New documents revealed that the cost of housing federal prisoners in a maximum security penitentiary has now reached an average of almost a quarter of a million dollars each annually.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Correctional Service attributed the cost increases to fixed expenses in one of the world's most expensive prison systems.“The combination of higher costs with fewer offenders to allocate these costs led to an increase in the annual cost,” the Correctional Service wrote the Senate National Finance committee. Prison managers detailed expenses per inmate based on levels of security.The cost of housing a maximum security prisoner has risen from $174,939 to $221,993 since 2019, a 27% increase. Similarly, the cost of medium security custody has increased from $111,242 per prisoner to $135,676 annually since 2019, a 22% increase.During the same period, expenses at minimum security prisons per inmate per year rose from $92,877 to $128,889, a 39% increase. Costs at women's prisons since 2019 also increased from $222,942 per inmate to $284,158 per year, a 27% increase.“Women inmates require different levels of management and intervention as their risks and needs differ,” wrote the Correctional Service.The agency calculated the figures by simple arithmetic wrote managers. “This is obtained by dividing the Correctional Service’s overall operating expenses by the average number of offenders,” they wrote.Tony Matson, assistant commissioner of prisons, testified during an October 31 Finance committee hearing that wardens had fixed costs that could not be reduced, even if prison cells remained unoccupied.“We have a large component of our funding that is fixed in nature,” testified Matson. “But there is a significant amount that changes based on the number of offenders in population and it also changes with inflationary pressures.”The federal prison system in Canada is estimated to have 16,382 cells. In 2022, there were 13,054 inmates in custody and the number of prison guards was 11,052. The Correctional Service as a whole spent $3.2 billion in 2022.In a 2019 Annual Report to Parliament, the correctional investigator stated that the Canadian system was costly.“With a staff-to-inmate ratio of one-to-one, the Correctional Service of Canada is among the highest-resourced correctional systems in the world,” said the report.“Since 2008, the Correctional Service added approximately 1,200 correctional officer positions to its roster. Its total staff complement has increased by over 2,500 employees, 80% of which were front-line staff.”“Today, nearly four in ten prisons have more full-time employees than inmates,” wrote the correctional investigator. “In some institutions, the number of correctional officers alone exceeds the number of inmates. There are approximately 2,000 prison cells now sitting vacant across the country.”
