By Peter Berton
OTTAWA – Although Canada’s corrections service has decided preventing prison inmates from viewing pornography may be a losing battle, the country’s politicians have declined to give up the fight.
The fracas began last year, when reports surfaced about inmates at the Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia watching televised porn. Immediately, then-Public Safety Minister Vic Toews vowed to put a stop to the “unacceptable practice.”
The promise proved easier said than done, owing to a clause in Canadian law that gives prisoners the legal right to subscribe to cable TV as long as they pay for it themselves. Canadian prisoners also have the right to access legally available adult materials as long as porn doesn’t “contradict their correctional plan or [become] an issue with respect to the management of a sex offender,” according to the Correctional Service of Canada.
Those revelations brought Toews and CSC Commissioner Don Head together for a face-to-face meeting in February. “A briefing document prepared for [Toews] in advance of that meeting stated that an absolute ban on prison porn was virtually ‘impossible,’” according to the Montreal Gazette.
Despite the legalities outlined in the government’s briefing document, Canada’s conservative politicians now have a figurative bone in their teeth.
“Frederik Boisvert, a spokesman for current Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, said in an email Wednesday that it is ‘completely unacceptable’ for convicted criminals to have access to sexually explicit programs,” the Gazette reported. “A government official who did not wish to be named added that it was subsequently determined that inmates did not have a right to access pornographic channels. A spokeswoman for the correctional service refused to confirm if that was the case, deferring to the minister’s office for comment.”
A flurry of bills intended to correct the “prison porn problem” is expected.
