Year of the Flood blog]
• Margaret Atwood to join prison farm march [Kingston Arts Council blog]
Always the poet.
It is a silly decision to close these farms.
Idle hands do nothing to improve one’s disposition
They closed the industrial farm near Sudbury Ontario call Burwash many years ago. The reason they gave at that time was it was not close enough for wife’s to visit and it cost to much to run it was too high.
The reason that was realized in end was it was Political and it just so happened that Minister had some homes to sell near Milton, and when they transferred people to new jail these people bought his homes. Burwash was model Farm the inmates worked farm learned trades and could go to school or work they had choice. Burwash could of supplied all the other jails with food and clothing but where not allowed to do it as they would take away business from other companies. closing these type of jails is stupid.
This decision is motivated by the current government move to replace prison farm produced food with corporate catering (a bad decision forced on hospital patients as well). Also, the trend towards privatization of everything, including the management of prisons by private companies only means prisons become a business that thrives on having more prisoners to fill them. The factory prison follows the factory farm in its inhumane treatment of animals, this time human beings, and the whole thing smells of more corporate greed. it is now hard to tell the difference between government and corporate people–they have become synonymous and we, the citizens of Canada are no longer calling the tune. Wake up, Canada. Wake up and smell the manure! (and the cows and the fields and the hay.) Wake up
The manure is in the fields alright but the stinkiest is on capital hill and getting putrid.
Spent the first 10 years of my life there. I have never got over moving from there. The community spirit was very high and every one knew every one else. “The Farm” was completely self sufficient, cows, pigs and all its veggies were grown right on the property. It produced it’s own power and had a profitable saw mill. It was a penny wise decision with a pound poor result.