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Canada: The chain gangs are back in Alberta
by Barry Artiste | October 2, 2007 at 07:33 am | 722 views | 2 comments
Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor
Does this surprise anyone that Alberta takes the lead once again in making crime less attractive for criminals. WIll we see this in British Columbia, or Vancouver? Not likely, when ex Dairy Farmer,Liberal Public Safety Minister John Les is in Charge with his New Best Pal Chief Justice Hugh Stanfield, perhaps they will send convoys of Hybrid buses filled with Organic Free Range Grief Councillors from Vancouver who mistakenly believe Edmontonians will need grief counselling as they drive by these criminal chain gangs working on the nations highways. "Oh the Humanity", Oh it's about time!
Is the chain gang back in Alberta?By 24 HOURS NEWS SERVICES
Edmontonians driving along Highway 216 near the city might think they're seeing a modern-day chain gang.
A half-dozen men wearing orange jump suits are spending part of the weekend picking up trash along the side of the highway between Whitemud Drive and Yellowhead Trail. The provincial convicts are serving weekend sentences at the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre - and, according to communications officer Christine Skjerven, doing something positive for society and for themselves, too.
"The program offers the inmates a worthwhile way they can give a little bit back to the community," she said. "We all benefit."
Not all inmates are eligible to serve weekend sentences or perform community work. Skjerven said the types of offences that earn a weekend sentence might, for example, include a build-up of unpaid traffic tickets. In other cases, a judge may not want to send a family's bread-winner to jail full-time.
The correctional centre must then come to agreement with a municipality before it lets inmates perform supervised work.
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October 2, 2007 at 07:33 am by Barry Artiste, 722 views, 2 comments
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Comments (2)
at 11:26 on October 2nd, 2007
This is not new in Alberta. Actually, the inmates aren't actually chained but they do wear orange jumpsuits and most of them go back to their regular lives during the week. Yes, they do important work keeping the highways clean. I have also been a part of volunteer organizations that have used their services. One was Alberta TrailNet, an organization for encouraging and developing trails in the province. We had a project to develop a connector trail in the Heart Creek area, near Canmore about six years ago. It was a short but difficult project through pretty rugged country and we had to start from scratch, digging up roots, cutting down trees and preparing a trail bed. We had an inmate gang helping us. The first day, as we worked and sweated with the hard labour, one guy in orange stopped, looked at me and said "Are you doing this for nothing?" "Yes", I said. Whereupon he shook his head and said "You're nuts".
at 05:41 on October 3rd, 2007
Thanks for the insight ppeggy, nice to hear comments from those in the know,
Barry