Prison inmates insist "carrot-and-stick"
programs don't work

The "carrot-and-stick" prison literacy campaign promoted by Solicitor General James Kelleher is doomed to failure, say the hardened men who are the supposed beneficiaries. The "carrot" has its moments. But the "stick" isn't going to budge lifers who landed in jail because they wouldn't follow society's rules.

Wally Belczowski is still talking calmly about the benefits of education as the door made of grey steel bars scrapes shut a foot from his face. His voice becomes suddenly urgent.

"It matters." There is a loud click. "It really matters." And then Wally, head of the students' council, walks back into Edmonton Institution, an SO maximum security federal penitentiary, complete with Special Handling Unit.

A tough jail for tough men. Usually about half of the 190 inmates are lifers.

Ten of these inmates have just spent the better part of a summer morning telling a visitor why the "carrot-and-stick" prison literacy campaign being pushed by federal Solicitor General James Kelleher will fail.

"The carrot sometimes works," says Wally, whose formal title is chairman of the distance education group. "The stick doesn't work at all.

"If we were going to do what we were told, we wouldn't be here. If you tell someone here they have to learn, they'll break your nose, or worse." The coercion in Kelleher's policy comes from giving less of everything to allegedly illiterate inmates who won't take remedial courses: less pay, less chance for early parole and no chance for privileges like day release.

That's only the start. Senior department staff don't hide their admiration for the success of some U.S. prisons with mandatory literacy courses.

"We're not convinced yet that we need to go the U.S. route," says assistant corrections commissioner Andrew Graham. "You hold things in reserve." In a remarkable display of masochism, Kelleher even hosted a national conference in Ottawa in May, 1987, where experts from across the country competed to trash the coercive slant of the policy.

From B.C.'s Simon Fraser University, Prof. Stephen Duguid questioned the basic assumption behind the literacy drive—that education will empty jails by rehabilitating prisoners.

"We've been down this road before," warned Duguid, who runs the country's most successful program of university studies inside penitentiaries.

Other critics said little was being done for the 4,000 former federal inmates on parole. Provincial jails, with another 12,000 inmates, are even farther behind.

But no inmates, federal or provincial, were invited to that ballroom at the Chateau Laurier.

"Just because I'm in prison doesn't give them the right to push me around," Rob Ironchild is saying. Other inmates in an Edmonton Max classroom nod in agreement. Bill joins in: "They don't want us smarter than them, they don't want us to get any smarter in this place." The penitentiary system insists it does want the inmates smarter—at least about society's rules.

"We're trying to teach inmates that they're responsible for their own behavior," says Dan Kane, head of offender programs. "We want them to take control of the world they live in, in a positive way." That's called "life skills". Two years ago, the professionals of the Correctional Service of Canada urged a 10-times increase in spending on life skills and only a doubling for literacy courses.

Politically, literacy is a lot more salable for ambitious ministers than nebulous "life skills".

"We solicitors general don't seem to last long," Kelleher notes. "I'm the fourth one in two-and-a-half years, so I'm trying to get a lot done rapidly." So far, he seems to be succeeding. In the first three months of the new drive, the correctional service graduated almost twice as many newly literate inmates as in the past 12 months—252 versus 150. The numbers don't really mean much. As Kane told the National Conference on Offender Literacy: "We can make the books look like we want them to." Part of the problem is the correctional service has only the vaguest idea what proportion of the 12,000 federal inmates are really functional illiterates. The SCAT (School and College Ability Test) being used to rate prisoners is more than 20 years old, was designed to measure the progress of California teenagers, was overtaken by a new version six years ago, and, since it is multiple choice, rates as literate a prisoner who can barely sign his name.