In round figures, it costs taxpayers one hundred thousand dollars per year to house each prisoner in a Canadian federal prison.
Ouch.
The average annual income for a Canadian family is in the neighborhood of seventy one thousand dollars.
Simple math says it costs more to house one criminal annually than it takes a family to earn.
For that hundred grand, prisoners have three squares and a cot, that is, the he receives three meals a day and a bed.
Along with this, inmates receive other benefits such as education, health care, and a host of services and leisure activities.
Say what you want about rehabilitation and prison conditions, but one cannot deny that a prisoner in a Canadian federal correctional facility has it a hell of a lot better than many in society.
It's not called Club Fed for nothing.
One of Canada's newspapers broke the story recently that seventy year old Clifford Olson, currently serving eleven consecutive life sentences for murdering eleven children, was receiving $1100.
00 per month under the Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs.
Additionally, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police paid Olson a hundred thousand dollars to have him lead law enforcement to the bodies of some of the children.
So, in addition to the six figure price tag every year for his room and board, we also pay this criminal to laze around.
Canadians were outraged to learn that we pay convicted criminals each and every month.
The price tag adds up to around two million dollars per year for the federal contribution portion and around ten million dollars per year for the provincial portion of benefits, for a total of about a million dollars per month being paid to criminals.
In the grand scheme of things, a million a month to the federal government is peanuts, however the sheer audacity of rewarding someone while they are supposedly paying their debt to society is an insult to the victims of crime and to taxpayers who must now share the burden of their husbandry.
And while this amount may not represent a king's ransom, with so many federal and provincial programs being cut every year, each penny lost to this abyss could be better invested in precious services for the less fortunate in our nation.
As quickly as the story of this affront to Canadians broke, the government redeployed its crafty spin doctors away from their usual foray of political doublespeak to draft new legislation that would ban the prisoner's cash cow.
Whew! This may be a record pace for any government to design, debate and dissipate a decent law.
Kudos to the Canadian government for responding appropriately.
The benefits of being in prison do not end there.
Essentially, a prisoner loses nothing by enjoying our hospitality.
They still get to vote.
And that is disconcerting.
If breaking the law has any consequences for an individual, it must include that he loses privileges in which he would otherwise choose to indulge.
And that's my take.
© 2010 by Curtis Sagmeister.
All Rights Reserved.
Ouch.
The average annual income for a Canadian family is in the neighborhood of seventy one thousand dollars.
Simple math says it costs more to house one criminal annually than it takes a family to earn.
For that hundred grand, prisoners have three squares and a cot, that is, the he receives three meals a day and a bed.
Along with this, inmates receive other benefits such as education, health care, and a host of services and leisure activities.
Say what you want about rehabilitation and prison conditions, but one cannot deny that a prisoner in a Canadian federal correctional facility has it a hell of a lot better than many in society.
It's not called Club Fed for nothing.
One of Canada's newspapers broke the story recently that seventy year old Clifford Olson, currently serving eleven consecutive life sentences for murdering eleven children, was receiving $1100.
00 per month under the Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs.
Additionally, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police paid Olson a hundred thousand dollars to have him lead law enforcement to the bodies of some of the children.
So, in addition to the six figure price tag every year for his room and board, we also pay this criminal to laze around.
Canadians were outraged to learn that we pay convicted criminals each and every month.
The price tag adds up to around two million dollars per year for the federal contribution portion and around ten million dollars per year for the provincial portion of benefits, for a total of about a million dollars per month being paid to criminals.
In the grand scheme of things, a million a month to the federal government is peanuts, however the sheer audacity of rewarding someone while they are supposedly paying their debt to society is an insult to the victims of crime and to taxpayers who must now share the burden of their husbandry.
And while this amount may not represent a king's ransom, with so many federal and provincial programs being cut every year, each penny lost to this abyss could be better invested in precious services for the less fortunate in our nation.
As quickly as the story of this affront to Canadians broke, the government redeployed its crafty spin doctors away from their usual foray of political doublespeak to draft new legislation that would ban the prisoner's cash cow.
Whew! This may be a record pace for any government to design, debate and dissipate a decent law.
Kudos to the Canadian government for responding appropriately.
The benefits of being in prison do not end there.
Essentially, a prisoner loses nothing by enjoying our hospitality.
They still get to vote.
And that is disconcerting.
If breaking the law has any consequences for an individual, it must include that he loses privileges in which he would otherwise choose to indulge.
And that's my take.
© 2010 by Curtis Sagmeister.
All Rights Reserved.
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